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ZERO WASTE
An individual, social, cultural, economic solution
One of the biggest problems in Romania is recycling. We manage to recycle very little, somewhere around 13%. And the living proof that these statistics are true can be seen in any wasteland. Because everything we DON'T recycle goes to incineration, to the landfill or... to the field. Sometimes, even to the field next to the house.
The Sustainable Solutions Association has set out to look at what we can do, not just at the problems. And one of the solutions for the problem of waste in general, plastic in particular, municipal waste, and pollution is called Zero Waste. Zero Waste. Zero Waste.
However, there is quite a lot of confusion around the concept. Perhaps also because some people misuse it. The scandal that broke out in April 2023 around Kaufland's Zero Waste campaign is already famous, when the supermarket chain sold the public the idea that it was a Zero Waste company, when, in fact, only their operational waste received such a certification. Waste about which we still don't know exactly what it means. And a certification that we later found out actually bears another name. A campaign that sustainability consultant Vasile Lazăr then said was clearly greenwashing.
If you want to find out more about greenwashing, you can watch the full interview with Vasile Lazăr, in which the concept is widely debated and five other concrete examples, from Romania and abroad, are given, in addition to the Kaufland case.
What is Zero Waste
It is clear then that some clarity is needed on the concept. It's hard to say exactly when the Zero Waste movement began and who exactly its father or mother is, because we all usually remember our grandparents' habits, for example, when almost any waste became a resource. A rag was turned into a rug, food scraps into animal feed. But probably the first mention of the term is from the 80s. And the most recent definition offered by the Zero Waste International Alliance is:
"Zero waste: the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without incineration and without discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health."
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So Zero Waste represents a set of principles designed primarily for sustainable production and consumption. Durable. Because this is why we ended up here, buried in garbage: we produce too much, products that break too quickly. And we too often buy products that we don't need too much and that are too packaged. Packaging that, behold, makes us dependent on waste incinerators and landfills. We are in a vicious cycle.
Circular economy expert, Piotr Barczak, co-founder of the Zero Waste association in Poland, says that Zero Waste should be viewed more as a journey than as a destination. “No one will ever reach zero in terms of waste generation. This is impossible. But in the perception of Zero Waste, in the world of Zero Waste, this is the way to reduce waste generation as much as possible.
But to do this, a reduction in production and consumption is needed, both at home, but also by industries, by economies, by countries, by continents, and by the entire planet. Today, indeed, we use so many resources, as if we had three planets. But we don't. So, we are already living on the credit of our future generations. The Zero Waste approach tries to reduce resource consumption, to protect these resources for future generations.
Of course, it can be translated into individual consumption, but mainly, and this is what I usually focus on, it refers to policies, to how governments, city halls, national or even the UN, or larger, as well as corporations, how they produce, how they use resources, if they use them with respect.
Basically, Zero Waste can also be understood as a different way, a more respectful way of dealing with resources, creating a relationship with resources. Rather than now, when it seems we have no relationship. We use them, they serve us, and then we throw them away.”
Our garbage, our responsibility
This aimless throwing away translates, as shown by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), into 2.4 billion tons of municipal waste that we produce globally each year.
If we made a huge pile out of all this waste, we would get a mountain taller than Everest. Every year. Year after year.
It is estimated that by 2050 we will increase this amount of municipal waste to 3.88 billion tons annually. If we don't act. A mountain of waste that suffocates our planet, aggravates the climate crisis, aggravates the loss of biodiversity and nature, aggravates pollution.
To draw attention to these multiple crises and in recognition of the benefits that the Zero Waste concept can bring, the UN proclaimed March 30 as International Zero Waste Day.
Because Zero Waste helps us break out of the vicious circle. It shows us that there is another way. We can buy unpackaged products. We can turn waste into resources. Zero Waste stores that sell in bulk or producers who use scraps as raw material have already started to appear in Romania.
The question is: how far can these initiatives go? At an individual, social, economic, cultural level? Can we have more than a Zero Waste store? A school? An office building? A neighborhood? A city? A country? How much can we apply this concept and what are the limits of Zero Waste?
I looked for the answer to these questions in the video report. Which I invite you to watch.
