Paul Connett

The Zero Waste Solution

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Waste is something we all make every day but often pay little attention to.  That's changing, and model programs around the globe show the many different ways a community can strive for, and achieve, zero-waste status.

Scientist-turned-activist Paul Connett, a leading international figure in decades-long battles to fight pollution, has championed efforts to curtail overconsumption and keep industrial toxins out of our air and drinking water and bodies. But he’s best known around the world for leading efforts to help communities deal with their waste in sustainable ways—in other words, to eliminate and reuse waste rather than burn it or stow it away in landfills.

In The Zero Waste Solution, Connett profiles the most successful zero-waste initiatives around the world, showing activists, planners, and entrepreneurs how to re-envision their community’s waste-handling process—by consuming less, turning organic waste into compost, recycling, reusing other waste,  demanding nonwasteful product design, and creating jobs and bringing community members together in the process. The book also exposes the greenwashing behind renewed efforts to promote waste incinerators as safe, nontoxic energy suppliers, and gives detailed information on how communities can battle incineration projects that, even at their best, emit dangerous particles into the atmosphere, many of which remain unregulated or poorly regulated.

An important toolkit for anyone interested in creating sustainable communities, generating secure local jobs, and keeping toxic alternatives at bay.
This book is currently unavailable
611 printed pages
Original publication
2013
Publication year
2013
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Quotes

  • Soliloquios Literarioshas quoted6 years ago
    An open letter circulated by GAIA and a number of environmental justice groups sums up what it takes to beat incineration and other unwelcome projects pushed on communities by powerful corporations:

    To build a powerful movement, you must first figure out where you have power, and build from there. We have power in our communities where we have relationships and can hold politicians and corporations accountable. In DC, corporate power rules because they can concentrate energy and resources there—in ways we cannot. However, when confronting these same corporations in our tribes, cities, and towns, we reveal that they are not nimble or powerful enough to defeat our communities. Movements are built house-by-house, block-by-block, community-by-community, whenever people in communities rally around a common cause, acting on their own behalf with allies and networks—often against powerful interests, often building new institutions needed to win lasting change.33
  • Soliloquios Literarioshas quoted6 years ago
    Indeed, it was this wonderfully succinct tool designed to help citizens on many technical issues that we used as a model for Waste Not. Each issue of Rachel’s was short enough to be read on the day it was received. Everything was meticulously documented so that citizens could use the information in public hearings and meetings with confidence. Each issue had a large identifying number, the date, and was already punched with three holes for convenient filing and retrieval for later use. In fact, Waste Not copied this format and tried to do for news coverage on incineration and recycling battles what Montague did with technical advice on hazardous waste and many other issues. Both were designed to give citizens ammunition to fight the Goliaths of the municipal and hazardous waste industries. According to author Robert Gottlieb, “By the late 1980s, both the Connetts and Montague had become important adjuncts to the grassroots groups and anti-toxic networks. . . . Their publications became essential reading for community groups. They made obscure documents and reports accessible, covered project battles and revealed information the waste industry would rather have kept removed from public view.”35
  • Soliloquios Literarioshas quoted6 years ago
    Meanwhile, measurements made in cows’ milk in Ireland, which had no trash incinerators at the time (but also a lot less industry), were about ten times lower than in the United Kingdom and about one-fifth of the “ideal” goal set by the German government.23

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