Nudging Recycling From Less Waste to None

New York Times: Nudging Recycling From Less Waste to None

At Yellowstone National Park, the clear soda cups and white utensils are not your typical cafe-counter garbage. Made of plant-based plastics, they dissolve magically when heated for more than a few minutes.

At Ecco, a popular restaurant in Atlanta, waiters no longer scrape food scraps into the trash bin. Uneaten morsels are dumped into five-gallon pails and taken to a compost heap out back.

And at eight of its North American plants, Honda is recycling so diligently that the factories have gotten rid of their trash Dumpsters altogether.

Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.

The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can.

Though born of idealism, the zero-waste philosophy is now propelled by sobering realities, like the growing difficulty of securing permits for new landfills and an awareness that organic decay in landfills releases methane that helps warm the earth’s atmosphere. ...

Comments

[Virgil]

This is great to see happening without government mandate; nobody wants a trash dump in their backyards, now or in the future.

Great post.

[phil_style]

Nice. Michael, I really enjoy your peices on how markets/technology are resulting in environmental change for the better. There seems to be a constant tensions between one philosophy that says we're doomed and the only way out of this 'crisis' is to shut the whole system down and return to pre-industrial levels of production and consumption. Whilst on the other hand there is the philosphy that says we can think/adapt/design our way through this. It's interesting to see how much empirical evidence each philosophy has at it's disposal.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks Phil. I think there has always been, and always will be, a tension between markets and environmental advocacy ... and that is healthy.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks Virgil.

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