Nothing gets wasted: everything travels in cycles. How do we move toward this in Acton?
Acton, as a relatively affluent community, is responsible for the purchase and use of a lot of goods, and we create a lot of trash that ends up accumulating at toxic levels in such places as incinerator ash poisoning groundwater, rotting trash in landfills putting the greenhouse gas methane in the air, and the general accumulation of unprocessed and sometimes unprocessable hazardous waste.
How do we in Acton fix this? What moves us towards a system where any goods that we bring in to Town last longer, are reused multiple times, repurposed or composted at the end of their planned life, and, in general, get entirely used up or transformed to other forms that can be 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 in to food sources. When us faster-moving humans are involved, faster 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 move this transformation along.
Please join us to help move this transition along.