this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Zero Waste

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Being "zero waste" means that we adopt steps towards reducing personal waste and minimizing our environmental impact.

Our community places a major focus on the 5 R's: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot. We practice this by reducing consumption, choosing reusable goods, recycling, composting, and helping each other improve.

We also recognize excess CO₂, other GHG emissions, and general resource usage as waste.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

the only material that is really useful for recylcing is copper and alu. esp alu since it's refining process is very energy intensive and recycling it is actually cheaper.

recycling paper and plastic is mostly energy/cost negative compared to making it new.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If I remember right, glass is extremely efficient in recycling.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If it is recycled. But the profit motive isn't there, so in a lot of places it simply isn't. In Canada's second largest city, it all goes to landfill, and they don't even have a bottle return system yet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yep you can use 100% of it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Conversely, many places have stopped accepting glass for recycling because they have huge backlogs and broken glass presents a significant danger to recycling staff.