Is It Really Possible to Live Zero Waste?
The term ‘zero waste’ is popular these days (adding two new words of ‘refuse’ and ‘rot’ to the known mantra of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’. But in this day and age, is it really possible to live a zero waste life? The truth is probably not. But as chef Anne-Marie Bonneau wrote:
We don’t need a few people doing zero waste perfectly. We need billions of people doing it imperfectly’.
The Internet is awash with people who generate ‘one small plastic bag’s worth of waste each year’.
It’s commendable, but not realistic for most people who have to rely on local supermarkets and perhaps don’t have the time, resources or good health to make everything from scratch.
Like those people who literally live on no money (bartering for homes and food), these are nice ideas to inspire, but the average person is not going to live this way. It’s more helpful en-masse to live simpler lives that are also enjoyable, to inspire those around them to do the same.
We’d all love to skip to the organic farmers’ market and buy bunches of loose carrots, then walk home to a zero waste kitchen spend the afternoon making soup. But most people don’t live within walking distance of a market or zero waste shop. The best thing is just to do what you.
If we all do this, collectively it will affect the economy so much that MPs and big business will have to take notice, and change the way they do things.
It’s happened with Sir David Attenborough’s programs and Veganuary – now let’s see if we can get big supermarkets offering refill stations and zero-waste packaging!
Zero Waste Must be Affordable to Work
Once, writer George Monbiot was sitting on a train and his fellow passenger was reading a book on ‘the simple organic life’ written by the then-wife of a well-known environmental campaigner.
He was bored so asked to take a peek. After a few pages, he noted ‘this is for people who don’t go out to work, isn’t it?’ The book actually had good reviews.
Yet 14 years after being published, the writer sells £600-odd real (not recycled) diamond charms online and endorses Prada handbags (a brand ranked ‘not good enough’ on environmental and animal welfare grounds at Good On You).
The problem with terms like ‘zero waste’ is that eventually we all fall off the wagon. Caught short on a hot day without a reusable water bottle, or buying a needed ingredient for a recipe (only sold in plastic).
Or perhaps you need medicine for a relative/pet, you’re obviously not going to refuse that. Aspire to a ‘simple sustainable life’ rather than perfection. Then don’t feel guilty if you get something wrong. Just get back on the train and keep going!
Meet Philadelphia’s Zero Waste Mayor
If you thought a typical Mayor wears a big hat and shakes a bell, like a town crier, meet a more visionary kind of Mayor in the US city of Philadelphia (the ‘city of brotherly love’ is just 1.5 hours from New York). Waste Free Philly is the website of a new kind of politician, and one we could emulate.
Whereas our city council websites just have oodles of confusing recycling information, this Mayor has developed a manifesto, determined to remove all litter from the streets, and stop it coming back again.
Local businesses are getting involved to rent out tabletop linen (rather than buy), cleaning up community parks in volunteer efforts and renting out toys to children.
Rather than just pen-pushers doing greenwash bulletins, this city is planning to appoint an Officer of Zero Waste, staffed by sustainability experts who know what they’re doing. It’s also going to tackle illegal dumping and aim to make the streets completely trash-free within a few years.
The city’s band of SWEEP officers are trained uniformed civilians (a bit like ‘special constables’) who train local people about the laws (it’s illegal not to recycle) and can issue fines. They patrol the streets to enforce litter laws, so you’d never get what happens here.
The city of Philadelphia is the largest in the state of Pennsylvania, and not far from New York City. Founded by Quakers, it has around the same population as London, so what can we learn from it?
One is that its mayor has a zero waste policy, and this is the politician’s primary goal (instead of infighting over whether Mayors are ruled by certain religions etc). In fact, the city’s founder William Penn was a campaigner for religious freedom, and would no doubt not be amused by today’s politics in his home country.
Wissahickon Valley Park is one of the largest urban parks in the world, and contains a car-free road for long walks. Forbidden Drive is a trail named after a campaign by 12,000 walkers to stop cars using it. Each year there is a parade to celebrate their victory.
It’s a nice city with many fans. Lonely Planet travel guides rank this as the best city in the USA to visit. And like many pleasant cities, it’s designed on a grid system with long straight streets running east-west and north-south, which makes it very easy to get around by foot (no having to walk miles to take a short journey ‘as the crow flies’ that sometimes happens in England).
Thanks for Sharing (how one woman gave up shopping!)
Thanks for Sharing is the inspiring story of one woman who decides to join the sharing economy, and give up buying stuff. She and her family pledge to share as much as they can over one year, and give up ‘owning things’, instead they lend, rent and swap in this tale of ‘collaborative consumption’.
Read more on no-dig gardening and humane slug/snail deterrents. If you live with animal friends, read up on pet-friendly gardens (some recommended flowers and fruit trees are not safe). Also avoid netting to protect food (just leave some for wildlife!)
Avoid facing indoor plants to outside gardens, to help stop birds flying into windows.
Each chapter includes a different type of sharing (food, clothes, cars, furniture, the space around us) plus tips to help you share (including useful apps).
What makes this book different is that it’s a real funny read, and not at all preachy. Anyone from any walk of life is sure to be inspired.
She begins her experiment admittedly not really knowing much about her fridge’s ‘two salad drawers’ that were for food her grandmother would have said were ‘on the turn’. So begins and adventure where is learning as much as we will by the end of the book.
Eleanor is a one-woman guinea pig who dives straight into sharing everything from food to fashion to furniture. She makes it all incredibly accessible due to her engaging writing styles, and warts-and-all reportage. Tessa Clarke (co-founder OLIO sharing app)
Even with some hilarious misunderstandings and mishaps, I came away from reading this book, wanting to try sharing more regularly. Rebecca Heaps (founder of Tentshare)
Eleanor Tucker is a former creative and features writer for newspapers, who now writes on the sharing economy. Originally from Oxford, she now lives in Scotland.
Going Zero (the story of a family that ditched plastic)
Going Zero is the interesting story of a family that decided to ditch plastic, after a bean bag burst in their garden, sending thousands of polystyrene beads everywhere. They shunned supermarkets (cooking all meals from scratch), bought second-hand clothes (polyester in new clothes is made from plastic) and make their own homemade cleaners.
Deciding to walk away from the ‘throwaway society’, today this family sends almost nothing to landfill, proving a well-lived life does not have to be ‘wrapped in plastic’.
If you ever pop round to ours and start randomly opening our kitchen cupboards, fridge or freezer, there’s food in there.
But it’s all in label-less jars, paper bags or sometimes even sacks for bulk items. At first visitors find the lack of familiar packaging quite unsettling.
How Satish Kumar Inspires Simple Living
Satish Kumar (whose book Elegant Simplicity is a real favourite) is a true inspiration of a man. Born in India, he ran away to become a Jain monk in his late teens. Satish really did live simply at the monastery. He didn’t have a bath for 9 years, he fasted regularly, even his ‘thick black hair’ was plucked out twice a year.
But although this did drop away a lot of worldly desires, what he really wanted was to cook and grow his own food, kiss a beautiful woman on the lips and inspire others to live simple sustainable lives they enjoyed.
So he ran away to travel the world as a peace pilgrim, before meeting his wife and settling in Devon, where for over 40 years he has edited a celebrated environmental magazine from his kitchen table (he also founded a small school). His life went from zero waste to a ‘bit more complicated’ but all for the good that it’s done to him and others!
Rather than offering ‘zero waste tips’ like switching to wind turbines or not buying stuff, he says just learn to love nature, and live in harmony with it. He says getting angry and campaigning against everything that is not green and good is ‘like churning sand to make butter’.
Throwing statues covered in toxic paint into rivers, does not solve racism, as it’s the same mentality (anger and resentment) that created it. And it doesn’t help the innocent marine creatures in the rivers, who get poisoned through not fault of their own.
When I speak of simplicity, I don’t mean a life of deprivation, hair-shirt living or hardship. I believe in a good life, in beautiful things, in arts and crafts and in sufficiency. This is why I put the word ‘elegant’ before simplicity.
We all need and should have a comfortable and pleasant life. But at the moment our complicated lives are no longer comfortable. If we are blessed with wealth, we can use it for caring for the Earth and her people. Satish Kumar
