What is Zero Waste?
Zero Waste is an approach to solid waste that seeks to capture materials for reuse, and promotes the redesign of resource life-cycles so that all products are reused.
What could Zero Waste mean for Acton?
Acton, as a relatively affluent community, is responsible for the purchase and use of a lot of material goods. From all that “stuff,” we create a great deal of trash that ends up accumulating at toxic levels: in the poisoning of groundwater with incinerator ash, in landfills, where it rots and puts the potent greenhouse gas methane into the air, and in the general accumulation of unprocessed, and sometimes unprocessable, hazardous waste.
How do we in Acton fix this? What’s needed is movement toward a system in which any goods that we bring into Town last longer, and are reused multiple times, repurposed or composted at the end of their planned life, and, in general, get used up or transformed to other forms that are usable by humans, other animals, plants, or other parts of our larger ecosystem.
In slower-moving ecosystems, species evolve to take advantage of accumulations, turning them into food sources. When we faster-moving humans are involved, more-rapid repair mechanisms are needed, including persuasion, legislation, financial incentives, and other government and private interventions.
Green Acton has proposed a number of Zero Waste initiatives to help boost our transition to a more-conserving approach to the materials we use.
Please join us to help along this important change in our community.