Zero Waste Resources1
The following are links to information and associations that can help communities and
businesses pursue Zero Waste goals and implement them.
The website of the GrassRoots Recycling Network (GRRN), highlights Zero Waste
programs, policies and examples of success stories: www.grrn.org/zerowaste/index.html.
The GRRN has held three national Zero Waste conferences. The program for the 2009
conference has some of the presentations available for downloading at:
http://www.grrn.org/conference2009/general/agenda.php
and some of the presentations from the 2004 conference are available at:
http://www.grrn.org/conference2004/index.html. The GRRN Website for Local
Government actions, provide five fact sheets that detail cutting edge solutions to urgent
waste problems and offer model local government resolutions for communities wanting
to take action: http://www.grrn.org/localgov/index.html. GRRN helped to set up a Zero
Waste Communities discussion group nationally at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZeroWasteCommunities.
The GRRN website on Zero Waste Businesses highlights businesses around the country
that have diverted more than 90% of their wastes from landfilling and incineration, at:
http://www.grrn.org/zerowaste/business/profiles.php. GRRN's Zero Waste Business
Principles highlight comprehensive waste diversion goals for businesses to achieve at:
http://www.grrn.org/zerowaste/business/
The Zero Waste International Alliance website includes an internationally peer-reviewed
definition of "Zero Waste" to cite in policy discussions
(http://www.zwia.org/standards.html), a list of communities internationally that have
adopted Zero Waste as a goal (http://www.zwia.org/zwc.html), and Zero Waste Business
Principles (http://www.zwia.org/standards.html).
The Earth Resource Foundation website has presentations posted from past Zero Waste
Business conferences they organized at: http://www.earthresource.org/zerowaste.html.
A discussion group for those working to help Zero Waste Businesses achieve their goals
is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZWBusiness.
The California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) has a zero waste website
that provides a window into many other websites on the excellent CIWMB website for
Best Management Practices for all types of recyclable materials: www.zerowaste.ca.gov.
The CIWMB also has some excellent Case Studies of Model Local Government
Recycling Programs and Policies at: http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/LGLibrary/Innovations/,
including
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Resource Recovery Parks
Organics Recycling
Compiled by Gary Liss (www.garyliss.com), 3/4/09. If you know of others, please forward to
him at gary@garyliss.com, 916-652-7850.
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C&D Policies
Business Recycling Policies and Programs
Incentives for Maximizing Waste Diversion
The CIWMB reference library includes materials that have been submitted to CIWMB by
local jurisdictions, including such documents as regional agency agreements, joint
powers agreements, memoranda of understanding, solid waste ordinances, public
education materials, and petitions for reduction in diversion mandates:
http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/LGLibrary/LocalDocs/
Resourceful Communities: A guide to Resource Recovery Centres in New Zealand (PDF
1.8 MB) provides some good insights and models for developing Resource Recovery
Parks as well: http://www.zerowaste.co.nz/assets/Reports/ResourcefulCommunitieslowres.pdf
EPA Website on Resource Management which seeks to align waste contractor incentives
with community or business goals to foster cost-effective resource efficiency through
prevention, recycling, and recovery:
http://www.epa.gov/osw/partnerships/wastewise/wrr/rm.htm
The website of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), Wasting and Recycling in the
U.S., 2000 is a comprehensive overview of facts and figures on those topics, available at:
http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/zerowaste/index.html. ILSR also produced an excellent
publication, "Cutting the Waste Stream in Half: Community Record-Setters Show How"
providing detailed costs and descriptions of communities that diverted more than 50% of
their waste from landfill: http://www.ilsr.org/pubs/cuttingwaste.pdf. ILSR also has other
excellent related publications on their website, at www.ilsr.org/recycling/.
A White Paper was prepared for the International Dialog on Proper Discard Management
organized by the CRRA Global Recycling Council (GRC), August 26-27, 2004. This
White Paper highlights key issues and opportunities for communities seeking to conserve
wastes as resources: http://www.crra.com/grc/international/whitepaper.html. In addition,
presentations by many of the speakers at the GRC International Dialog are posted at:
http://www.crra.com/grc/international/index.html. GRC also has posted a variety of
articles and publications on Zero Waste at: www.crra.com/grc/articles/zwc.html
The CA Product Stewardship Council was established to provide a voice for local
governments to articulate the need for more producer responsibility for their products and
packages. This website has excellent background information on the subject, model
powerpoint presentations, sample local ordinances, information on how to join at:
www.calpsc.org.
The Computer TakeBack Campaign works to protect the health and well being of
electronics users, workers, and the communities where electronics are produced and
discarded by requiring consumer electronics manufacturers and brand owners to take full
responsibility for the life cycle of their products, through effective public policy
requirements or enforceable agreements: http://www.computertakeback.com/
Clean Production Action works with groups around the world to develop and build
technical support for policies and strategies that promote the use of products that are safer
and cleaner across their life cycle for consumers, workers and communities:
http://www.cleanproduction.org/AAbase/default.htm
The U.S. Green Building Council is the nations foremost coalition of leaders from across
the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible,
profitable and healthy places to live and work:
http://www.usgbc.org/AboutUs/mission_facts.asp
The Zero Waste New Zealand Trust website includes an excellent manual on Zero Waste
Community Planning (Getting there! The Road to Zero Waste (PDF 1.4 MB)
http://www.zerowaste.co.nz/assets/Reports/roadtozerowaste150dpi.pdf). Their goal is
to help create a worldwide movement of local governments to achieve tangible
improvements in global sustainability with special focus on environmental conditions
through cumulative local actions at: http://www.zerowaste.co.nz/.
ICLEI offers Local Authorities an online self-assessment tool for local sustainable
development processes. You can use this tool free of charge to evaluate processes and
progress towards sustainable development from a local authority perspective:
http://www.localevaluation21.org/
The USEPA conducted a groundbreaking study of the nation's recycling and reuse
industry, called the National Recycling Economic Information Project. This website the
number of jobs created and the value of the recycling and reuse industry, and provides
tools to apply this information to promote recycling efforts in your area:
http://www.epa.gov/jtr/econ/rei-rw/rei-rw.htm
The USEPA has also developed extensive analyses of the links between Zero Waste and
Global Warming at: http://epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/waste/index.html and
http://www.epa.gov/wastewise/pubs/howto.pdf. They also have a great list of global
warming calculators at:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ActionsWasteTools.html. The
WARM model is most often cited as the basis for calculating local communities impacts
on climate change, at:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ActionsWasteWARMUsersGuide
.html
L.A. SHARES, which operates the Materials For The Arts Program, is a non-profit
materials reuse program that takes donations of reusable goods and materials (both new
and used) from the local business community and redistributes these items FREE-OFCHARGE to non-profits and schools throughout Los Angeles County:
http://www.lashares.org/mfa/
The Center for a Competitive Waste Industry champions efforts to restore and maintain
competition in the solid waste industry: http://www.competitivewaste.org/
Zero Waste Community Plans have been adopted to guide communities in the
development of new policies, programs and facilities to achieve Zero Waste. Examples
of Plans that have been adopted include:
the City of Austin, TX Zero Waste Strategic Plan:
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/sws/downloads/VeryFinalZWPlan.pdf
the City of Oakland, CA Zero Waste Strategic Plan:
http://www.zerowasteoakland.com/AssetFactory.aspx?did=2123
the City of Palo Alto, CA Zero Waste Strategic Plan:
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=7100
the City of San Jose, CA Zero Waste Plan:
http://www.sjrecycles.org/zerowaste-stratplan.asp
the Telluride, CO Zero Waste Plan:
http://www.newcommunitycoalition.org/documents/ZeroWasteActionPlan.pdf
the Burbank, CA Zero Waste Plan:
http://www.ci.burbank.ca.us/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=3117
the County of Hawai’i Zero Waste Plan:
http://compostingconsultant.com/images2/hawaii-zero-waste-plan.pdf
the website for Zero Waste Planning in the City of Los Angeles, CA:
http://www.zerowaste.lacity.org/home/index.html
the Central Vermont Waste Management District Zero Waste Plan:
http://www.cvswmd.org/wp/category/for-member-towns/swip/
and the City of Nelson, British Columbia Zero Waste Action Plan:
http://www.city.nelson.bc.ca/pdf/zero_waste.pdf.
Austin, Oakland and Palo Alto used their website throughout the development of their
plans, so you can see all the steps taken to develop those plans, and subsequent updates,
at their Zero Waste websites:
Austin, TX Zero Waste website: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/sws/0waste.htm
Oakland, CA Zero Waste website: http://www.zerowasteoakland.com/Page749.aspx
and Palo Alto, CA Zero Waste Website:
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/depts/pwd/recycle/zero_waste_program.asp
Many communities are including Zero Waste goals in Climate Action Plans or
Sustainability Plans, such as the following:
Burbank Sustainability Plan:
http://www.ci.burbank.ca.us/PublicWorks/Sustainability/Sustainability.htm
Austin Climate Protection Plan:
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/acpp/downloads/acpplan_overview.pdf
San Miguel County (including Telluride and Mountain Village) Sustainability Action
Plan 2007:
http://www.naco.org/cffiles/ggi/green_counties/documents/San%20Miguel%20County%
20CO%20Sustainability%20Action%20Plan.pdf
Designing City Contracts and RFPs for Zero Waste (CRRA 2008):
http://www.crra.com/2008conf/presentations/monday/monday_liss.ppt
The UN has adopted Urban Environmental Accords which is the only “Cool Cities”
program that includes Zero Waste as one of its Accords. These were adopted by over
100 communities in response to a challenge from the City of San Francisco to the 100
largest communities on earth to adopt them, as part of World Environment Day in 2005
in San Francisco. For a copy of the Accords, go to:
http://www.sfenvironment.org/our_policies/overview.html?ssi=15
The Zero Waste Task Force of Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Benito counties worked
to draft a Zero Waste Communities Strategy to help communities on how to create a Zero
Waste Community: http://www.crra.com/grc/articles/zwc.html
A sample Zero Waste Communities Slide Show that was presented to the Palo Alto Zero
Waste Task Force on February 10, 2005 highlights the opportunities for adopting Zero
Waste as a goal by communities:
http://www.crra.com/grc/articles/zwcpaloalto/zwcpalotalto_files/frame.htm
A Zero Waste Tool Kit For Local Government was prepared by the Recycling Council of
British Columbia (May 2002):
http://www.footprintbc.com/zerowastenorth/pdf/gov/Zero_Waste_Local_Gov_Kit.pdf
A Citizens's Guide to Zero Waste, was prepared in 2001 by Bill Sheehan and Paul
Connett (PDF 164 KB): http://www.zerowaste.co.nz/assets/Reports/CitizensGuide.pdf
Fortune magazine had an excellent article on Zero Waste in 2007:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/03/19/8402369/index.htm
Eco-Cycle in Boulder Colorado is working to develop their community into a model for
Zero Waste implementation. They have an excellent 6 minute video that makes a great
introduction to a Zero Waste talk (http://www.eco-cycle.org/zerowastevideo/index.cfm),
and other resources at their Zero Waste webpage at:
http://www.eco-cycle.org/zero/index.cfm
Californians Against Waste (CAW) is leading the fight for new rules and legislation to
help develop Zero Waste in the future. Some of those are highlighted at their Zero Waste
webpage: http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/zero_waste
Here are some links to related Yahoo Groups:
Zero Waste Communities - This group will help communities working to adopt and
implement Zero Waste as a goal by sharing information and resources. This group was
organized by the Zero Waste Communities Work Group of the GrassRoots Recycling
Network (www.grrn.org). This group adheres to the definition of Zero Waste adopted by
the Zero Waste International Alliance (www.zwia.org). To join, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZeroWasteCommunities/
A discussion group for those working to help Zero Waste Businesses achieve their goals
is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZWBusiness.
Plastic Debris: Rivers to Sea - This network is an information exchange and dialogue
seeking an understanding of and solutions to the problems associated with plastic and
trash in the marine environment.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/plasticdebris/?yguid=32640534
To join, email: plasticdebris-subscribe@yahoogroups.com