Yesterday I downloaded the Carbon Trust’s Zero Waste guide. As most of the content could have been written a decade ago, it was, frankly, a waste of electrons. Where was the aspiration, the innovation, the inspiration? We get a nod to the circular economy and design, but no more detail. Instead we get the 3Rs and talking to waste management contractors.

If you want zero waste, paradoxically you’ve got to stop thinking about waste. You’ve got to think about preventing resources being wasted instead (my mantra is “waste is a verb, not a noun”). You’ve got to think about loops, not linear processes.

Once you’ve changed your mindset, you’ve got to find quality uses for every stream of material or design it out of your system. You need to talk to suppliers and customers about closed loop business models and innovations. You’ve got to talk to other organisations who may be able to use unwanted material as a raw material. You, and plenty of other people, have got to do things radically differently.

We cannot face a challenge like zero waste with a linear waste minimisation mindset, it’s like taking a pea shooter to a war zone. As Einstein said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”