Waste Management

It was the growing pile of clear plastic containers with bits of food oozing down the sides, greasy Chinese takeout boxes and unused plastic silverware in our trash can that flipped the switch. 

I’ve always been fairly aware of my environmental impact. At the age of 6, my mom organized a neighborhood cleanup and I paraded down the street as ringleader, silver twirling baton in one hand, trash bag in the other. Since then, I’ve always recycled, I traded my car in for a bus pass and a scooter, and more recently, invested in a compost bin. 

But after a promotion at work, I found myself coming home too tired to cook. It was just easier to pick up dinner from our local Thai or sushi place. Within a few days, trash began to accumulate. One trip to Pearl’s, our favorite burger spot, and we’d come home with plastic silverware, ketchup packets, napkins, boxes for the burgers, paper wrappers for the burgers, a box for fries, a paper cup, a straw for the inevitable milkshake, and a paper bag to carry everything in. Just for one dinner.

One Saturday, I spotted the documentary No Impact Man on Netflix. The film is about an NYC family trying to live with no environmental impact for a year. While their experiment was extreme, it brought to light what I and most Americans have become so used to, but what we simply do not need. (read: the full trash bag of takeout containers in the kitchen headed for a landfill.) After some Googling, I also ran across Bea Johnson’s blog zerowastehome.blogspot.com. Bea is a modern, aesthetically minded woman doing her part to help the earth. Her blog reassured me I didn’t have to become a hairy pitted, wheatgrass loving, B.O. smelling crazy person to have a legitimate impact on the health of the Earth. 

After a few days of musing and becoming achingly aware of all my waste, I decided to embark on a zero waste project. Thankfully, my husband Aaron didn’t write it off as another of my short-lived schemes, and totally got on board. Together, we’re cutting out packaging on food, cutting down on other waste around the house, repurposing, composting, recycling, and hopefully, finding a balance between our current culture and a lifestyle of existing more responsibly on the earth.