Cities & Communities

A Zero Waste world? Let’s Do It!

Published

10 Feb 2013

Written by

Joan Marc

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From 1st to 3rd of February 175 -mostly- young people from all over the world met in Estonia to talk rubbish and ended up talking about zero waste. The Let’sDoItWorld movement has so far managed to mobilise 7 million people from 95 different countries do clean their landscape in what has become the most important clean-up ever accomplished. Yet, after some years of intensive cleaning these volunteers have had enough. Having seen that forests and rivers get dirty again decided to explore what would it take to really have a clean planet.

In order to find out a group of high-level experts from all walks of life were invited by the president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves (in the picture above with the Zero Waste flag), and the “visionary” of the LetsDoIt movement, Rainer Nolvak, to brainstorm during 2 days what kind of actions can be done in order to clean the planet. It was clear that in order to change the planet the first thing to do is rethink the way we do things and design better products that can be either recycled back into the system or can biodegrade without polluting the environment. Then good politics should lead to good separate collection and good waste treatment that closes the material cycle, not leaving anything to go to waste. In a nutshell; apply the zero waste philosophy!

Inspiring renowned speakers such as Dr Elisabet Sahtorius, Dr Leandro Herrero or Muna Lakhani laid the ground for fruitful exchanges about how to make the global change possible.

The conference was an incredible experience that provided the opportunity to people to meet, network, colaborate and above all share their dreams for a better world.

Message to take home: nature makes no waste and nature knows no borders, we humans have invented both and it is our duty to free the world from them. With people like those who assisted this event the impossible is possible. A Zero Waste world? Let’s Do It!