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Small actions, like bringing your own bags to a farmer's market for fresh produce, can drastically reduce unnecessary plastic waste. trashisfortossers.com; packagefreeshop.comIf your recycling bin is already overflowing, you always carry reusable shopping bags, and a plastic water bottle is something you wouldn't touch even with a 6-foot natural hiking pole, you may be ready to take the next step toward the ultimate eco-friendly lifestyle.
We're talking about 'zero waste'—as in no waste produced by your household.
Garbage bins emptied. Every. Single. Week.
It's absolutely possible. It may require some adjustment, of course, and a shift in habits, but it can be done. Also, your idea of "zero" waste may differ from someone else's perspective. In fact, your definition of "waste" might not align with others' definitions.
But yes, the belief that we can significantly reduce what we use and consume to a point where it's nearly zero is entirely achievable, says Kathryn Kellogg, founder of the site Going Zero Waste.
The best part is that the closer we get to zero, the better off everyone will be.
"It's not about perfection," Kellogg explains. "It's about using your purchasing power to drive change."
The zero waste movement has been gaining traction for years. Many credit Bea Johnson's groundbreaking 2013 book, "Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste," with bringing the concept to a broader audience. Johnson, originally from France and now based in California, blogs at Zero Waste Home and spreads the zero-waste message globally.
Johnson, along with advocates like Kellogg and New York's Lauren Singer (Trash is for Tossers), proudly display months—or even years—worth of their household trash, all of which fits comfortably into a small glass jar.
A year's worth of garbage in a jar? Some of us generate more waste than that just on our nightstands.
So, what do you do with things like paper towels, tissues, or the bones from that store-bought chicken that came wrapped in that huge plastic bag you now feel guilty about?
Zero waste must be nearly impossible, right?
"Honestly, adopting a zero-waste lifestyle is all about making a series of small changes that, over time, have a big impact. If you think about it, bringing your bags to the grocery store isn't going to shake the Earth," says Kellogg. "Asking for your coffee in a mug at a café instead of using a disposable cup... that’s not exactly a life-altering change."
It’s crucial to recognize that the zero-waste movement — and yes, it truly is a movement — exists because we produce an overwhelming amount of waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average American sends about 4.4 pounds (1.9 kilos) of trash to a landfill daily. And it’s not just landfills — a massive garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii now contains tons of plastic and is twice the size of Texas.
To reduce the waste we create, Kellogg suggests some simple steps. The first three are favorites of the EPA. Some go even further. Here’s the breakdown:
- Reduce consumption. Use less unnecessary stuff. Especially in the U.S., we tend to overconsume everything. Cutting back benefits everyone.
- Reuse. Say goodbye to disposable cups, straws, plastic bags, tissues, and the like. (This also means considering second-hand purchases when they’re perfectly usable — clothes, electronics, anything.)
- Recycle what can’t be reduced or reused. From TV sets to smartphones to those junk mail envelopes. Recycling is necessary for anything we can’t reduce, reuse, or compost.
- Compost. Food scraps and anything biodegradable break down much more quickly in a compost pile than in a landfill, helping the environment more effectively.
We can start our journey to a zero-waste lifestyle on our own. However, we’ll likely need help — primarily from the companies that produce all this waste — if we’re truly going to tackle the massive garbage problem suffocating the planet.
Kellogg talks about "rewriting the system" to "write waste out of existence" by people demanding that businesses and governments become more environmentally responsible. "Individuals must act so policies can react," she says. "Manufacturers really need to step up and say that this is something they want to do. I think we're seeing a lot of small businesses moving toward that model."
Until that happens on a much larger scale, though, it's up to us. Here are some practical everyday ways we can move toward the zen of zero.
Swapping out your plastic storage containers for eco-friendly stainless steel is a great way to go zero waste. As long as you recycle the old ones.
trashisfortossers.com; packagefreeshop.com- Take reusable bags to the grocery or farmers' market. Kellogg forgot her reusables the first time (as many of us do). She made herself go back home to get them. She hasn't forgotten them since. Leave them in your car if you have to.
- Rethink the way you buy food. Skip the bagged salads and canned foods and buy fresh whenever possible. And in bulk. Many stores offer items package-free. Take your own reusable containers — cloth or net bags for produce, beans or flour, and glass jars for olive oil or honey — and, suddenly, you're using a lot less plastic.
- Keep a cup or a reusable water bottle. Enough with all the plastics disposable cups. Some places, including Starbucks, even give discounts when you have your own tumbler.
- Use cloth instead of paper towels. The cloth towels you have in your kitchen can work just as well as paper. Yeah, you have to wash them. But, according to Recycle Nation, if every household in the U.S. used three fewer rolls of non-recycled paper towels per year, we'd save 120,000 tons (108,862 metric tons) of waste and $4.1 million in landfill dumping fees.
- Use a cotton handkerchief. Remember those? It's not some crazy environmental-whacko thing to do. People used to use handkerchiefs all the time.
- Spike the plastic straws. According to the Be Straw Free campaign, Americans use 500 million of these buggers every day. If you have to suck on a straw, you can find all sorts of environmentally cool alternatives at The Last Plastic Straw. And, please, at the restaurant, make a point of telling your server not to bring any straws to the table.
- Rethink your hygiene routine. Switch to an all-metal safety razor with recyclable blades, and make your own beauty products when you can. Also, use only bamboo toothbrushes, which are compostable, and refillable, recyclable floss.
A 2017 study published in the journal Science Advances reveals that in the past 60 years, approximately 8.3 billion metric tons (9.1 billion tons) of plastic have been produced, leading to 6.3 billion metric tons (6.9 billion tons) of plastic waste. However, only 9 percent of that has been recycled. This results in a massive accumulation of plastic in landfills and a significant amount seeping into the oceans.
