The Root of the Problem: An Old System in a New World
In the late 19th Century, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, natural resources in this country were abundant – seemingly inexhaustible – and our nation’s population was relatively small. The U.S. government spent money buying land, building roads and rail, and establishing energy and water utilities to provide industry with incentives to fuel our economy with the unbridled use of natural resources. The systems for handling society’s “waste” from all this activity were simple – material was either buried or burned.
Today, more than 100 years later, our world is a very different place. Natural resources are now scarce and our population has increased dramatically, yet we continue to use the destruction of the environment as the engine for economic growth, investing tax dollars in archaic policies that reward wasteful and polluting practices.
We see the consequences in the news every day. From increasing temperatures and dwindling resources to loss of species and habitats, nearly every significant indicator of ecological system health on our planet is in decline. Coupled with environmental decline is the rise of human health problems ranging from asthma to cancer.
We can no longer afford to plunder our natural resources for short-lived products that are then buried in a landfill or burned in an incinerator – especially in this era when the synthetic and toxic materials in our modern products are winding up in the waste stream, the environment and ultimately our own bodies.
The Solution: A New System
Waste and the destructive use of natural resources is not inevitable, they are the result of poor design and bad public policy decisions. In the system Eco-Cycle envisions, public policy is set to financially reward manufacturers for designing and offering products and services that are environmentally-friendly and that can be reused, recycled or composted. Manufacturers are required
to take responsibility for the end-of-life management of their products, making them the key player in the infrastructure that makes it easy to collect and recirculate materials throughout the economy. The idea of designing waste out of our world is a fundamental shift in how we value and manage our natural resources, and we have a name for it: Zero Waste…Or Darn Near.
Zero Waste is happening in bits and pieces all around the world, but what is urgently needed is for one community to comprehensively model Zero Waste programs and principles so that Zero Waste can be more quickly and easily comprehended and adopted locally, nationally, and internationally. Our community and our organization are recognized internationally as being uniquely suited to play this role because of our distinctive successes over the past 28 years. In fact, those at the forefront of the global Zero Waste movement have turned to Eco-Cycle and our community to provide the much-needed expertise and leadership to help develop and spread this new movement and to leverage our successes to encourage Zero Waste elsewhere.
Eco-Cycle: (E-ko-si-kel) n.
1. eco as in “ecology”: the totality of relations between organisms and their environment
2. eco as in “economical”: careful, efficient, and prudent use of resources; operating with little waste
3. eco as in “economic”: of, relating to, or based on the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services
4. cycle: a circular arrangement |
Don’t Just Recycle…Eco-Cycle
To meet this need, Eco-Cycle is excited to announce that we are broadening our efforts – both locally and internationally – to go beyond recycling towards Zero Waste. We are redefining our name to represent more than just “recycling,” but “Eco-Cycling”…the adoption of a full “eco” cycle production system that is sustainable – not only for the economy, but also for the ecology.
Locally, over the next six years, we will use each of our departments – Business Recycling, Schools, Composting, Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM), Community Outreach, and Recycling Processing – to develop Zero Waste models. Each department will serve as an essential piece of the whole puzzle – a comprehensive, local approach to Zero Waste that can be duplicated anywhere in the world.
We are also launching our newest department, Eco-Cycle International (Eco-I), to respond to requests from outside our borders to bring our brand of success to the world, and to bring the successes of other nations and communities home to make our local programs even better.
This is the beginning of a new generation of Eco-Cycle, one that is prepared to lead the way to a more sustainable future. We’ll need your help and participation to get there!
Eco-Cycle dedicated the entire issue of its spring newsletter to laying out our vision for making our community a Zero Waste model for the world. Click here to read more about how each department will lead Boulder and Broomfield Counties as a model for Zero Waste. |
