Thinking for the Future:

The Possibility of Zero Waste
in the Regional District of Nanaimo

Introduction

At a time when our society is enjoying an unparalleled standard of living, it is easy to believe in the endless abundance and adaptability of the planet. Vast improvements in nutrition and medicine have led to increasingly longer life spans and a booming global population, in which individuals throughout the world aspire to attain the idealized lifestyle of the West.

However, the very patterns of consumption that define North American culture are the ones that are contributing to the dramatic depletion of the Earth’s resources. We have become a disposable society, in which status can be measured by the amount of material goods that flow through our hands each year. A term has been coined for this thoughtless usage of resources: throughput. Instead of input or output, it refers to the goods that continuously enter into our society and are discarded.

The same people who invented this term have created a concept that allows us to measure our impact on the ecosphere in concrete terms. It is called the "ecological footprint", and refers to the area of the earth’s surface necessary for each individual, community, or economy to sustain itself. At present, there are 1.5 hectares of land available to sustain each human being alive, taking into account only human beings and no other species. By using the ecological footprint method, we can estimate that the average Canadian uses over 4 hectares in order to produce enough food, shelter, energy, goods, and services to sustain their current lifestyle (Wackernagel).

Not only does this mean that we are using more than our fair share of the world’s resources, but this share will diminish over time as populations grow and natural resources are exhausted. So what will happen as the rest of the world strives to meet our standards?

This estimate also fails to account for assimilation of wastes, which is the end result of our excessive consumption. In order to be sustainable, human beings must not only use resources at a rate that allows them to renew themselves, but we can create only as much waste as the planet is able to re-absorb. The products that enter our society are used and discarded, and something must be done with the end result. At this point the Earth does not have the capacity to absorb wastes at the alarming rate at which they are created, and until now we have dealt with this by burning or burying our discards and pretending they did not exist.

Nevertheless, we are no longer able to simply ignore our unwanted goods. A growing awareness of the wastefulness of our resource consumption, and the ecological impacts of our discards, has lead to a new consciousness in waste management. The time has come for humanity to grow up and deal with our wastes responsibly. At best, we could become functioning and sustainable members of the ecosphere once again.

A movement has begun in the waste management industry that aims to see this happen. No longer are we regarding our waste as inevitable, but are striving for a time when waste will no longer be acceptable. Zero waste is the goal, and one hundred percent efficiency in resource use.

This report will discuss the possibility of zero waste policy being implemented within the Regional District of Nanaimo, and approaches that can be taken to reach this goal. It provides an overview of the necessity for zero waste within the district, the concepts behind the movement, the barriers faced in its implementation, and some of the tools we have available to overcome these. It will also touch on changes needed in order to reach significant waste reduction goals, including a set of recommendations on how to effect such change.

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