It's not one or the other. It's that we're spending millions into one category and zero in another.

Zero waste is already technically achievable with the technologies we have today. Kamikatsu, Japan is an extreme example where they sort their waste into 34 different bins.

We don't have to do all that but we would see extreme immediate benefits from even slightly abandoning George Bush's "the American lifestyle is non-negotiable" proclamation

The sorting doesn't really work as odds are too strong that someone in the city made a mistake and so you have to resort everything anyway. Automatic sorting machines that don't make mistakes are a better bet in the long run.

Don't forget to account for the costs of 34 separate dumping operations, generally with 34 different trucks, which is itself and environmental disaster.

(Is it either/or?)