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Net-Zero New Year

By Bryan Hadick, 30 December 2016

Image:  time.com

  

Like all moments of transition, the New Year offers an opportunity to pause, reflect and refocus, so that we can move ahead more confidently, boldly, and successfully. Many of us use the New Year to self-evaluate and refresh ambitions for personal growth, professional development, health and fitness, or relationships. For anyone thinking of a New Year's goal, TE Greengineers proposes a challenge: Join us in working to become Net-Zero waste generators in the next year.

  

Broadly, a Zero-Waste philosophy aims for the total impact of things we purchase and use - including production, distribution and degradation - to be minimized and reconsidered in continual process until we are no longer creating waste and harm by our choices and consumptions. More immediately, Net-Zero defines a precise objective for our waste streams: to send nothing to landfills. Like many New Year's goals, Net-Zero is about aggressively cutting back, but it is also about forming more intelligent plans and healthier decisions, developing innovative new systems and services, living better, and enabling our communities and habitats to thrive. It is a target that many cities including NYC have already committed to reaching by 2030, but as individuals we can help it to happen sooner.

  

Since the practices necessary for Net-Zero are built upon principles of wellness, they can provide the core for any kind of personal improvement project. Here are some ideas for getting started or going further:

  

  

TE Greengineers hopes you will join us this New Year in becoming more informed, engaged, empowered, healthy, and satisfied consumers. We need to reach Net-Zero, but we believe we can achieve it through personal transformation and betterment, by learning more and doing more, by sharing more and trying harder. We believe that as we endeavor to make ourselves into happier and healthier individuals in the New Year, and to realize those visions of our best-self, we can do the same for our communities and habitats, and actually create a better world for us all to live in.