She cut her weekly trash down to fit into unbelievably small jar
TIPPI Thole recycled. She composted. She thought she was doing a pretty good job environmentally. Then she heard a talk on plastics, and the container of trash she and her eight-year- old son emptied out every week began to look irresponsible.
Thole replaced her 10- gallon can with a small wastebasket that had been under her bathroom sink and started to change the way she shopped and lived. Within 14 weeks, the family’s weekly trash fit into a 2 1/2-inch-tall Mason jar. With room to spare.
These days, a typical week’s worth of trash might contain a receipt or two, fruit stickers, a wine bottle cap, a bottle label, a Band-Aid and packing tape.
Thole and her son, Eames, are newly minted members of the Zero Waste movement, a worldwide group that aims to eliminate as much waste as possible. Zero Wasters avoid plastics and disposable products, bring their own containers when shopping, make things that most of us buy packaged, and buy clothing and furniture only when necessary and only second-hand.
When Thole, a 41-year- old freelance graphic designer who lives near Montreal, examined her trash, she discovered that most of it was food packaging. Now she buys her edibles at farmers markets and bulk-food stores, and she belongs to a farm cooperative - all places that provide unpackaged food.
Cutting way back on trash doesn’t require time, she says, but you do have to be prepared. Thole has a shopping kit that includes cloth bags and glass jars to collect dried food, liquids, meats and cheeses. She uses a wine tote to keep the jars upright and prevent them from banging against each other. She keeps everything in a wicker basket, stored in the back of her car.
“By shopping for package-free food,” Thole says, “we’re able to eliminate this category of waste entirely. You can buy just about anything in bulk, from pantry staples to beer and wine.”
She also makes many items that other people buy as finished products and has been describing her efforts at tinytrashcan.com as well as on Instagram at @ tiny. trash.can.
“I keep sharing (on Instagram) because it keeps us accountable,” Thole says, “and the conversations are so interesting. Yesterday I had a butter wrapper. Someone suggested I could make my own ( butter). It’s just a matter of raising the question. Can I make this? How hard is it? Sometimes it just never occurred to me to learn how to make it.” ( Making butter is simply a matter of agitating - churning - heavy cream.)
Since February, Thole has posted about making butter, marshmallows, granola, cleaning supplies, dish sponges (out of orphaned socks), tortillas, goat cheese, kale chips, linguine, toothpaste, cotton rounds and washcloths (from her son’s stained cotton pyjama top), and produce bags (from old T-shirts). “All the stuff is just from recipes I’m finding online,” she says.
Her resolve to stop producing so much trash was sparked when she heard a TEDx talk last autumn about plastic debris in the Arctic. Thole says she was dumbstruck to learn “just how pervasive plastic is - it’s in our water, in our food and in our bodies. And plastic doesn’t biodegrade like other materials. It just breaks into smaller pieces, microparticles, which then poison the environment and animals, especially marine life and, ultimately, us.”
After that, she says, “I couldn’t in good conscience use plastic anymore.”
Every year, the United States creates 258 million tons of trash, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Every year, the world creates 78 million metric tons of plastic packaging, and a third of that flows into our oceans, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. By 2050, the total plastic in the ocean may weigh more than all the fish.
Such predictions have galvanised the Zero Waste movement, which a Northern California resident named Bea Johnson is often credited with founding in 2008.
She advocates “living simply and taking a stance against needless waste,” an effort organized around what she calls her “5Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot (and only in that order).” Refuse things you don’t need, reduce things you have, reuse everything, recycle what can’t be used and put the rest in the compost bin. ( Her Zero Waste Home website has a searchable list of places to buy food in bulk.)
Johnson and her family of four fit an entire year’s worth of trash into a pint jar.
Johnson makes her own makeup, lip balm, blush (from cocoa powder), mascara and shampoo. Her efforts to replace toilet paper were not so smooth. “Moss was fine at first but dried out quickly and was like wiping with a scouring pad,” she laughs. Now they use toilet paper that comes wrapped in compostable paper.
I was dumbstruck to learn just how pervasive plastic is - it’s in our water, in our food and in our bodies. And plastic doesn’t biodegrade like other materials. It just breaks into smaller pieces, microparticles, which then poison the environment and animals, especially marine life and, ultimately, us. Tippi Thole, member of Zero Waste Movement