Waste Not, Want Less

By Stephen Venneman

In the 1990s, the island community of Nantucket, Massachusetts realized it had a problem. A big and growing problem. The island community, which sits 30 miles off the Massachusetts coast, was running out of room in the dump. Worse, nobody was coming out to haul any of the landfill back to the mainland. The City Council was faced with a dilemma; what could they do to prevent overflowing the dump? Drastic times called for drastic measures, and Nantucket became one of, if not the first, community to take a “Zero Waste” approach to solid waste.

Over the next few years, and with the support of the residents, Nantucket mandated recycling, all but banned non-biodegradable packaging, and in 2015 banned the sale of helium-filled balloons. The result? After more than fifteen years of cooperation, the landfill is actually shrinking!

The term “Zero Waste” has been in use since the mid-1970s but only gained popularity in the past 20 years. In 1998, in a push to move from theory into action, municipalities started looking to zero waste ideas to go beyond their established recycling programs. In 2001, the State of California set a zero-waste goal to encourage more recycling and reuse. Since then, many cities have followed suit by enacting stricter rules on recycling.

So, what exactly is zero waste? According to Rachelle Strauss, who advocates for zero waste from her home in England, “zero waste is to live without needing to send anything to landfill or incineration and to view everything as a resource.” Zero waste efforts are directly aimed at reducing the amount of household garbage produced by families, from a national average of 4.3 pounds per day, to as close to zero as possible. This happens by incorporating a couple of simple steps designed to guide us to less trash.

At first blush, one might think, “That’s insane! How would I manage no trash all day? It’s not possible” Zero waste “guru” Bea Johnson would beg to differ. The California resident travels around the world teaching people about zero waste, lugging along the entirety of her family of four’s trash output from 2016. All one quart of it.

Johnson’s website zerowastehome.com has become a go-to site for people interested in adopting a zero-waste lifestyle. Johnson, and just about everyone else promoting zero waste, emphasize the “5 R’s” of consumption: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot. That is, refuse things that are not necessary, like that bottle of water at the barber; Reduce the number of things you purchase (do you need ten button-down shirts for work?); Reuse items whenever possible; Recycle everything you can; and rot, or compost your leftover food and scraps. Other websites, like zerowasteweek.co.uk and goingzerowaste.com, offer up additional tips on getting started and challenges to help keep people motivated.

According to science writer Tim De Chant, if everyone on the planet consumed at the rate Americans do, we would need 4.1 earths to sustain life. While the US isn’t the biggest culprit in consumerism, we have the most space and the most people, not to mention the influence America has on the rest of the world. We buy items to replace items that have not outlived their usefulness. We have closets full of clothes, several cars, and a good percentage buy a new cell phone every year or a new laptop every three years. Don’t forget the cases of bottled water people buy. Even if the bottles use less plastic, it’s still more than my refillable Nalgene bottle! As a result, Americans generate 245 million tons of solid waste every year. For an average American weighing 180 pounds, that’s their body weight every 41 days.

It’s not all doom and gloom, as a good portion of America’s waste does get recycled. The Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan reports that recycling rates have increased steadily since 1960, although they have apparently leveled off in recent years. Remember that 245-million-ton figure from earlier? In 2014, 135.9 million tons of that was sent to a landfill. Of the remaining solid waste, more than 89 million tons were recycled, and 33 million tons were used for energy generation. I know for myself, when I look at my family’s overflowing trash can I see a lot to be ashamed of. I see boxes that could be broken down, food cans that should be washed and put into recycling, and food waste that could easily be thrown into the garden plot where we try to grow tomatoes every year.

Americans on average throw away 4.3 pounds of garbage every day, up from 2.7 pounds in 1960. The solid waste industry magazine BioCycle states that as of 2010, the US had 1,908 active landfills, and available space is disappearing. While it will be centuries before the United States will run out of landfill space, there’s little doubt that, if we continue to consume at our current pace, we will run out of space eventually. That’s where zero waste programs may save us from an avalanche of solid waste.

Looking at cities like Nantucket, or Kamikatsu, Japan, you realize we have a lot to learn. While most of the Earth’s citizens send 52.8% of their solid waste to the landfill, the island community of Nantucket sends just 8%. In Kamikatsu, a town of 1,700 people, 80% of solid waste is either composted or recycled into one of 34 different categories. The Japanese town has declared the intent of Zero Waste by 2020. Many larger cities are right on their heels, too. San Francisco and other cities are at or above the 70% recycling rate, while the California community of Berkeley is at 80% recycling. These California cities achieved these levels by encouraging residents to recycle, making recycling easier, and providing facilities where people can drop everything from a soda bottle to a microwave oven.

Sadly, recycling and zero waste are not the same thing. Recycling is defined as use something, then send it back to be reused. Zero waste focuses on reuse of an item until the useful life is over, such as reusing a glass container until it breaks. One of the key arguments between recycle or reuse is biodegradable plastics. These are typically made from plant starch, but they undergo the same manufacturing process as their petroleum predecessors. A recycler might toss the used item into the recycling or compost bin, where a zero waster might look for ways to reuse the item. The argument is that by recycling or biodegrading, you are wasting the resources used to create the item. However, these items are designed to break down quickly when heated. Use a recyclable plastic fork to eat reheated spaghetti leftovers, and you’ve essentially started the process. Recycling the fork would keep it out of the landfill, just as recycling a plastic bottle, biodegradable or not. The argument seems to come down to, how much into zero waste do you want to be? Someone who is conscious of their consumption may be satisfied with recycling or composting that fork or bottle, trusting that the item will be broken down to starch and reused rather than using a petroleum product. For someone a bit deeper in zero waste, she might insist that the bottle or fork gets washed and reused until it is no longer serviceable, then recycled. It’s a matter of degrees, but for a city trying to encourage zero waste decisions such as reuse or recycle can cause significant headaches.

An idea that might help resolve the reuse-or-recycle argument comes from another R: Reduce. This idea focuses on reducing the amount of goods we purchase, but an overlooked aspect of this is reducing the packaging associated with the goods we purchase. One tip I picked up from Bea Johnson’s website was to take my own Mason jars to the grocery store for bulk purchases. The process was easy; visit a register and get a tare weight for the jar and lid. Then, fill the jars with flour, rice, lentils, even lunch meat from the deli counter. When I checked out, I made sure the checker noted the tare weight. I did get a few stares, but the checker thought it a great idea. Those Mason jars are also great for storing dry goods, and by buying in bulk I not only eliminated the plastic or paper bags dry items come in, but I bought as much as I needed, and no more. So, not only did I reuse my Mason jars, I reduced food waste as well as packaging waste.

Admittedly, when both parents work, or the home has just one parent, it’s difficult to take steps like making bread or granola to satisfy a family. Once again, Bea Johnson’s website has an answer. Johnson makes muslin cotton bags, including one very large bag that she uses to buy fresh bread from the grocery store’s bakery. The smaller bags can be used for everything from bulk oats to prepared granola, and in a recent review of the items in the bulk aisle at one of my local stores, I found cereal.

Most of the tips found on zero waste seem to focus on the kitchen, but there are tips and ideas for other areas of the home. For example, a reusable mason jar with cocoa powder could serve as bronzer. Baking soda for toothpaste. Another site has a recipe for soap (hand as well as laundry), mascara, household cleaners, even hairspray, and all of it goes into a reusable container of some type. The only real negative I’ve seen so far concerning these recipes is around the suggested deodorants. Apparently, not only do they not work, many commenters say the zero waste deodorant concoctions seem to make body odor worse. While the deodorant may be a bust, a quick review of prices for make-up or household cleansers made the homemade options certainly more appealing to the wallet.

If trying out different recipes is a step too far for getting started down the path, Rachelle Strauss recommends starting an audit. Strauss, on her websites, myzerowaste.com and zerowasteweek.co.uk, chronicles her family’s own efforts and has a simple suggestion to get started: “Take a bin audit - look at what you throw away and identify the top five offenders. Then pick ONE of them and either recycle the packaging, find a different way to buy it or find an alternative (i.e. boycott it).”

America is not going to run out of landfill space within our lifetime. Or our children’s. Or their children’s. Maybe even longer. That doesn’t mean we should maintain our current level of consumption, though. As landfills fill up, new ones must open up. But as Brian Palmer points out in an article from Slate.com, even with modern regulations on landfill construction, there is still the issue of leachate, the liquids from decomposing trash. Let me back up a bit. Current EPA regulations for landfill construction require a liner of some sort around the area where solid waste is dumped. These liners can be plastic, clay, or both, and must have a network of pipes to prevent the leachate from soaking into the soil, as it had prior to the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act passed by Congress. Nowadays, the leachate is trucked to sewage treatment plants while vents in the landfill vent off the methane gas to be used in power generation or converted to natural gas. While the liners offer considerable protection to the surrounding soil, no system is perfect, or permanent. Additionally, these liners – and the landfills that require them - are expensive to build. As a result, instead of lots of small landfills, there are “mega landfills” for massive amounts of garbage. Oftentimes, this means trucking the trash farther, meaning more vehicle emissions. Additionally, trucking garbage affects the trash capacities of different regions across the country. Arkansas, according to BioCycle, has capacity for another 600 years’ worth of garbage without opening another facility. New York state, despite trucking most of the trash from New York City, has 25 years left. Massachusetts, including Nantucket, has maybe a dozen years. All of these numbers will shift as more communities haul their garbage to landfills in other states.

So, I turn back to zero waste, and the amount of garbage Bea Johnson’s family of four generated in 2016. Remember the photo on page two? Yeah. One quart of garbage. Admirable, and certainly something to aspire to in my own family of five. It will take work, though. And just like in a family, when a town or city mandates zero waste, they may have some problems. The biggest problem would come in the form of residents refusing to take part. Strauss has some thoughts on this. “…we have to work with carrots, not sticks. So citizens need to be educated in the VALUE of mandating zero waste policies such as creation of jobs, better environment, cheaper products created by demand, opportunities for reuse and repair etc. Sadly, getting that warm 'n' fuzzy feeling from doing the right thing isn't enough for everyone. Strauss says her family of three saves about £1,500 (about $1,860) every year from being zero waste. No money wasted on packaging, no wasted food, and avoiding disposables like paper towels in favor of reusable items. Sexy, and more money in your wallet. Who wouldn’t want that?