What I Learned From 3 Years of Living Zero Waste

One way to reduce your footprint this Earth Day is by creating less trash. I’ve been living a zero waste lifestyle for the past three years. Here’s what I’ve learned. 

When people take on a new challenge, like running a marathon or becoming a vegetarian, they often find themselves changing their habits and routines. Zero waste is no different, and my life now involves planning ahead, buying in bulk and carrying around reusable everyday tools (for example, you’ll never catch me without a reusable coffee mug or a cloth napkin).

But the most noticeable changes in my life are in my daily interactions. Because we live in a world based on disposables, I have to enlist the help of everyone around me to be zero waste. If I’m at a restaurant, for example, I have to ask the servers to bring me my drink without a straw. I was worried about this aspect of zero waste at first, because I didn’t want to come across as demanding or pretentious. But if you acknowledge that you’re asking the other person for a favor and express gratitude for their help, 9 out of 10 people are very accommodating.

And once someone has been an accomplice to an act of “trashlessness,” they often think about it in their own lives. So in a sense, zero waste is a form of personalized activism that’s less about getting in someone’s face and telling them why they should change their mind about something, and more about modeling behavior and giving people something to think about.

The hardest part for me about zero waste has been resisting the convenience that is all around us—like ordering take-out or buying things on Amazon. But producing any new product takes a huge amount of resources. By some estimates, over 90 percent of the environmental impact of a product happens before you open the package. That’s why I consider recycling to be not much different from trash, because even if the end product is recyclable, it still has to be produced. You get much more bang for your buck, environmentally, if you focus on consuming less.

Another thing to consider is that the pollution created at each step of the production cycle — including the extraction of natural resources, manufacturing, and transportation — disproportionately affects low-income communities and people of color. It’s up to people who have the time and resources to take waste-reducing actions to push back against a system of production that is poisoning marginalized communities. Not everyone has access to bulk stores and a large second-hand market the way I do in New York City, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that access is a key component to making this lifestyle possible.

Living zero waste also takes upfront investment of time just like any lifestyle change, and that requires a certain level of privilege. In terms of actual cost however, a lot of products that create waste, like bottled water, are significantly more expensive than their zero waste counterparts. And shopping in bulk is cheaper than buying packaged food. With many products, what you’re paying for is the packaging. I’ve also noticed a significant decrease in my expenditures by buying almost exclusively second-hand (although I do make exceptions for things like soap, medicine etc.).

There's certainly an argument to be made that for any meaningful change to happen, it will have to be undertaken by industries and governments rather than individuals. For example, New York just became the second state to ban plastic bags, which will undoubtedly save more trash from the landfill than I could save in a lifetime.

But because zero waste is a part of my daily life, it can prompt a cognitive shift around resource awareness in a way that policies can’t. I think that’s really powerful and I hope that people who decide to try zero waste will be inspired to challenge the current system and push for policies like plastic bans. Zero waste is a positive and energizing experience in a world that’s filled with a lot of negative news about climate change. It’s refreshing to do something that is empowering rather than overwhelming.

People often ask me what habit they should change to decrease their waste. But changing one thing doesn't accomplish the same sort of awareness as trying to eliminate trash entirely— even if it’s for a short period of time. There’s something powerful and shocking about being confronted with the reality of your own consumption patterns that can’t be replicated any other way. With Earth Day coming up on Monday, my challenge to people is to try living without creating trash for a day, and see what happens.