By Paul Rosenberg
The Zero Waste International Alliance (click here) defines its goal as “ethical, economical, efficient and visionary," and also as a way to "guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use.”
If it sounds utopian, well, it is. It's a goal, after all. But 11 years after Los Angeles first adopted the “zero waste” framework, the city has put in place a sweeping new waste-management system, Recycle LA, that's guided by the zero-waste philosophy in the abstract, but is also fleshed out in ways that meet a wide range of more immediate goals, where progress — or lack thereof — can be measured, compared and tracked against expectations.
Translating the abstract into a nuts-and-bolts plan was largely the world of a wide-ranging coalition called Don't Waste LA, pulled together by the LA Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) in the late 2000s.
At the time, Hillary Gordon was chair of the Zero Waste Committee at the Los Angeles Chapter the Sierra Club. “A lot of zero waste work up until this point had been at the level of 'what can people do individually in their lives to take responsibility for the waste they are generating?'” she recalled in a recent interview....
