Hey guys! We are four senior students from IENH and our main purpose is to talk about an important topic. This is a website that has as one of its major intentions to inform about the topic “Zero Waste”, a movement that literally wants to do what the topic says: don’t produce any kind of waste. After conducting a survey with around 50 people about ‘what it means to be Zero Waste’, we concluded that none of the interviewed individuals applied the practice at home, as well as 17% do not even know what the term means. With this small number in mind, we decided to talk about this relevant topic to proliferate the idea and help our home, our planet to be a better place to live and heal from what it is already damaged.

What does it mean to be Zero Waste?

A zero waste lifestyle includes a variety of habits that go far beyond recycling and waste sorting. In zero waste, you are not supposed to call your materials waste, instead you should call it residue. Rather than using disposable materials, in a zero waste lifestyle you don't consume any type of plastic or residue that you are unable to reuse at least for a year. If the materials are organic (fruit peels, dirty napkins or leftovers), it is very important to keep them in a different space from the recyclable ones, so you can compost to help your plants grow!

The importance of zero waste:

Every Brazilian person produces around 387kg of waste everyday.; Meanwhile, a zero waste lifestyle can avoid this situation; If people had the knowledge that their waste does not disappear from this world, only in Brazil we would get rid of 80 bi. kg of waste every single year. Our planet is ill, and if we don´t stop to use their natural resources as we do nowadays, in a few years we won't have a place to live anymore due to all the pollution and sickness spread worldwide.

The beginning of zero waste:

‘Zero Waste’ is a recent term that changed its name in December 2000 after a lecture in New Zealand. Before, the most well-known term was ‘No Waste’, but after the conference performed by campaigner Warren Snow, the term and the practices ‘Zero Waste’ started to grow and spread around the world.