A zero waste approach revealed as a top climate protection strategy: Winston-Salem, NC June 5, 2008 – Today the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League joined with environmental groups across the United States to release the new report, Stop Trashing the Climate. This timely report, on United Nations World Environment Day and with North Carolina in the midst of a major early June heat wave, points the way for North Carolina to move forward to reduce waste and simultaneously to cut the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. BREDL Press Release

October 25, 2006: Boone, NC Town Council passes Resolution creating a Zero Waste Plan in order to eliminate waste and pollution in the manufacture, use, storage and recycling of materials.. Read October 23, 2006 Watauga Democrat article | View Resolution passed by Boone on October 19, 2006.

Feb. 16, 2006: A recent article in Purchasing Magazine reports on packaging PVC clamshells. In the Feb. 16 article "The battle rages over use of PVC clamshells", Microsoft attorney, Joan Krajewski, "estimates its replacement of PVC packaging with corrugated cardboard and recyclable plastic packaging will remove more than 800,000 lbs from landfills annually."

Jay Watts, senior manager of the Microsoft package engineering management team, says "as part of the project, we were able to eliminate clamshells altogether-not just the PVC but the clamshell itself-from 60-70% of our packaging, so no substitution was needed at all." Those clamshells made of plastic still in use now are made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), he says, "and 25% of that resin is recycled material."