“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”―Jacques Yves Cousteau

Those of us living in affluent countries discard an average of 4.3 pounds of waste a day, enough to fill a 3,100-mile-long column of refuse trucks bumper-to-bumper from New York to San Francisco.* This contributes to a global annual total of three trillion tonnes, the vast majority of which either ends up in methane-emitting landfills or is burnt, producing toxic chemicals known as dioxins. Two thirds of our waste is organic (mainly food, a quarter of which is never eaten), and a third of it paper and plastic.But if I’m not personally affected by any of these things, you may say, why should I care?

To start with, we can save a lot of money—over £700 annually per household in the UK, for example. We’ll be targeting remote Micro Earths where people use imaginative ways to produce near zero waste and also maintain a high standard of living. What are they doing right that we can translate to in our own lives and draw benefit from?

More at http://microearths.com/

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All Rights Reserved – © 2016 Jason Lewis

* Source: The World Bank