VISION. MISSION. PRINCIPLES.

» Reduce Demand on Resources
The one-way extraction and use of virgin resources for products and packaging that are discarded to landfills or incinerators is a primary cause of global resource depletion and associated environmental, climate and social problems, and is fundamentally unsustainable.

» Stop Enabling Waste
Landfills, incinerators and high-temperature waste processing facilities enable and propagate the system of one-way use of materials, remove finite resources from the economy, and act as public subsidies for wasteful product design.

» Manage Materials, Not Waste
Zero Waste is a policy framework which places discarded materials in the context of global resource depletion. Product stewardship, waste prevention, reuse, recycling and composting significantly reduce the demand on extraction and use of virgin resources, and deliver manifold environmental, climate and economic benefits beyond mere landfill diversion. Preserving landfill capacity and reducing landfill gas emissions is just the start of the environmental and climate benefits of these activities. The more profound benefits are critical to the national discussion on ecological and economic priorities.

» Product Stewardship
Increasingly complex, toxic and over-packaged products constitute a growing portion of the discard stream managed by local governments, and is placing demands and liabilities on municipal disposal systems for which they are not designed or intended. Product Stewardship - shifting the fiscal responsibility for "cradle to cradle" management of products from local government to the producers of the products - reduces waste through product re-design. It incentivizes resource-efficient products, packaging and logistics, and reduces net system costs.

» Preserve Embodied Energy and Value
Maximizing the recovery, re-use, and recycling of products in as whole and as useful a form as possible preserves more of the embodied energy used to produce and deliver them. This includes organic discards treatment processes which preserve the ability of the material to be used as soil amendment.

» Local Utilization of Resources
Furnishing as many of our material needs as possible from the local flow of recovered resources supports local economic development and resiliency, and reduces the environmental and climate impacts of longer supply chains. This is particularly true of basic materials such as compostable organic materials which are essential to local soil replenishment, and concrete, asphalt and other construction and demolition debris, which are essential to sustainable infrastructure and redevelopment.