Talk:Key:zero waste

When is something zero_waste?

Most supermarkets sell vegetables in bulk where you put the vegs in a disposable plastic bag yourself. Though it's not encouraged, you are free to take your own bags from home. So they technically sell goods without packaging, but it would be ridiculous to tag them with zero_waste=yes. Shouldn't the intent of the shop be taken into account, or at least the majority of goods be unpackaged? Surely if customers aren't even encouraged not to use non-reused packaging, the shops shouldn't be marked as zero waste.

To me a tag zero_waste=yes looks like the shop doesn't produce any waste at all: mind the "zero". In a funny coincidence I created a proposal for low_waste=* three days before the discussion on the German forum started. I chose not to call it "zero_waste" and used different criteria. —M!dgard [ talk ] 16:37, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

At least one person didn't like "low_waste" and proposed packaging=yes / packaging=low_waste / packaging=zero_waste/no. Another idea would be avoids_waste=no/low_waste/zero_waste. —M!dgard [ talk ] 16:41, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

I think packaging=yes / packaging=avoids_waste / packaging=zero_waste (avoids_waste instead of low_waste) looks pretty clean. —M!dgard [ talk ] 16:43, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Maybe "when the shop sells goods without available packing and it is necessary to bring your own (not specifying)." would work better? Tag is not significantly used so redefining would be still possible Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:00, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Could we extend zero-waste to non-plastic packaging?

The description clearly says "For shops that sell goods without plastic packaging for ecological reasons.". Most of the shops I know which are in a garbage reduction goal propose to not use non-reusable packaging at all, even paper bags.

Do you think we could extent "without plastic packaging" to "without packaging" or "without packaging or using reusable packaging ?

Here is a similar discussion about tagging shops that avoid to sell goods with non-necessary packaging: https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=751856 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajojo44 (talk • contribs) 14 December 2019

"for ecological reasons"

Is it necessary or useful to recrict tag meaning in this way? Why shop selling stuff without packaging for other reasons should not qualify? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:04, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree it's unneccessarily specific there. It could be moved into examples. ----- Kovposch (talk) 09:07, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I edited it a bit, hopefully for better Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:25, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Rewritten, and recycling

I took the liberty to rewrite the page because it was written in a rather confusing way and with poor language.

One of the things I did, was make it stand out more that container deposit (of glass jars e.g.) is acceptable. There was extended discussion on the forums about different tags, whether it should better capture the practical side (bring your containers) or the waste-reducing motivation, and about choosing an appropriate tag to reflect that. The key "zero_waste" seems to be most adopted since then, and the key makes it clear it's about the waste-reducing motivation. The docs now show that.

While researching zero-waste to better write the docs, I saw that the need for recycling of returned packaging is controversial. Would we need to make a distinction in OSM? My idea would be to not accept that as zero-waste because I've been told recycling is energy intensive, costly and in many cases yields inferior raw materials. (Reading the Wikipedia page, I guess that makes it clear that my take on zero-waste is more than "keeping plastic out of the oceans".) —M!dgard (talk) 00:57, 16 February 2021 (UTC)