New Zealand's positioning as a clean and green country is important for trade and tourism as well as the quality of life of current and future generations.

Businesses throughout the world have found that reducing waste reduces costs and increases profits. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has encouraged this through ‘eco-efficiency’ which, in its simplest terms, means creating more goods and services with ever less use of resources, waste, and pollution.

Promoting Zero Waste helps fulfil the NZBCSD aim of providing business leadership on environmental issues as well as demonstrating best practice and progress towards sustainable development.

Zero Waste is about the elimination of all forms of waste from production systems, including solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes. The NZBCSD has chosen to focus on achieving zero solid waste in industry. Solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes are interrelated, therefore the focus on one type necessarily leads to addressing the others.