Orange County NC Website
Browse       Search
2 <br />It is now evolving into a more inclusive concept to push a community <br />toward emphasizing redesign, reduction, reuse, recycling and composting. <br />The Zero Waste Training Course offered by the Solid Waste Association of <br />North America (SWANA) emphasizes that each community needs to define <br />the meaning of ‘Zero Waste’ for itself.It is clearly noted, as fact, that it will <br />remain physically impossible to not have waste that must be landfilled. <br />An ultimate goal of the County’s definition of “Zero Waste” should include <br />language ensuring that whatever residuals must be landfilled are ‘stabilized <br />and inert’ so as not to cause future harm once buried via leaching. <br />The balance of this memorandum offers information on defining Zero <br />Waste and a definition of Zero Waste for the Orange County Solid Waste <br />Master Plan. <br />The Zero Waste International Association defines Zero Waste as:“The <br />conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, <br />consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials <br />without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten <br />the environment or human health.”(Last updated December 20th, 2018). <br />This definition is viewed by the Department as prohibiting the use of any <br />type of technology that utilizes burning material as processing or results in <br />a product that is burned. <br />The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) definition takes a <br />much less definitive and more flexible approach that does not discuss the <br />broader concepts included in the above definition but focuses on reducing <br />solid waste: SWANA defines Zero Waste as “efforts to reduce solid waste <br />generation waste to nothing, or as close to nothing as possible, by