Désolé, cet article est seulement disponible en Anglais Américain.

Waste is one of the main world ecociders. Indeed, waste fulfils all the comandments of ecocide; it causes environmental destruction, it damages ecosystems, it threatens any sort of live and it ignores the rights of future generations. Waste is the living proof of the degree of selfishness and stupidity of the most intelligent generation of human beings this planet has seen.

Nature makes no waste, it is a genuine human invention. In nature nothing and nobody goes to waste because the definition of an ecosystem is that it is a system of cooperative and symbiotic relationships; the discards of a process are the input for another one. Everything is upcycled into the system in a way that the system is sustainable and resilient. In an ecosystem all energy used is renewable and non-polluting and all resources are obtained in the vicinity using non-extractive, low-energy-intensive techniques. Processes take place at normal local temperatures and pressures and combustion is not an option. The current linear throw-away society is the opposite to sustainability; resources are extracted, transported, manufactured, sold, used and discarded committing ecocide almost in each and every step of the process.

Following the example of nature, Zero Waste is a philosophy, a strategy and a goal aiming at emulating sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are resources for others to use. Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them. Implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges to land, water, or air that may be a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.

But beyond definitions, Zero Waste is a movement of people around the world which are working everyday not to better manage waste but to rather phase it out of the system. Zero Waste people and communities work at diferent levels of the production and consumption chain in order to minimise environmental impact and close the cycles.

For instance the network of Zero Waste municipalities –more than 200 in Europe alone- commit to sending zero waste to landfills or incinerators as soon as possible. Many of these municipalities are already separately collecting more than 80% of the waste which means that they provide good feedstock for composters and biogas plants which produce renewable energy and organic matter to improve the soils and avoid desertification. They allow for high quality recycling of paper, plastic, glass and metals which save the cutting of new forests or the opening of new mines to extract new resources. And they alllow for the closing of incinerators and landfills which destroy the environment and cause the whole process of extraction to start again.

But Zero Waste is not only about recycling more and better, it is also about reducing the waste generation in the first place. In Zero Waste communities the generation of plastic packaging has been radically decreased thanks to the opening of public fountains, dispensers of liquids such as milk, honey or detergents in bulk, the ban on of bottled water or single-use plastic bags, the implementation of green procurement, policies to stop spillage of food-waste and many others. For instance, whereas in Denmark, the top waste producer per capita in Europe, almost 400kg of waste per person and year were sent to polluting incinerators in Zero Waste communities the anual waste sent for disposal per person is below 100kg and some of them are even close to 50kg. This means not only that the environmental impact of Zero Waste citizens is less than 4 times less than that of the average Dane it also means that the need to extract new resources is much lower.

Because Zero Waste is based in the proximity principle, most discards are treated as close as possible to where they are generated. This means that sustainable and good jobs are created to collect and recycle the waste, that innovation thrives in order to create products that are not toxic and easy to recycle and that the total costs for the community but also for the new generations are also reduced. Moreover there are many other positive extrenalities associated to a Zero Waste strategy. For instance, in Capannori, the first European town to declare Zero Waste despite recycling almost 90% of the waste and generating new jobs in the collection of waste it has also generated new jobs in associated sectors. For instance, thanks to the zero waste policy new shops such as Effecorta are opened which sell local products without packaging, or a reuse center also was created where people can donate their used stuff where it is given a second life reducing waste and generating local economy. A company supplying reusable nappies –Ecobimbi- is also thriving thanks to the opportunity given by the Zero Waste strategy. One of the consequences of such an array of virtuous initiatives is that nobody now remembers that one day a company wanted to build an incinerator in the town, which would have polluted the air and destroyed all this source of renewable and resilient economy that is now a reality. As we can see, the more Zero Waste is implemented the less ecocide there will be.

But zero waste is also much more. It is about environmental justice, so that pollution and waste treatment facilities are not concentrated in poor and disenfranchised communities. It is about inclusion, so that the millions of people worldwide who make a living by collecting and selling discarded materials (aka waste pickers, catadores, grassroots recyclers) are able to live with dignity. It’s about putting money into real solutions, and combatting corruption. It’s about community organizing, education, and democracy, so that all citizens can participate in local resource management plans, funding is fairly distributed, and so that all businesses and manufacturers understand and fulfill their roles in minimizing waste and designing products for the future.

In places where incinerators or landfills are built there is a clear democratic problem triggered by corruption or incompetency –or both-. These are places in which the citizens are ecocided for the sake of economic profit or in order to allow some other richer communities elsewhere to continue to live in their illusion of a planet without limits. We can’t continue to run a throw-away economy in a finite planet and waste is today a global issue. There is no place called “away”. Milions and milions of tons of plastic waste are now in the sea-bed or floating in our oceans, breaking into small pieces which are entering the food chain and exterminating the fauna and affecting us all –rich and poor-. The throw away society is consuming more energy than ever to extract resources which are becoming more difficult to reach and all of this to produce a short-lived designed-for-the-dump product which we will use for little time before we send it to the landfill, the incinerator or the nature.

Waste has not future, waste is, in itself, ecocide. Zero Waste is a very simple way to fight ecocide starting from our everyday life and allows for building up actions with friends, neighbours and communities to change the world, one community at a time.

As we can see, there are many existing ways how to manage our society without committing ecocide. You can also do your bit by giving it a legal power at www.endecocide.eu

Joan Marc Simon

Executive Director of Zero Waste Europe
www.zerowasteeurope.eu

Catégories : blog

0 commentaire

Laisser un commentaire

Emplacement de l’avatar

Votre adresse e-mail ne sera pas publiée. Les champs obligatoires sont indiqués avec *

Ce site utilise Akismet pour réduire les indésirables. En savoir plus sur comment les données de vos commentaires sont utilisées.