Group pushes U.N. to define ´zero waste´

"There´s a lot of people trying to use zero waste to tout their environmental commitment and, in those cases, they´re misusing the term," he said. "For instance, the zero-waste-to-landfill claim many times is, in essence, another way of saying, ´We burn the materials,´ [or], ´We don´t recycle,´ or ´We´re not able to recover.´

"Other users of the term ´zero waste´ believe recovering energy from the waste stream is part of the zero waste equation. A purist definition of ´zero waste´ wouldn´t accept that because by burning the material, you´re not capitalizing on the embodied energy in that material stream and that resource stream. You´re just getting some crude level of energy out of it. You´re not using the innate qualities of the material."

Group pushes U.N. to define ´zero waste´