Our human custodianship of the planet is not going well. According to Scientific American, we have only sixty years of farming seasons left because we have degraded soils through industrial agriculture and the overuse of chemicals.
The World Wildlife Fund says we have wiped out 60 percent of all mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles since 1970.
Chemical destruction of biological processes poisons our soils, our air, and our water. The mishandling of waste is a lost opportunity to repair much of this desecration.
If waste were collected as source-separated products, more than half of it could be returned to soils as quality compost and biological products. A very large percentage of the remainder could be recycled, remanufactured, and reused.
This book is about how this reduction of waste is being achieved in some parts of the world and how we could do it globally if we could only think differently.
We need to change our minds about waste, because the only place waste exists is between our ears. Waste is a concept derived from lazy thinking and twisted economics. We need to reconnect our organic waste to local soils and our wasted resources to local jobs.