Zero Waste Can Lead to New Income Streams

In most of the production facilities, the manufacturing of a product and its usage leads to solid waste. This is not only a waste of resources and materials, but also has an impact on the environment.  As such, companies are now trying to reduce this waste to zero percent.

The EPA claims that all industrial facilities in America dispose of over 7.6 billion tons of waste on a yearly basis. As such, many companies have now focused attention on reducing the waste they generate. Some of these are interested in sending no waste to dumpsters and landfills and are keen on achieving this.

What exactly is zero waste?

Zero waste has no meaning in the literal sense. Waste is always produced. The term just refers to not disposing any waste in landfills or using energy for incinerating it.  In some cases, the laws demand that waste has to be disposed of to the landfills. Companies have to follow this since this is a legal requirement. While trying to achieve zero waste, this is not considered.

How do companies plan to achieve zero waste?

The strategy of adopting zero waste differs with every company. For Procter and Gamble, which is one of the biggest global enterprises, zero waste is all about eliminating solid waste completely or at least reducing it from production processes. They are also aimed at developing more efficient delivery systems and improving the packaging of their products by using the lifecycle thinking concept.

P&G has decided they will achieve complete zero waste by the year 2020. As of now, 60 of their production sites have already achieved it.  P&G’s global sustainability Vice President told the press the reduced waste being disposed of to the landfills mean less money spent.  He added that because of this there were significantly reduced costs associated with their supply chain, which contributed to their bottom line.

Is P&G the only one devoted to zero waste? No, Hersheys is another brand that is trying to achieve it. They have plans to divert the materials which end up in landfill and send them to another channel.
For instance, some of these materials can be reused and some can be recycled. As of now, Hershey has 6 production sites which are not sending any waste to landfills.

Source: www.environmentalleader.com