Across all industries, there’s a significant push to become more eco-friendly. It might seem counterintuitive to the industry, but there are also big pushes by waste management companies to achieve sustainability.
Perhaps the biggest and most ambitious goal in this regard is something that’s called zero landfill, or zero waste to landfill. In essence, this term involves diverting at least 99% of the waste that’s generated away from landfills, with what’s left being either recycled, reused, composted or sent to energy recovery.
“Zero” doesn’t mean there won’t be any more waste generated in the world. Instead, it refers to the goal of a significant reduction in the amount of waste that’s sent to a landfill.
Below, we dig deeper into zero landfill as well as more details about sustainable waste management.
Difference Between Zero Waste and Zero Landfill
Zero waste and zero landfill are terms that are sometimes confused today. While they are related in some ways, they do involve very different approaches to sustainability.
Zero waste is a philosophy that aims to eliminate waste from business activities. If there’s less waste that’s being generated in the first place, then there’s less waste that needs to be handled.
It’s an ambitious goal, but one that is hard to measure and challenging to enact across the board because it involves so many different companies across so many different industries.
Zero waste to landfill, meanwhile, is a specific goal that’s achievable today. Not all types of waste will be able to be diverted away from a landfill. But, having the goal of reaching 99% diversion shows how important it is to achieve it in any way possible.
After all, a vast majority of the waste that’s being sent to landfills today can actually be used in some other way.
Benefits of Zero Waste
The benefits of zero to landfill are immense. Here are just a few.
Environmental Benefits
First and foremost, zero waste can provide tremendous benefits for the environment. Landfills take an enormous toll on the environment, which makes zero waste critical for the future of the earth.
Diverting waste away from landfills reduces pollution and contamination, as some of the waste is toxic and can seep into groundwater. It also helps to conserve natural resources, since more land won’t be needed to simply house waste — which in turn preserves trees and other natural growth.
Doing so also reduces greenhouse gas emissions. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions in the U.S. that are generated by human activity. In 2022 alone, landfills accounted for about 14.4% of methane emissions.
Cost Savings
Businesses can realize huge cost savings from zero waste to landfill efforts. When they make a concerted effort to reduce waste and use their materials for longer and more effectively, they have less to throw away and, as a result, pay less for disposal costs.
Companies also realize savings through this efficiency. By figuring out how to reuse some of the materials they have, they cut down on expenses they’ve previously shelled out. As a whole, zero waste can help to reduce the economic burden that waste management puts on businesses.
Compliance and Marketing Advantages
Governments all across the world have been putting new restrictions on businesses to positively affect climate change. Working toward zero waste helps businesses remain compliant with these local laws and regulations.
While that’s reason enough to do it, there’s another side benefit: Being sustainable helps to enhance a brand’s reputation and image.
Today, an increasing number of investors and customers want to do business with brands who are playing their part in saving the environment. Zero waste can help businesses market that that’s exactly what they’re doing.
The Waste Hierarchy
Zero waste to landfill is a multi-step process. It isn’t as simple as just not throwing things away. There is a hierarchy that can be followed to help achieve it more effectively.
Prevention
The top of the waste hierarchy involves addressing waste at its source — where it’s generated in the first place.
One of the biggest culprits of waste today is the packaging that products come in. Products are put into packaging that keeps it safe and secure, and then bundled up into more packaging if it’s being shipped to a customer’s door.
Coming up with new ways to design products and packaging to reduce this unnecessary waste is key. In addition, consumers need to be encouraged to adopt sustainable consumption patterns, too, so they can play their part.
Prepare for Reuse
Products will obviously need some packaging. But, the ideal scenario is if a majority of that packaging was designed to be reused and/or recycled.
Companies can encourage consumers to reuse products and materials that they sell. This could involve putting recycling bags in the package with a delivery of coffee pods, for instance, to make it easier for consumers to recycle them instead of throwing them in the trash.
Product designers can also adjust how they’re making and packaging products with waste reduction in mind.
Recycle
After the first two steps, the next best option is to recycle as much as possible. By converting waste into new materials and products, we’ll be reducing the need for more raw materials. In the process, the world conserves more natural resources and produces less “stuff” that eventually gets thrown away.
Recovery
Some types of waste will still remain if they can’t be prevented, reused or recycled. And some of what’s left can actually be put to good use in generating energy.
There are multiple processes through which waste can be turned into usable energy — including anaerobic digestion and incineration. This is essentially a newer form of renewable energy.
Like all other types of renewable energy, it reduces the need for fossil fuels, which aids the atmosphere and the environment as a whole.
Disposal
Traditional disposal of waste in a landfill is only done as a last resort in the zero waste to landfill plan. As mentioned, there will still be some materials that will need to go to a landfill.
However, minimizing how much waste is sent there will ultimately reduce the environmental harm that it causes.
Overcoming Challenges in Zero Landfill
There are some challenges that must be overcome to achieve zero landfill.
Public education and awareness is a big challenge that needs to be addressed head on. This includes not just the importance of achieving zero landfill, but marketing efforts to educate and promote ways that people can reduce waste in their own homes and at work.
In addition, this education needs to include information about what can and can’t be recycled, and how items need to be prepared (if at all) to be recycled. It can also include innovative examples of how people might reuse things that they otherwise would consider to be waste.
Businesses can play a huge role in this by providing their employees with reusable products. They can shift away from any single-use products such as paper or plastic cups and silverware, and replace them with stainless steel straws, reusable water bottles and cups, and even bamboo utensils.
If this is too much of a burden on the business’ bottom line, they can ask employees to bring them into the office with them. At the same time, the business can encourage this by simply not providing single-use products anymore and by providing incentives to people who bring in reusable products.
Some regions simply don’t have the same access to facilities that process recycling as others. This lack of infrastructure is something that needs to be addressed if zero landfill is to be achieved.
It’s also important to not disregard food waste, which is a huge contributor to the waste that builds up in landfills and, eventually, turns into greenhouse gasses. Education and marketing initiatives need to be put in place to help guide people on how they can plan meals and use their leftovers better.
The Future of Sustainable Waste Management
The importance of zero landfill in waste management can’t be stressed enough.
Landfills aren’t viable as a long-term solution for waste management. Not only is there not enough space to continue adding landfills, but doing so has huge native impacts on the environment.
Moving toward zero landfill will help to reduce environmental harm from waste, conserve natural resources and promote sustainable development.
Every person, every community and every business can play a part in implementing zero landfill initiatives. What might seem like small actions today can have a huge impact on our future.At GPS Waste, we are helping businesses across all industries reduce the waste they generate and recycle as much as they can to play our part in bettering the environment. For more information on how we do this, and how we can help your company save on costs in the process, please contact us today.
