Home town advantage: The Berkeley City Council ‘made environmental
history’ when the Council officially – and unanimously – established
one of the nation’s first Zero Waste Goals, adopting a 75% waste
reduction goal for 2010, and establishes a Zero Waste Goal for 2020.
From the press release:
Zero Waste is a concept that couples aggressive resource recovery with
industrial redesign to eliminate the very concept of waste. ‘If it can’t be
reused, rebuilt, refurbished, reconfigured, recycled, or composted, then it
needs to be redesigned – or removed from production all together,’ said Dan
Knapp, founder and owner of Urban Ore, Berkeley’s premier reuse retailer.
‘In the 1980’s when Berkeley set a goal of reducing waste by 50%, everyone
said it couldn’t be done’, said Mayor Tom Bates who sponsored the
resolution, ‘Not only did we prove them wrong, but less than a decade later
the State of California set that goal for all counties. I am confident that
we will not only meet our Zero Waste goal, but give a boost to innovative
waste reduction policy across the nation.’