Recycling has become a national habit, a daily ritual practiced by over 100 million people every day. Yet recycling alone will not end our dependency on landfills and incinerators, nor reverse the rapid depletion of our natural resources. As world population and consumption continue to rise, it is clear that our one-way system of extracting virgin resources to make packaging and products that will later be buried or burned is not sustainable. Zero Waste is a new way of looking at our waste stream. Instead of seeing used materials as garbage in need of disposal, discards are seen as valuable resources. A pile of “trash” represents jobs, financial opportunity, and raw material for new products. Host Stephanie Gates gets the details from Ecocycle in Boulder.
