Zero Waste is nothing new. Nature does it all the time. Always has. Always will.

Belying the incomprehensible complexity of relationships in nature is the simple outcome ..... "no waste".

Humanity, however, is an exception to this rule (basically we've been giving Nature the forks for some time). By having detached ourselves from nature and having abandoned so many of our natural relationships we humans have moved far from living a 'natural' life.

Instead of relationships based on exchanges for the sake of mutual survival and sustainability, we're mostly caught up in relationships based on the exchange of money for 'goods', in a society driven by profit, with governments and industries invariably promoting increasing levels of material consumption as a panacea for the symptoms which stem from our ill-considered movement away from nature.

Individually we have to work damn hard simply to satisfy the complicated requirements of conformity within such a society - whether we like it or not. We have to work even harder if we choose to go against the flow and move closer to nature. And we have to work even harder again if we wish to try to influence the rest of society to move with us. Basically, whichever way you look at it, life is hard work. No wonder we create waste.

Now nobody is saying that living sustainably is easy. It's certainly not for the ant, the bee, or the earthworm. But by virtue of the fact that it will require us to be more material and energy efficient, it shouldn't be any harder.

In terms of dealing with the waste we currently generate (while we work towards a zero-waste society), deposit-refund systems have a lot to offer.

The main waste-creating problem with our unnatural way of doing things is that we don't "close the loop". Our consumption-driven society is linear at its peril. From the moment of extraction of finite raw materials, through the production, distribution, and consumption stages of a product's life, to the 'final' disposal of used products and packaging waste into scarce holes in the ground, too little thought is given to the return of materials to whence they came.

Only when we close the loop and begin returning products and packaging to their originators - those most capable of reusing and recycling them, or modifying their design to do so - will we be conducting our consumption-related activities in a more sustainable way. A sensible way of doing this is to ensure they have a value at the end of their consumer-usable life. Even a value as little as 20 cents for an empty Coke bottle ensures nearly all are returned to the manufacturer for re-use and recycling.

Re-establishing our natural relationships, and our proper and respectful place in nature, is a long term goal we may, or may not, realise. In this context deposit-refund systems shouldn't be seen as an end point. But they are a useful mechanism for dealing with the situation we currently (and for the foreseeable future) find ourselves in. It's a bit like swimming diagonally when you're caught in a current, rather than fighting the tide .... and drowning in the process.