Did you think that Zero Waste is just a new idea that hasn’t really caught on yet? Well think again, because Zero Waste thinking is at the heart of many designs that surround us.

SOFTWARE

Programmers need a lot to keep them going. Long nights with serial pizza, guzzling sodas and coffees, pulling down huge salaries (Hah!) to pay for their fifty dollar haircuts, celebrity threads and doublestory mansions. Not to mention the palaces they work in with the lights burning 24 hours. Yes they use up a lot of planetary resources.
So it only makes sense that once they write a program for doing some simple task (opening a file or running the clock on a toaster) they would want to save it for the world to use again. In fact they use a special kind of coding called Object Oriented Programming. Objects are codes that can be looked up in a public database and used over and over again. In the world of software, there is no such thing any more as coding some task, then discarding the coding and having to do it over again. Clearly this is a Zero Waste strategy since a mental product is made once and its function used over and over. In fact, what makes software unique, is that IT CONSISTS OF NOTHING BUT FUNCTION!

What do you think recycling theory would have to say about this? First they would look for the materials. There is a bit of paper used but that isn’t the coding. There are some tapes or CD’s used but that isn’t the coding. In fact, the coding, the product, has no materials to gather up, carry to some garbage industry run recycling company, heat it and treat it and grind it and melt it into some new item. THE RECYCLING BUSINESS HAS NOTHING TO SAY!

And yet we can see that the programmers making the programs are using up all the inputs that humans use everywhere. They demand that industries that support them degrade air and water and soil, use energy and use other human labor. They drive cars, live in houses and demand education and entertainment.By reusing objects, this consumption is all reduced. There is nothing special or forced about the Zero Waste analysis – this is what that analysis is all about.

TRAFFIC

Did you read the part above thinking that software must be some kind of unique nesting place for Zero Waste applications? Not on your life! Here is another situation, that you probably encounter every day, that is based on Zero Waste ideas.
Driving cars. We all know there is lots of waste associated with that activity but think about how much worse it could be if traffic engineers weren’t planning it all for us. If there were no traffic lights, such as can sometimes be found out in the boonies, we could be creating lots of waste at intersections playing chicken with our bumper cars. But the lights keep us all organized. We’ve had those for so long that we just take it all for granted.

What do you suppose is the most important waste that we can eliminate? How about accelerating, then slowing down, then stopping and accelerating again. There’s something we want to avoid. And on many roads, with sequential lights, the lights are timed so that if we maintain a reasonable speed, we can hit every light when it is green. That doesn’t just happen. Traffic engineers plan that situation, using Zero Waste ideas, even if they don’t know the term.

There’s more. Are you aware of those sensors under the roadway at intersections? They sense whether someone is waiting at a red light or waiting to make a turn. There is no sense stopping traffic on the main road (acceleration and braking again) when there is no one even waiting on the side road. The sensors are another Zero Waste idea.

Amory Lovins has estimated that we spend 17% of our gasoline waiting at stoplights, just idling. That’s a huge waste. Can we eliminate it with some clever fix? Here’s one idea – I would take note that electic cars and hybrids don’t have to keep their engines turning over while they wait. They can just sit there doing nothing, wasting no energy, until it’s time to move again.

Much has already been done in traffic design. Properly designed passing and turning lanes, entry and exit ramps on highways and signs telling us how to all cooperate and get along. Now we need to use Zero Waste thinking to redesign the cars that make up the traffic.

CHEMICALS AND RESEARCH
Chemical processing is planned very carefully. There is no other choice. Chemicals move in a choreographed dance thru reactors, stills, heaters, coolers and tanks. Their molecular composition must be always under control. They are contacted by other, expensive chemicals. Their manipulation requires energy, expensive materials and, always, much human input. It is essential that the chemicals not be allowed to escape their containers but it is also essential that no planned escapes be tolerated. Let us ask what would happen to chemical processes if they were all designed with the Zero Waste constraint: THERE WILL BE NO DISCARDS AND NO DISCHARGES. Today many unnecessary discards take place merely because they are allowed and it is the easiest and laziest thing to do. When discards are no longer tolerated, we will be amazed by the changes that will take place.

It begins to appear that some continuity or commonality of activities is needed before Zero Waste thinking is worth designing in to processes. If the same product is being made day in and day out, then it is surely worthwhile to spend the time to redesign the manufacturing process along Zero Waste lines. But what happens if the process is changing all the time? Can we find a temporal commonality – a repetition of common tasks? Let us look at the quintessential non-repetitive activity, namely scientific research.

Most scientists would probably assure us that their research work changes from project to project and day to day and offers no opening for Zero Waste design. But research does have repetitive features:

This shows that there are common elements, pregnant sites for applying Zero Waste, in the most varied and disparate activities.