Design & Architecture (recycled)

Everyone is talking about zero waste these days. Jared Blumenfeld of San Francisco's environment department says "From our perspective, waste doesn't need to exist,It's a design flaw." David Redfield of Wal-Mart says "When you look at a dumpster, you see trash. When I look at it, I see materials and money." William McDonough says "We're not talking here about eliminating waste, We're talking about eliminating the entire concept of waste."

According to Fortune: "Zero waste is just what it sounds like - producing, consuming, and recycling products without throwing anything away. Getting to a wasteless world will require nothing less than a total makeover of the global economy, which thinkers such as entrepreneur Paul Hawken, consultant Amory Lovins, and architect William McDonough have called the Next Industrial Revolution." ::Fortune and be sure to watch the bizarre video of a garbage processing plant set to music.

The Whole Life Times: "a new movement is taking a more holistic approach. Rather than focusing solely on what to do with existing waste, the “Zero Waste” movement looks at a product’s entire life cycle — and redirects the conversation toward usable options for every step along the way. The ultimate goal is to eliminate waste as a concept entirely — a lofty aspiration indeed. But Zero Wasters say loftiness is part of the point — after all, creating a trash-free world is going to take nothing short of revolution."

The Boston Globe: "IMAGINE AN INDUSTRIAL system in which nothing ever really dies or gets discarded....In this perfect system, each unit of energy consumed would be somehow offset. Every industrial byproduct would reassemble into something useful and benign. Every beam of sunlight, scrap of garbage, and flush of the toilet would be pressed into service. No exceptions. Humankind would make obsolete the very concept of "waste."

Final word to David Redfield of Wal-Mart: "Trash is Cash."