My Zero Waste Week
I first heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in sixth grade. Needless to say, I was horrified to discover that there is a patch of trash in the Pacific that’s three times the size of France. Until that point, I hadn’t thought about where the trash that I produced goes once I tossed it into a garbage can. At age 12, creating trash was normal, and I didn’t have the resources to see that, in fact, there are many things that individuals as well as corporations can do to reduce society’s trash output.
As a college student, I started to do more digging into reducing the amount of garbage that I produce as an individual. On the recommendation of a friend, I read Bea Johnson’s Zero Waste Home, and started following environmental activists, including Lauren Singer and Kathryn Kellogg, living completely Zero Waste lives. For reference, living “Zero Waste” means that your waste output, or the amount of trash you produce, is basically zero. Nil. Nothing. Nada. However, composting and recycling are considered acceptable.
When I read that Lauren Singer, the creator of the blog Trash is for Tossers and CEO of The Package Free Shop, produced enough garbage in four years to fit in a simple mason jar, I was floored (you can find her video here). According to the EPA, the average American produces over four pounds of trash per day. And somehow, Lauren Singer managed to produce less than a mason jar of waste in four years. Insane.
Although my parents recycle, have a garden in the summer, and compost on a regular basis, I grew up in a household where “taking out the trash” was a weekly chore. It seemed as though living without producing any trash at all would be impossible for a person living a normal lifestyle.
It’s been months since I had first heard about the concept of living “Zero Waste,” so I decided to try it out for a week. Why? To see if the lifestyle is conducive to a busy person on a college student budget. Before starting my experiment, I created a few guidelines:
- This experiment will be five days long, starting Sunday, and ending Thursday.
- Every item I produce that cannot be composted in my apartment or recycled will go into a jar.
Here’s what I found…
Day 1: Grocery Shopping
I went grocery shopping on Sunday the way I usually do, but this time, I did a little more prep before leaving for the store. I brought a reusable bag with me, as well as some reusable Bee’s Wrap that my roommates and I use on a regular basis. With a few exceptions, like Annie’s Mac and Cheese (the cheese packet isn’t recyclable), baby carrots (non-recyclable plastic wrapping!), and hummus (non-recyclable container cover), I bought the same products that I buy every week.
When I went to buy cheese from the deli section of Giant, I asked the woman behind the counter to wrap the cheese in Bee’s Wrap. She was completely on board with my experiment, and was happy to help (although unfortunately, the price sticker is not recyclable).
When I went to buy Brussels sprouts, I noticed that I had two options: I could either buy a stalk, or Brussels sprouts in a non-recyclable plastic wrapping. I went for the stalk, but realized that they came with a rubber tag wrapped around them. I decided to buy them anyways, and put the part of the tag that wasn’t recyclable into a mason jar. In the future, I could avoid vegetable packaging by buying my produce at the Farmer’s Market, although I wasn’t able to make it the week that I did this experiment.
Next up is my usual brand of Smucker’s Peanut Butter. I hadn’t even noticed before that even though the jar is glass and the lid is metal, there is still a piece of plastic around the outside of the lid. A simple way I could avoid this piece of plastic in the future is to buy bulk peanuts and grind them up in a food processor myself.
This is my roommate, Kaitlyn, who went to the grocery store with me. She is irrelevant to this experiment, and is generally awesome.
Day 2: Eating on Campus
I decided to explore the sustainability of eating at The Bison, one of the three main places to eat lunch on campus. I chose The Bison because it’s closest to my 10:00 class, and one of two places where my meal plan is actually effective. I ordered an omelette, which came on a paper plate (The Bison only uses single-use dishware, made out of paper or plastic). I made sure that my camping spork was in my bag before I left my apartment this morning, as The Bison only uses plastic utensils as well.
After I finished my meal, my paper plate looked like this:
There was much more food residue than I thought there would be. I have long been wondering about the amount of food residue that can be recycled, so after I finished my meal, I did some research.
According to Kiera Butler, recycling companies in San Francisco accept recyclable items with food residues on them. The items are still recyclable, but food residues devalue the worth of the item on the recyclables market. However, I was unable to find information on food residue acceptance for my school’s recycling program.
Just to be safe, I rinsed the food residue off my paper plate in the nearby bathroom before recycling it. Mission accomplished, although it was embarrassing to be caught by many lunch-goers tediously rinsing off a paper plate in the bathroom. After recycling the paper plate, I realized that I could have just brought it back to my apartment with me and composted it.
Before leaving The Bison, I checked out the status of my school’s Terracycle bins.
The program is great, but looking into the bins, I found that students were not following the directions on the signs. In the bin meant for Colgate products (middle), I saw a soda cup (complete with a plastic straw), many napkins, a Gatorade bottle, wax paper, and a variety of plastic utensils. How is Bucknell supposed to Terracycle when students are misusing the bins?
Day 3: On The Road
I was worried about being able to keep up with my Zero Waste experiment while traveling by bus to a career fair in New York City. At 1:00, I got on the bus to the career fair, and ate a sandwich I had packed (in Bee’s Wrap) on the way. When I got to New York around 5, I bought coffee (in a reusable cup that I brought with me) and yet another sandwich (which I ate at the restaurant).
I ate some snacks at the event on a small camping plate (with my spork) that I stuffed into my backpack at last minute. Bringing my reusable plate and spork to the event was a practical solution that kept my Zero Waste efforts going, but also made me feel socially awkward. I had taken strides to look professional in my appearance , and felt that my plate and spork took away from that image.
Day 4: The Bison (Part 2)
I went back to the Bison , partially because I was too busy to run back to my apartment for dinner, and partially because I was unhappy with my last Zero Waste adventure to The Bison (see Day 2). I decided to experiment with different food stations, to see if they would accommodate my Zero Waste experiment. My plan was to bring a glass container to one food station, ask the person behind the counter to put the food in the container, and if I was rejected, try another station.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by how accommodating the person behind the counter was! I handed her my glass container and asked for a burrito. She was excited to help me out, and even made the burrito a little bit smaller, so that it would fit into my container. Sometimes, people are great.
Day 5: Lab
On Thursdays, I go to my weekly lab for my Hazardous Waste & Society class. This week’s lab was about microorganisms in waste water, and it was required that my classmates and I wear glasses, lab coats, and rubber gloves (peep the photo below of my stylish classmates in their ~lab casual~ attire). Rubber gloves were necessary for this lab, as we were working with liquids containing potential pathogens. I felt a little wasteful throwing the gloves into our lab’s biohazard bucket at the end of our session, but also, not really, because the gloves were a literal biohazard.
Reactions:
As you can see in the photo below, I did not live 100% Zero Waste this week. Even though I have all the equipment (and use it regularly), such as a compost bin, Bee’s Wrap, and plenty of reusable containers, it wasn’t easy to make the switch to living completely Zero Waste.
I did learn, however, that it isn’t hard to take steps to reducing your waste output, such as stowing reusable utensils in your backpack or purse, carrying around a reusable water bottle, and skipping plastic packaging on food products by shopping in bulk (by the way, if you want to compost, but don’t have the space to do it yourself, you might be able to find a composting service here).
I think that part of the reason I found it easy to go low waste and hard to go Zero Waste is because of the way that society recognizes single-use plastics: as normal. It was hard to completely avoid tiny pieces of plastic that come attached to most everyday products. When you stop and think about the purpose of every little piece of plastic, they seem ridiculous. Why are we creating needless trash that will just end up in landfills or in the ocean?
My takeaway from this experiment is that living a low waste lifestyle is something that I want to continue doing. My life as a college student right now might not be conducive to a completely Zero Waste lifestyle, but I can easily put in the effort to live as low waste as possible.
Looking for more ways to reduce your waste output?
Check out this video by Exploring Alternatives, and this blog post by Lauren Singer. Are you a college student? Check out Lauren Singer’s guide for college students here.
Now, I know what you’re thinking… some of these Zero Waste alternatives are expensive and take a lot of work! Yes, some are, but there are also cheap (or even better, free!) and low-energy ways to reduce your waste output, such as shopping online at Poshmark or a new app called Relovv, stashing reusable utensils in your backpack or purse, or reusing plastic containers from the grocery store.
Have any other green tips you would like to share? Feel free to email me at sweilbaker3@gmail.com.
