WHEREAS:
- The placement of materials in waste disposal facilities, such as landfills and incinerators, causes damage to human health, wastes natural resources and/or inappropriately transfers liabilities to future generations, and
- Landfills are the single largest man-made source of methane in the United States, and contribute significantly to global warming, and
- Reduced wasting, and increased reuse, recycling and composting could dramatically help reverse climate changes, and
- Voluntary recycling goals have not reduced wasting sufficiently, and
- Communities are currently forced to assume the high financial cost of collecting, recycling, and disposing of increasingly complex and toxic products and packaging, which is an unfunded mandate, and
- A resource management based economy will create and sustain more productive and meaningful jobs, and
- Subsidies for wasting and use of virgin materials send the wrong economic signals to both consumers and producers, and
- Most toxic product and packaging waste can be eliminated through the use of non-toxic alternatives in product design, and
- Producers should design products to ensure that they can be safely reused or recycled back into the marketplace or nature, and
- Federal, state and local governments around the world are adopting policies to hold producers financially and/or physically responsible for collecting, recycling, and properly handling of products and packaging, and
- Our current mode of utilizing resources (Extract>Process>Use>Dispose) is unsustainable
- Zero Waste policies and programs will establish practical ways in our community to eliminate waste or safely reuse, recycle or compost discarded products and packaging;
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the [City/County/Organization] hereby adopts a Zero Waste goal and directs staff to return with a Zero Waste Plan to implement that goal within one year.