The Dirt

The City Council of Austin, Texas has announced a committment to reduce per capita solid waste sent to landfills and incinerators by 20 percent by 2012, and then 90 percent by 2040.

According to the City Council resolution, the infrastructure transition plan for moving to zero-waste includes a few key components:

• Lead by example. Evaluate departmental waste streams for baseline
  data and future monitoring within one year of adoption of the Plan.
  Within three years of adoption of the Plan, frame, develop and
  implement, where appropriate and feasible, waste diversion programs with input from City Departments.
• Consider and implement pro-active education and enforcement methods for the Commercial and Multi-family Recycling regulations. Develop and present to City Council City Code amendments as necessary to require recycling at all commercial enterprises and multi-family residences and include them in the stakeholder process. The proposed City Code amendments should become effective in phases over a three year period.
• Reach out to institutions, industrial facilities, and manufacturers, to
  encourage them to adopt and implement zero waste goals.
• Promote composting to remove organic material and compostables
  from landfills, which is necessary to reduce methane and carbon
  emissions. First, identify the best strategies to promote on-site
  composting at work and home. Second, evaluate infrastructure for
  residential curbside, commercial, and institutional composting; develop strategies to increase composting capacity; and implement a pilot curbside composting program when composting capacity is available.

According to GreenBiz, Seattle and San Francisco are also pursuing zero-waste strategies and plans.

Read the City Council resolution
Go to the Austin, Texas waste services site

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The World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) published a report on Sustainable Consumption, which examines the relationship between business activities, sustainable consumption, and environmental and social challenges.

The report says current global consumption patterns are unsustainable. “It is becoming apparent that efficiency gains and technological advances alone will not be sufficient to bring global consumption to a sustainable level; changes will also be required to consumer lifestyles, including the ways in which consumers choose and use products and services.”

Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has also released a report: Measuring the Corporate Impact on Ecosystems: A Comprehensive Review of New Tools. The BSR report argues that: “Companies may face accountability, not only for pollution prevention, but also for impacts (positive or negative) to ecological structure and function in the areas where they operate or source. Such an evolving mandate could either be advanced via regulation or, more opaquely, become expected practice by investors, insurers, activists, employees or neighboring communities. Such an expanded focus would translate into a company needing to understand its dependencies and impacts (both positive and negative) on the flow of ecosystem services.”

While the report omits the Sustainable Sites Initiative, it outlines the value of ‘multi-ecosystem service assessment tools,’ such as InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs), MIMES (Multi-scale Integrated Models of Ecosystem Services), and the NVI (Natural Value Initiative).

BSR has 250 member companies, and WBCSD is a CEO-led global association of 200 firms.

Read Sustainable Consumption: Facts and Trends from a Business Perspective and Measuring Corporate Impact on Ecosystems: A Comprehensive Review of New Tools

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