NEW RULES, NEW PATH
Reforming waste policy is an important part of the broader work on transitioning to a post-carbon economy, both to reduce materials and energy flows and to build resilient communities through a return to local production and product stewardship. It would be irrational to repeat the mistakes of the nineteenth century with public investment in municipal incinerators and landfills supporting unsustainable flows of materials and energy, and simply hope that consumers and producers will of their own accord do in this new century what they failed to do in the last one. Instead, we can set new rules and hold producers responsible for obeying them. If we get waste policy right, we can leverage profound changes in how our society manages materials and energy and how we function as communities. If we fail, then “business as usual” will lead to further acceleration of material and energy throughput and ensuing destabilization of the climate and human society.