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Masters Thesis

The state of Zero Waste

This thesis describes San Francisco as a case study city shifting from a paradigm of Municipal Solid Waste Management to one of Zero Waste and Resource Management. It reviews the body of professional and academic literature on Zero Waste and understands the concept as a philosophical construct, while examining San Francisco's actions as an application of that philosophy. This paper describes the elements of change in infrastructure, policy, and education that have to be addressed for a city to bridge the cultural divide from disposal to resource recovery and source reduction. Zero Waste is still in the process of being both understood and defined and this original research will provide a social history of waste and Zero Waste in the U.S., and will contribute to understanding and solving the problem of waste in cities.

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