Indeed, April (and May) may be the cruelest months for waste, at least if NASA and Nike have anything to say about it. On April 1, they opened up submissions to their LAUNCH: Beyond Waste Challenge.

The goal of the LAUNCH: Beyond Waste Challenge is to identify ten “game changing” innovations that have the potential to transform the current waste management systems and practices to ones focused on minimizing waste and/or transforming waste into new products. LAUNCH invites proposals for innovative design for zero waste solutions, waste elimination, waste transformation, and waste mitigation technologies, as well as waste reduction-focused education, business, and financial strategies that have the potential to reduce and/or eliminate waste at a household, community, office building, campus, or industrial level.

Ultimately, adds Triple Pundit, “the goal is to have these new waste processing systems aid space travel in the future.” In addition to NASA and Nike, the LAUNCH program is also being organized by the U.S. State Department and USAID, who point out that

On Earth, landfilling and incineration has long been the easy out because there is (still but not for long) land mass and an atmosphere in which to dump unwanted materials. But in an inhospitable environment like outer space, reducing, repurposing, reusing waste becomes critical in order to “mitigate orbital debris.” Meanwhile earthlings would benefit from new waste management practices, efficiency and a healthier environment. Businesses, and this is where NIKE comes in, would score improvements from an even leaner and greener supply chain.

And after seeing images of all the orbital debris that surrounds out planet, I think we can all agree that we don’t need to contribute any more! Deadline for submissions is May 15, 2012.