The concept of “Zero Waste” is becoming increasingly popular nowadays. Australia and New Zealand have entire states and districts that are advocates of the Zero Waste concept. There was declaration of Wales, in the UK, as a zero-waste area.

Zero Waste is a design principle as well as a philosophy of the 21 ^st century. This also includes the concept of recycling but covers a wider scope since it includes the entire system of the rapid progression of resources and waste through the planet. Zero Waste reduces waste, lowers consumption, uses the full potential of recycling and makes sure that they manufacture most products for reusing, repairing and recycling, to return to the marketplace or the environment.

A new way of thinking

Ideally, there should be no manufacture of a product if you cannot repair, recycle, compost or reuse it. There are lots of products in the market today, which can be substituted with products made out of recyclable materials, such as polystyrene boxes from fast food joints. You can make them instead with natural materials that are biodegradable. The biodegradable boxes are even consumable by the kangaroos in Australia. Brighton even produces Frisbees, made out of hemp oil.

When the time comes that toxic materials, such as PVC, will have the label of being illegal substances for manufacturing products, then they will also disappear from the “waste stream”, which will convert it into a “clean resource stream”. The end goal is that the cycles will be as close as possible to the natural cycles, instead of the broken cycles that we have now. Broken cycles are an indication that the damage to our environment is getting severe.