Written by Jesse Barrera, MEA student. Before we get into the facts, it's important that we define waste. Anything that we humans produce or consume but do not then reuse, is called waste. Natural environments produce no waste because every molecule is cycled continually through the system, reused over and over again for millennia. In contrast, humans produce endless materials that, because of their manufacturing processes, cannot be easily broken down into their component substances or reused as is. Instead, we have chosen to simply store these products in the environment, so we do not have to deal with them in our cities, towns, and suburbs. Clearly we cannot continue to dispose of waste this way indefinitely, because the environmental space available for waste storage is highly limited while our material production, though not unlimited, will continue to grow far into the future. For this reason, eventually, humans must transition from this linear model of production and storage, to a circular model of production and repeated reuse, just like that exhibited by environmental systems. It may seem like this transition to a zero-waste society is something that will need to happen in a few decades, in some far-off futuristic moment when our waste production finally leads bursts our landfills at the seams, and this would be true - if this were the 1960s. Instead, its 2016, and the future has arrived. Today, global annual municipal solid waste production alone exceeds 1 billion tons per year, the equivalent of 2 trillion lbs of waste. The amount of waste in landfills in developed nations has long exceeded their capacity, while in developing nations, waste is often improperly disposed of and poses health risks to those living nearby. Corporations ship hazardous waste, such as the heavy metals found in electronic devices such as cell phones, to poor nations whose citizens are exposed to the hazardous substances, while the oceans are saturated with plastics that can strangle, trap, or even be ingested by, fish and wildlife. Landfills themselves are not risk free, as chemicals from decomposing plastics can leach into and contaminate nearby groundwater, while decomposition can also release potent greenhouse gases into the air. Finally, nuclear power plants, while a cleaner energy source than oil or coal, produce dangerous amounts of radioactive nuclear waste, which poses a major threat both to international security and to environmental quality. Thus, human production of waste has already reached a critical mass that is damaging human health and the environment worldwide.
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