* Zero waste is an ambitious goal to eliminate garbage (or darn close) through strategies including reduction, reuse, recycling and composting.

* Zero waste is about sustainable resource management, because it preserves materials and resources, saves energy and reduces global warming.

* Zero waste employs creative and comprehensive approaches to maximize waste reduction. Integral to zero waste are product stewardship requirements that give corporations the responsibility for taking back or eliminating the wasteful products they produce (examples include toxicity, excessive packaging and a short life span).

* Zero waste is an engine for green economic development and job creation. It saves more resources and energy and does more to address global warming than any other approach to waste management. It needs a cooperative effort between the community and industry (if our communities can’t reuse, recycle, or compost it, industry shouldn’t make it).

Citizens’ Environmental Coalition is sponsoring the New York State Zero Waste Campaign:

Join a statewide coalition of concerned citizens and groups to press the state to incorporate 21st century “Zero Waste” principles into its solid waste policies. NY lags behind many states in recycling and composting and remains heavily dependent on polluting garbage incinerators and landfills. In many municipalities, recycling and waste diversion rates have been declining, and existing NYS policy has done little to turn this dismal situation around. We have an opportunity to move toward Zero Waste in New York, but we need your involvement.

I answered their questionaire, but couldn’t find any further information on their website. I’ll post updates here as they become available…

Mark Levy represented Sustainable Flatbush at Sunday’s Lawn Litter Law press conference. Here’s his report from the event:

It isn’t very often that the steps of City Hall look like my Ditmas Park front porch; but covered with mounds of advertising fliers, menus and other “lawn litter”, there were certain similarities. The lawn litter were props, collected by City Council staff to dramatize Saturday’s start of enforcement of the Unwanted Materials (AKA Lawn Litter) Law, and I was there to participate in a press conference.

As press conferences go, it didn’t look like much of a success. Just City Council Member Simcha Felder (D-Bklyn), playing the ambitious politician and me, playing the colorful neighborhood activist, along with a few of Felder’s staff and a Russian language film crew from Radio Free Europe and two reporters, one from a Brooklyn-based Chinese language news service, one from AM New York.

Felder, a candidate for City Comptroller, first got involved with the fight against unwanted menus and advertising materials when his mother was fined by the Department of Sanitation for lawn litter on her property in Borough Park. He sponsored this law and it finally went into effect on August 2nd. He explained the process to file an affidavit against the distributors.

I explained that as a representative of Sustainable Flatbush, reduction of waste materials is one of our primary goals of promoting sustainability (along with community gardening, livable streets and energy efficiency). I noted that this law is “Good for business, Good for the environment and Good for our neighborhoods” and displayed the affidavit I will file against Kohl’s Department Store for the mounds of junk litter their distributor dumps on my property. This will be the very first one filed.

As a Gothamist commenter noted, at least Mark was dressed for the occasion!

photo: City Councilman Simcha Felder (right) with Sustainable Flatbush’s Mark Levy (via Flickr)

Sustainable Flatbush No Litter Sign

Another note: Sustainable Flatbush is now offering download-able “No Litter” signs (similar to the ones created by the Park Slope Civic Council), and will also have laminated versions available at the Flatbush Frolic in September.