Trash or Treasure?
“One man’s trash is often another man’s treasure.”
Waste is what is left over, seldom used, and usually discarded (rather than retained and re-purposed). What is wasted is lost.
In nature there is zero waste. Everything is used for something. Everything has a use and a purpose. Everything has value. Anything not used as food or raw material for something else is converted to and used as energy. Actually, everything that exists is energy.
Energy can not be created or destroyed – but it can and often does change form.
Form and structure determine (potential) function and use.
Matter is a form of energy. Thoughts are also a form of energy. How and what we think matters – more than we usually realize.
Zero waste is not just some ecological ideal. It is also an economic imperative – for survival.
Sustainability mean to keep going. It is another way of saying survival.
Ecological, economic, and often individual sustainability and survival often depends upon the ability to make (maximum) use of available resources – with little or no waste.
Reducing costs, expenses, and liabilities is sometimes faster, easier, and more important than only increasing income and assets. Less exposure means less vulnerability and risk.
Everything that exists is an asset and a resource – with purpose and potential (whether we realize and make use of it or not).
An asset is anything with the property or advantage of adding value. Property is an asset. An asset can feed you. A liability costs and sometimes eats you.
A resource is anything that provides, supplies, or supports the acquisition or appreciation of an asset – including the ability to meet and handle situations. Monetarily this is usually available funds.
Appreciating assets increase or grow in value. When the origin, source, or provider of an asset can be accessed and used again and again, multiple times, on an ongoing basis without exhausting its ability to (re)generate reserves, it is called a renewable resource. If allowed to replenish as much or more than is depleted, it is sustainable – and essentially infinite in its ability to provide (value).
Many things are better together than they are apart. Ingredients may be inert alone. Combined with a catalyst, the result may be something of far greater beauty, significance, use, value, and worth than either are alone.
This is also true with people – and their ideas. Only so much is possible alone. Together Everyone Achieves More is the reason for many a TEAM.
Zero waste would be the result of a TEAM approach to appreciating and utilizing everything and everyone – as an essential asset and valuable resource for the highest and best good for all.
© 2009 – 2010, Oren Pardes. All rights reserved.
