a. n. (Esp. with reference to the manufacture or distribution of a product) generation of very little or no waste;b. adj. (esp. of the manufacture or distribution of a product) characterized by the generation of very little or no waste.
1974
The delegates voted in favour of..efficient production without misuse of the environment or excessive consumption of nonrenewable resources. They also agreed to an amendment which..shifted the emphasis to a philosophy of ‘zero waste’ as a desirable economic goal.
Guardian 14 September 7/2
1994
He affirms that our profession should work toward zero-waste engineering and the controlled environmental production of compost as a bioresource.
Resource October 3/2
2011
Many cities that have enacted zero-waste plans say they have taken up the task in the name of sustainability.
Wall Street Journal 12 September r7/1
2021
Zero waste is more like an ideology than a reality. It is something that we are aiming towards.
Shields Gazette (Nexis) 16 March
Frequency
zero waste typically occurs about 0.2 times per million words in modern written English.
zero waste is in frequency band 4, which contains words occurring between 0.1 and 1 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of zero waste, adj. & n., 2017–2024
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Modern frequency series are derived from a corpus of 20 billion words, covering the period from 2017 to the present. The corpus is mainly compiled from online news sources, and covers all major varieties of World English.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the corpus.
Period
Frequency per million words
2017
0.14
2018
0.14
2019
0.15
2020
0.17
2021
0.18
2022
0.16
2023
0.17
2024
0.16
Originally published as part of the entry for zero, n. & adj.
zero waste, adj. & n. was first published in 2021.