Using ZeroWaste

ZeroWaste is CloudForecast’s waste-detection feature. Once a week, it scans your AWS accounts for resources you are paying for but not fully using, such as unattached EBS volumes, idle load balancers, and over-provisioned instances. It then shows what each one costs you.

ZeroWaste is read-only. It recommends changes, and your team decides what to act on.

This page covers how to use ZeroWaste after setup. If you haven’t set it up yet, start with Setting Up ZeroWaste.

Where Recommendations Come From

ZeroWaste combines up to three sources. On the dashboard, recommendations are labeled CloudForecast or AWS Cost Optimization Hub.

Source	What it finds	What it needs
CloudForecast checks	Unused, idle, and over-provisioned resources across EC2, EBS, RDS, load balancers, S3, and CloudWatch Logs	The ZeroWaste IAM role in each account you want scanned
Container checks	Over-provisioned CPU and memory for ECS and EKS workloads	Container cost visibility with split cost allocation data in your CUR
AWS Cost Optimization Hub	AWS recommendations for EC2 instances, Auto Scaling groups, EBS volumes, RDS databases, ECS services, and Lambda functions	A Cost Optimization Hub export prefix on your AWS source

ZeroWaste does not recommend Savings Plans or Reserved Instance purchases. To track commitments, use RI & SP Inventory and the RI & SP Usage Dashboard.

What CloudForecast Checks For

CloudForecast’s own checks look at the last 14 days of usage where metrics apply:

EC2 — previous-generation instance families, and instances whose maximum CPU stayed under 40%
EBS — unattached volumes, volumes with no reads or writes, gp2 volumes that can move to gp3, and snapshots 90 days or older
RDS — databases with no connections, databases whose maximum CPU stayed under 40%, and gp2 storage that can move to gp3
Load balancers — Application and Network Load Balancers with no traffic, and Classic Load Balancers with no registered instances
S3 — buckets with no lifecycle rules
CloudWatch Logs — log groups that never expire

For exact thresholds and the permission behind each check, see the ZeroWaste IAM Permissions Reference.

The ZeroWaste Dashboard

The dashboard groups findings into AWS, AWS ECS, and AWS EKS sections. Within each section, a card for each resource type, such as EC2 Instances, EBS Volumes, or S3 Buckets, shows:

Total cost of the flagged resources over the last 30 days
Number of resources flagged

Open a card to see every flagged resource in a table. Depending on the resource type, the table shows:

Recommended action — what the check found and what to do, labeled with its source (CloudForecast or AWS Cost Optimization Hub)
Account and region — where the resource lives
Resource details — such as the resource ID, instance type, engine, or status
Cost — what the resource cost over the last 30 days
Jira — create a ticket for the resource (see below)

You can export any table to CSV.

Resources with no cost in the last 30 days don’t appear on the dashboard.

Filtering Recommendations

Narrow the dashboard to the resources a team owns or cares about. You can filter by:

Tags
Sub-accounts
Cost categories
Products

To prioritize, start with the cards and resources with the highest 30-day cost.

ZeroWaste and Cost Groups

Each Cost Group with an AWS source has a Zero Waste button. It opens the ZeroWaste dashboard scoped to that group’s resources, so a team sees only its own findings.

ZeroWaste Email Reports

You can add a ZeroWaste report to a cost report, so the people who receive that report also get a summary of waste findings by email. The ZeroWaste report covers the same accounts and filters as its cost report.

When you add it, choose:

Frequency — weekly on Tuesday, every two weeks on Tuesday, or monthly on the first weekday after the 5th
Cost threshold — only include resources costing more than (or less than) an amount you set. The default includes every resource with a cost above $0

This lets you send each team a focused waste report for the resources they own.

Creating Jira Tickets

With the Jira integration connected, you can create a Jira issue for any flagged resource:

Open a resource table on the ZeroWaste dashboard
Click the Jira option on the resource’s row
Review the prefilled details, including the resource ID, its tags, and a link back to CloudForecast
Choose the issue type, adjust the summary and description, and create the issue

The issue lands in your Jira project with the context an engineer needs to act on it.

Excluding Resources

If some resources should never be flagged, such as a disaster recovery environment, exclude them by tag:

Go to Sources → ZeroWaste → Credentials in CloudForecast
Under Excluded Tags, add a tag key and value. To exclude every value of a key, use * as the value
Save

Matching resources are excluded starting with the next weekly scan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will ZeroWaste make any changes to my AWS resources? No. ZeroWaste is read-only. It never modifies, stops, resizes, or deletes resources. See the ZeroWaste IAM Permissions Reference for the full list of permissions.

How often are recommendations updated? ZeroWaste scans once a week. Each scan uses the latest Cost Optimization Hub export available, if you’ve set one up.

Why do I see fewer recommendations than I expected? Common reasons:

The ZeroWaste role isn’t deployed in every account. Check Sources → ZeroWaste → Credentials for accounts without a green checkmark
ZeroWaste only scans regions where your Cost & Usage Report shows spend
The Cost Optimization Hub export prefix isn’t set on your AWS source, so Hub recommendations aren’t included
The resource had no cost in the last 30 days
The resource matches one of your Excluded Tags, or a dashboard filter is active

Can I hide a recommendation I’ve decided not to act on? Yes. Tag the resource and add that tag to your Excluded Tags.