Bibliography
Zero Waste thinking has not had a densely full history but there have been a number of seminal works that developed the thoughts in many important ways. This page presents some of the central works from which current thinking evolved.
| Small is Beautiful (Economics as if People Mattered) | 1973 | E. F. Schumacher | Schumacher was the first to use the term Natural Capitalism (see below). This was practically a cult book in the 1970’s, promoting the belief that human-scale operations were superior to the kind of giantism that followed from the pursuit of so-called economies of scale. His Chap. 4, Buddhist Economics, for example, deals brilliantly with the elevation of human labor, joined to leisure, as a holistic pursuit which should give value to the contributions of people to an economic system, as opposed to Western economics which devalues work as no more than a necessary evil. This part connects to ZW by dealing with the waste of human labor. |
| Natural Capitalism | 1999 | Paul Hawken,Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins |
This is perhaps the most important book in the Zero Waste pantheon prior to Getting To Zero Waste. It is a detailed, statistics and research based compilation of the basis for, the history of and the business applications of the ideas of resource conservation that led to modern theories of ZW. It is dense with stimulating ideas. Some is based on Lean Thinking (see below).Learn more. Read some of their trenchant writing on taxes and subsidies. |
| Guernica and Total War | 2007 | Ian Patterson | You may well wonder what a book on total war is doing here. This book includes a study of public attitudes toward aerial bombardment and provides a close parallel to attitudes toward recycling. Patterson reports that from the first days of warplane development, the people doing the bombing assumed that bombing was so devastating that those being bombed would be entirely demoralized and would fall into chaotic disorganization, providing no rational resistance to such superior force. All evidence is to the contrary. Cities and peoples under bombardment invariably pull themselves together and create reasonable defenses, such as anti-aircraft guns and bomb shelters. They devote themselves to a unified resistance to the effects of bombing. Yet the self-deceptions march on. In utter defiance of evidence to the contrary, air warriors today still delude themselves that bombing will cause overwhelming fear and demoralization. Richard Nixon asserted that the Vietnamese would be bombed “back to the stone age”. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield managed to delude themselves that a campaign of “shock and awe” would leave Iraqis completely defenceless.In exactly similar ways, people the world over continue to delude themselves that recycling will somehow get rid of garbage. They expect that with just some more recycling, the dumps will begin to empty, the garbage cans will disappear and we will enter a world of total recycling. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, namely the resolute march toward ever larger accumulations of garbage, ever larger cans and ever larger collection fees, the recyclers admit no defeat.I can only hope that you, gentle reader, know better.Read more or hear a discussion.
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| Lean Solutions | 2005 | James Womack and Daniel Jones | This is the third in a series of books that deal with the removal of unnecessary inefficiency in the design of businesses. The first was The Machine That Changed The World (about the Toyota Corporation), the second was Lean Thinking. Read more |
| Getting To Zero Waste | 2005-6 | Paul Palmer | This is a personal testimonial of the author’s thirty years experience in starting the first and only broad spectrum chemical reuse company in the world. Those experiences are distilled and expressed as insights and principles which apply to the reuse and reycycling of all goods, even though they are also uniquely applicable to hazardous materials like chemicals.This is the only book dealing directly with Zero Waste and is also the only book to show how the same principles that apply to toaster reuse also apply to chemicals. See the book’s website with a sample chapter. |
| Palo Alto Strategic Plan | 2005 | Gary Liss and Associates; adopted by the Palo Alto City Council | This is an early example of the kind of resolutions that many cities and counties have passed, claiming to be policies supporting ZW though they only support recycling. Here is the document’s statement of the meaning of ZW: A philosophy and visionary goal that emulates natural cycles, where all outputs are simply an input for another process. It means designing and managing materials and products to conserve and recover all resources and not destroy or bury them, and eliminate discharges to land, water or air that do not contribute productively to natural systems or the economy.The emphasis on natural cycles, though common in the environmental community, is misplaced, since natural cycles, though effective at recycling, are extremely wasteful cycles which human society cannot afford to mimic. They depend strongly on abundant solar energy, including microbial life and oxygen. Human products can be much more economically reused without the breakdown into molecular components that nature makes use of. Note that product reuse is not mentioned. And further:For Palo Alto, although the intent of this Plan is to strive for Zero Waste, practically if the City diverts at least 90 percent of the waste generated by all sources (residential, business, schools, and institutions), it will be well on the way to Zero Waste and the program will be deemed a success.
This operating plan sets a ZW goal that has nothing to do with ZW. Diversion is code for recycling from discards, definitely not a ZW program. Reuse is not mentioned anywhere. The discussion is carried on with respect to the world of garbage which is a deadend for ZW thinking. Various good words about “not creating waste in the first place” can be found but then the message is immediately blunted by the non-sequitur “A Zero Waste systems approach turns material outputs from one process into resources for another process.” Apparently the drafters simply could not believe that products could be designed for their own reuse without the crutch of “another process” (usually code for low grade downcycling). The impact of this plan is to abandon all hope of a successful ZW program and substitute the pedestrian goal of mere recycling. Unbelievably, this plan mentions the words “zero waste” 244 times while providing not one single idea which could be said to be inspired by zero waste thinking. All the plans I have seen coming out of California cities are equally as impoverished as this one.
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| Nature’s Solution – EXTINCTION! | 2007 | Lancelot Fernando | Mr. Fernando has penned an excellent warning of the reason for turning immediately to zero waste solutions and to stop producing waste which is then discarded (pollution) followed by a pathetic attempt to clean it all up (which then creates its own waste) in an orgy of irresponsibility. The consequence he foresees is a harsh one. Read it here |
| Lifecycles Building Challenge | 2007 | Lifecycle Building | This organization sponsors a challenge for engineers and architects to build the most carefully designed buildings, Some can even be dismantled and reassembled, a mandatory Zero Waste requirement (see discussion on this website) and See their 2007 winners here. |
| Redesigning Common Articles | 2007 | Design for the street – a video | Jan Chipchase starts with the way that cell phones are used worldwide and then draws amazing conclusions about the ways in which designers need to rethink their approaches. |
| Thoughts on sustainable living in Mendocino California | 1973-2007 | Deep design for living | Stephen Heckeroth, an architect, and his wife Christiane have been building an intensely thought out plan for sustainable living, farming, using solar energy and making the most out of all goods and materials, for years. They give an overview in an interview. |
| Deep vs. Shallow Green Building | 2008 | Deep design for building | This article by Don Fitz for the Green Party studies on environmentalism points out the difference between building with “eco-fads”, “eco-gadgets” and greenwashing and the use of really effective and conserving methods. He points out that most of the most effective energy and materials conserving tricks and devices are usually passed over because Americans want bigger and more wasteful houses, built in more profligate designs, followed by adding on expensive and wasteful gadgets. |
| Innovative ideas on the redesign of products and society | 2008 | Deep design for building | This website provides a forum for creative people to suggest better ways of doing common things, such as designing brakelights, cutting tools, pool cleaners and everything else. It is run by two Yale professors with an entrepreneurial bent. There is no particular focus on waste avoidance but it does bring out the ability of ordinary people to look past conventional design while trusting in their own imaginations.  |
| The Next Phase of Internet linking | 2007 | The new emergent properties of the Internet |  KEVIN KELLY is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the popular Cool Tools, True Film, and Street Use websites. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling “New Rules for the New Economy,” and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, “Out of Control”In this video, Kelly explores the real value in products. Recycling doesn’t come up since he sees the real value of products in their embedded intelligence, not in their materials. His views on the ways that the World Wide Web is going to affect manufacturing are in line with a Zero Waste approach.
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