What is Zero Waste?

Zero waste is a waste prevention and management strategy gaining popularity among individuals as well as industries, communities, and businesses. The goal — as zero waste is more of an ideal than a hard target — is to emulate sustainable natural cycles where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for other uses, which will themselves become resources for other uses, and so on. Therefore, ideally, nothing is sent to landfills or incinerators. Zero waste strives for reduced resource use, use of recycled or less impactful materials, longer product lives, repairability, product sharing, and recovery of materials from products reaching end of life.

Concretely for most individuals, zero waste means gradually trying to reduce their trash by avoiding unnecessary products or packaged products, avoiding single-use items like straws and cutlery, composting, considering full product lifecycle, and being more mindful consumers overall.

Where to Start

First things first: you don’t have to go run out and purchase anything.

As zero waste has grown in popularity it has unfortunately been commoditized since it has opened up a space in the market and made it profitable to attract well-meaning consumers who are looking for more sustainable products. This means companies will “greenwash,” or market their products as eco-friendly despite not making anything substantially different to warrant such a label.

The Five R’s

When actually starting their zero waste journey, many like to follow the “5 R’s” rule. It comes from Bea Johnson’s family and can provide some guidelines to zero waste decision-making. Here’s a brief description and thought process behind the guideline:

1. Refuse — Refuse what you do not need. This is the first line of defense against generating waste. As everything we consume/purchase will eventually reach an end of life, it is important to limit it to what is only necessary. It has become customary for many establishments and companies to give away free items despite them not being always necessary. Therefore, refusing them helps limit how much waste is generated out of them.

• Refuse single-use cutlery and straws from eating establishments
• Refuse single-use bags at stores
• Refuse marketing material from companies
• Unsubscribe from junk mail
• Refuse hotel and airline toiletries and other single-use travel items
• Refuse gifts for the sake of gifting

2. Reduce — Reduce what you do need. After determining what is necessary and what is not, the guideline suggests evaluating whether the items we do consider necessary could be reduced, or the waste they typically generate could be reduced. As mentioned above, even what we do need will eventually reach an end of life and reducing the amount of waste it will generate at that point can be significant. In addition to that, reducing the consumption of these items and products at a larger scale reduces the market demand, further decreasing the resources used to produce these items. This also ties with environmentalism and climate change advocacy, where swapping to an alternative with a lower carbon footprint or smaller impact on the environment is a part of reducing waste.

• Reduce unnecessary packaging
• Do not participate in fast fashion
• Reducing meat and dairy consumption
• Purchasing second-hand, or refurbished

3. Reuse — Reuse what you already have. As we reuse the items we have or repurpose them in some way, we reduce the need for new items that would have fulfilled that purpose. Some purchase items whose sole purpose is to be a reusable form of something previously disposable so as to reduce the amount of single-use items.

Reusing also includes repairing items so as to extend their life before having to replace them. Upcycling and visible mending are great resources for creative ways to reuse items and fixing those for further use.

• Use reusable water bottles and coffee cups
• Bring cloth grocery store bags
• Opt for reusable period products (menstrual cups, cloth pads)
• Switch to stainless steel safety razors

4. Recycle — Recycle what you cannot refuse, reduce, or reuse. At this step, we are mostly looking for as much of our waste to be able to enter a more circular life cycle, where it becomes a resource once again before it ultimately becomes waste. Whether through municipal programs or private companies, it is possible to recycle a lot of our waste. That said, recycling has its own issues as an industry and is therefore not a solution to our waste problem and the reason it is so far down in the list of R’s.

Some materials can be recycled more easily than others. Glass and aluminum are both nearly infinitely recyclable, while plastic tends to be “downcycled,” or made into inferior products before ultimately going to the landfill. When possible, opt for products packaged in materials that are recyclable in your area.

• Recycling packaging of many items (plastic, glass, aluminium, paper, cardboard, etc)
• Reclaiming materials from electronics that have reached their end of life

5. Rot (Compost) — Rot the rest. Here the rotting refers to composting, the process by which organic waste decomposes naturally back to soil. Organic waste makes up around 30% of what gets sent to landfills, meaning composting is a meaningful way to significantly reduce waste. In addition to that, landfill conditions (low oxygenation and mixture with inorganic matter) hinder the proper decomposition of organic matter, which in turn releases methane: a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, which exacerbates the effects of climate change.

• Start a home composing solution
• Participate in a local composting group at a community garden
• Advocate for green waste solutions in your city

Do a trash audit!

One of the easiest ways to get started with zero waste is to analyze the waste that you create each week. Go through your trash bag — starting with the stuff going to the landfill — and see what takes up the most space, and what’s the most harmful. Got a lot of plastic coffee pods, or spray cans from having cream? Make it your goal this week to find an alternative.

As the weeks go on, each successive trash audit should result in more and more waste being reduced. Once you’ve tackled the non-recyclable stuff, move on to the recyclable stuff. While many materials can be recycled well, others cannot, and it’s always good to move up in the 5 R’s from Recycle to Reuse!