ABSTRACT
As people move from rural to urban environments, hoping for a better quality of life, cities are expanding. Our consumption-driven society produces an enormous amount of waste every day. Overcrowded cities with congested transport systems are compromising the quality of urban life due to their rapid growth, and an ever-increasing generation of waste is leading to overflowing landfills, the destruction of natural habitat and loss of biodiversity. Different types of waste require different strategies. To prevent further depletion of global resources, we need to introduce sustainable consumption patterns and strategic waste management systems. It is evident that there will be a permanent shortfall in the global supply of a significant number of non-renewable resources (such as cadmium, gold, mercury and tellurium) within the next two to three decades. Therefore, a more efficient use of resources (energy, materials and water) and the prevention of unnecessary waste creation are now urgent challenges for all cities worldwide.
This chapter outlines the concept of ‘zero waste’ and applies it at a city level. Zero waste is a holistic approach that entails systematically designing and managing products and processes to conserve resources through minimization of initial use and maximization of subsequent recovery from waste streams. In a ‘zero waste city’ (ZWC), avoidable waste is eliminated from production through optimized industrial/architectural design and end-of-life product has been designed to enable recycling. ZWC recycle 100 per cent of their waste, recovering all possible resources from waste streams and preventing harmful waste from contaminating the environment. The ZWC model is based on six key design principles. A simultaneous and synchronized application of all ZWC principles is required to transform a city into a ZWC. In addition, an assessment tool called the ‘zero waste index’ (ZWI), which quantifies the performance of ZWC, is needed to evaluate the efficiency of waste management systems in different cities.
