Zero Waste Management

• “Is a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient

and visionary, to guide people in changing their
lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable
natural cycles, where all discarded materials are
designed to become resources for others to
use.”
 Zero Waste Management
• is a philosophy that encourages the redesign
of resource life cycles so that all products
are reused. No trash is sent to landfills or
incinerators.
 Zero Waste Management
• means designing and managing products and
processes to systematically avoid and eliminate
the volume and toxicity of waste and materials,
conserve and recover all resources, and not
burn or bury them.
 Cradle-to-Grave
• is a term used to describe a linear model for
materials that begins with resource extraction,
moves to product manufacturing, and, ends
with a ‘grave’, where the product is disposed
of in a landfill.
 Cradle-to-Cradle
• is a term used in life-cycle analysis to
describe a material or product that is
recycled into a new product at the end of
its life, so that ultimately there is no
waste.
 Cradle-to-Cradle
• focuses on designing industrial systems so
that materials flow in closed loop cycles
which mean that waste is minimized, and
waste products can be recycled and
reused.
Benefits of Zero Waste
Management
• Saving Money.
• Faster Progress.
• Supports Sustainability.
• Improved Material Flows.
PACKAGING
EXAMPLE

RETURNABLE
GLASS
BOTTLES
 RECYCLING AND ROTTING
(COMPOSTING)
• It is important to distinguish recycling from Zero
Waste. Some claim that the key component to zero
waste is recycling while others reject that notion in
favor of reusing high function. The movement
toward recycling has separated itself from the
concept of zero waste.

EXAMPLE
 EXAMPLE
The computer industry where worldwide millions of PC's are
disposed of as electronic waste each year (160 million in
2007). Those computers that enter the recycling stream are
broken down into a small amount of raw materials while
most merely enter dumps through export to third world
countries. Companies are then able to purchase some raw
materials, notably steel, copper and glass, reducing the use of
new materials.
 ON THE OTHER HAND
There is an industry, more aligned with the Zero Waste
principle of design for long term reuse, that actually repairs
computers. It is called the Computer Refurbishing Industry
and it predates the current campaign to just collect and ship
electronics. They have organizations and conferences and
have for many years donated computers to schools, clinics and
non-profits. Zero Waste planning demands that components
be redesigned for effective reuse over long lives leading to
even more refurbishing and repair.
 Significance of Dump Capacity
Many dumps are currently exceeding carrying
capacity. This is often, mistakenly used as a
justification for moving to Zero Waste. Others
counter by pointing out that there are huge tracts of
land available throughout the USA and other
countries which could be used for dumps.
• Poorly conceived proposals, that appear
with a dismaying regularity on the Internet,
to blithely destroy all garbage as a way to
solve the garbage problem, make use of the
common delusion that it is the garbage
itself which is the problem.
• These proposals typically claim to convert all or a
large portion of existing garbage into oil and
sometimes claim to produce so much oil that the
world will henceforth have abundant liquid fuels.
One such plan, called Anything Into Oil was
promoted by Discover Magazine and Fortune
Magazine in 2004, even though it absurdly claimed to
be able to convert a refrigerator into "light Texas
crude" by the application of high pressure steam.
 Zero Waste
Implementers
 Corporate Initiatives
• An example of a company that has demonstrated a
change in landfill waste policy is General
Motors (GM). GM has confirmed their plans to
make approximately half of its 181 plants
worldwide "landfill-free" by the end of 2010.
 Corporate Initiatives
• The goal for General Motors is finding ways to
recycle or reuse more than 90% of materials by:
selling scrap materials, adopting reusable parts boxes
to replace cardboard, and even recycling used work
gloves. The remainder of the scraps might be
incinerated to create energy for the plants.
 Corporate Initiatives
• Companies like Subaru, Toyota, and Xerox are also
producing landfill-free plants.
• Furthermore, The United States Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) has worked with GM and other
companies for decades to minimize the waste through its
WasteWise program.
 Various governments have declared zero
waste as a goal, including:
• California
• Kamikatsu, Tokushima
• Fort Collins, Colorado
• Capannori
• United Kingdom
• Masdar in Abu Dhabi
THREATS TO
BIODIVERSITY
BIODIVERSITY
 a portmanteau of "bio" (life) and "diversity,"
generally refers to the variety and variability of life
on Earth.
 typically measures variation at the genetic,
the species, and the ecosystem level. (United
Nations Environment Programme)
 Biologists most often define biodiversity as the
"totality of genes, species and ecosystems of a
region".
BIODIVERSITY
 Biodiversity is not distributed evenly
on Earth.
Terrestrial biodiversity tends to be
greater near the equator.
 Marine biodiversity tends to be highest
along coasts in the Western Pacific.
BIODIVERSITY
 Rapid environmental changes typically
cause mass extinctions. More than 99.9
percent of all species that ever lived on
Earth, amounting to over five billion species,
are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the
number of Earth's current species range from
10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2
million have been documented and over 86
percent have not yet been described.
BIODIVERSITY
 The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion
years. The earliest undisputed evidence
of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5
billion years ago, during the Eoarchean
Era after a geological crust started to
solidify following the earlier
molten Hadean Eon.
BIODIVERSITY
 Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several
minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity.

 The PHANEROZOICEON (the last 540 million

years) marked a rapid growth in
biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion—a
period during which the majority
of multicellular phyla first appeared.
BIODIVERSITY
 Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several
minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity.

 The next 400 million years included

repeated, massive biodiversity
losses classified as mass extinction events.
In the Carboniferous, rainforest
collapse led to a great loss
of plant and animal life.
BIODIVERSITY
 Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several
minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity.

 The PERMIAN–TRIASSIC EXTINCTION event,

251 million years ago, was the worst;
vertebrate recovery took 30 million years.
BIODIVERSITY
 Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several
minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity.

 The most recent, the Cretaceous–

Paleogene extinction event, occurred
65 million years ago and has often
attracted more attention than others
because it resulted in the extinction of
the dinosaurs.
BIODIVERSITY
 Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several
minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity.

 The period since the emergence

of humans has displayed an ongoing
biodiversity reduction and an
accompanying loss of genetic diversity.
Named the HOLOCENE EXTINCTION, the
reduction is caused primarily by human
impacts, particularly habitat destruction.
THREATS TO BIODIVERSITY
 Jared Diamond describes an "Evil Quartet" of
habitat destruction, overkill, introduced species
and secondary extinctions.
 Edward O. Wilson prefers the acronym HIPPO,
standing for abitat destruction, nvasive
species, ollution, human over- opulation
and ver-harvesting.
 The most authoritative classification in use today
is IUCN's Classification of Direct Threats
HABITAT DESTRUCTION
 Habitat destruction has played a key role in
extinctions, especially related to tropical
forest destruction.
 Factorscontributing to habitat loss
are: overconsumption, overpopulation, land
use change, deforestation, pollution (air
pollution, water pollution, soil
contamination) and global warming or
climate change.
HABITAT DESTRUCTION
A 2007 study conducted by the National
Science Foundation found that
biodiversity and genetic diversity are
codependent—that diversity among
species requires diversity within a species
and vice versa. "If any one type is
removed from the system, the cycle can
break down and the community becomes
dominated by a single species.“
HABITAT DESTRUCTION
 Atpresent, the most threatened
ecosystems are found in fresh water,
according to the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment 2005, which was confirmed by
the "Freshwater Animal Diversity
Assessment", organized by the biodiversity
platform and the French Institut de
recherche pour le
développement (MNHNP).
INTRODUCED AND INVASIVE
SPECIES
 Barriers such as
large rivers, seas, oceans, mountains and deserts enc
ourage diversity by enabling independent evolution
on either side of the barrier, via the process
of allopatric speciation.
 The term INVASIVE SPECIES is applied to species that
breach the natural barriers that would normally keep
them constrained. Without barriers, such species
occupy new territory, often supplanting native
species by occupying their niches, or by using
resources that would normally sustain native species.
GENETIC POLLUTION
 Endemic species can be threatened
with extinction through the process of genetic
pollution, i.e.
uncontrolled hybridization, introgression and
genetic swamping. Genetic pollution leads to
homogenization or replacement of
local genomes as a result of either a numerical
and/or fitness advantage of an introduced
species.
OVEREXPLOITATION
 Overexploitation occurs when a resource is
consumed at an unsustainable rate. This occurs
on land in the form of overhunting,
excessive logging, poor soil conservation in
agriculture and the illegal wildlife trade.
 The overkill hypothesis, a pattern of large animal
extinctions connected with human
migration patterns, can be used explain
why megafaunal extinctions can occur within a
relatively short time period
HYBRIDIZATION, GENETIC EROSION
AND FOOD SECURITY
 The Green Revolution popularized the use
of conventional hybridization to increase
yield. Formerly huge gene pools of various
wild and indigenous breeds have
collapsed causing widespread genetic
erosion and genetic pollution. This has
resulted in loss of genetic diversity and
biodiversity as a whole.
HYBRIDIZATION, GENETIC EROSION
AND FOOD SECURITY
 Genetic erosion and genetic pollution
have the potential to destroy
unique genotypes, threatening future
access to food security. A decrease in
genetic diversity weakens the ability of
crops and livestock to be hybridized to
resist disease and survive changes in
climate.
CLIMATE CHANGE
 Global warming is also considered to
be a major potential threat to global
biodiversity in the future. For example,
coral reefs - which are biodiversity
hotspots - will be lost within the
century if global warming continues
at the current trend.
CLIMATE CHANGE
 Climate change has seen many claims
about potential to affect biodiversity but
evidence supporting the statement is
tenuous. Increasing atmospheric carbon
dioxide certainly affects plant morphology
and is acidifying oceans, and temperature
affects species ranges, phenology, and
weather.
HUMAN OVERPOPULATION
 SirDavid King told a parliamentary
inquiry: "It is self-evident that the massive
growth in the human population through
the 20th century has had more impact on
biodiversity than any other single factor.“
 Biologists
such as Paul R. Ehrlich and Stuart
Pimm have noted that human population
growth and overconsumption are the
main drivers of species extinction.[
HUMAN OVERPOPULATION
 According to a 2014 study by the World
Wildlife Fund, the global human population
already exceeds planet's biocapacity - it
would take the equivalent of 1.5 Earths of
biocapacity to meet our current demands.
The report further points that if everyone on
the planet lived the lifestyle of a typical
resident of the USA, we would need 3.9
Earths.