Before I start, I need to confess that I am not a perfect person who fully embraces a zero-waste lifestyle yet. Maybe I’m not even close. I still make a lot of waste and regret doing so. But you know, the point is I am trying. To encourage me to be conscious of the environment and sustainability, I sometimes watch Youtube videos or read articles related to the environment. Recently, I watched Bea Johnson’s Ted Talk “Zero Waste is not recycling more, but less” and it inspired me.
Bea Johnson has lived a zero-waste lifestyle, and her family only produces one jar of waste per year since 2008. In the Ted Talk that I watched, she says many people think recycling is the best way to take care of the environment and take action against climate change. Johnson has a different philosophy. She says recycling is not the best way to reduce waste. Recycling requires energy to process, and lack of regulation to manufacturers, consumers, and municipalities regarding recycling means that it doesn’t end up helping our environment as much as it could. As Johnson puts it, “recycling depends on way too many variables to make it a dependable solution. What we put in our recycling bin is out of our control. Only very few of the plastics that are accepted for recycling have the chance of being recycled.” I could totally agree with her thoughts. It is much better not to make waste before we consider recycling them.
To reduce waste even before the trash goes to the recycling stage, Johnson suggests 5 steps that we can take, known as the five Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot. I think this is really cool to know and will guide us one step closer to a zero-waste lifestyle.
First, refuse what you don’t need. Saying “No” to something that you don’t need is the first step to reducing your consumption and your waste production. This is an important step that a lot of us neglect to take. We usually don't consider not making any waste beforehand. This step includes avoiding single-use plastics such as straws, utensils, and water bottles. You can drink coffee without a straw or coffee cup sleeve and you can drink water through a water fountain if you have your own cup or water bottle. Just do some simple things that you can actually do rather than thinking about something that doesn’t fit in your situation.
Second, reduce what you do need. We can’t refuse everything, but we can still reduce the impact of what we consume. For example, you can choose products that have recyclable or reusable packaging such, as pasta sauce in a glass bottle. You can also stop buying clothes from fast fashion companies, buy second-hand clothes, or donate your unwanted clothes. Swapping clothes with your friends is also a cool option.
Third, reuse. Using something as long as you can will help to make less waste. For instance, you can have your own reusable water bottle or grocery bags. Using cotton cloths instead of paper towels or using tea strainer instead of tea bags are also helpful.
Fourth, recycle what you can’t refuse, reduce, or reuse: This step, along with rot, is the last thing we can do to reduce our waste. However, as Johnson states in her Ted Talk, recycling is not the white hope for the health of our planet that we may imagine it to be. It consumes a lot of energy and its infrastructure is quite limited. In many cases, when the materials are ‘recycled’, they are downcycled, which means that they break down into very small pieces to produce other products with that. In this process, those recycled materials don't have the same quality as the first one. Additionally, many recyclable materials are not actually recycled, It is always better to recycle something, but it will be much better not to reach the point where we need to consider recycling.
Fifth, rot the rest. Rot means composting organic materials. All you need to do is to find any baskets with a little bit of soil and compost organic wastes! You can use that compost when creating an amazing garden. It can be a good fertilizer. If your local city or county has a composting system, check that out and see which waste can be composted. It is awesome to imagine what you consumed going back to the soil where everything started.
It’s okay not to be perfect. Any small change you make in your lifestyle can have an impact. Don’t hesitate to make Bea Johnson’s five Rs a part of your daily routine. If you want to know more about her and her zero-waste lifestyle, she has a website “zero waste home” (https://zerowastehome.com/)