Circular Economy: A milestone for Zero Waste Municipality

Abstract

People around the world generate billion tons of waste. Over two billion tons of solid waste was produced in 2016 and it is estimated to rise to 3.4 billion tons by 2050. The world’s trash amount is reaching crisis and seems to getting bigger and bigger unless we take a systematic action to deal with it. The purpose of this article is to study a methodology for zero waste municipalities, examine the role of a community in addressing municipal waste and moving towards zero waste, and to evaluate how circular economy can contribute in achieving zero waste municipality. Zero waste is likely adopted as a mechanism for waste management, but circular economy is a mechanism for industries and businesses in both eliminating waste and promoting resource efficiency as products are intentionally designed and manufactured to be repurposed and recycled. The result showed that with the circular economy concept, the waste can be reduced at the first stage of prevention as products are designed to use regenerative materials and designing technic to make them last longer and repairable in the light of designing out waste. Also, waste can be getting less and less due to the practices of reuse and repair service which extends product life cycle. Recycling is another practice that contributes to waste elimination as the component parts and materials will be used for manufacturing new products.