I Tried Living Waste Free for a Year

According to the EPA, the average American person generates about 4.45 pounds of waste a day. That’s 220 million tons of trash each year — just in the U.S, which is equivalent to burying more than 82,000 football fields six feet deep in compacted garbage.

On a worldwide scale, we generate 2.6 trillion pounds of trash per year. And every second, the U.S throws away 694 plastic bottles, adding up to 60 million a day.

A couple of years ago, I read an article about a woman that managed to fit a year’s worth of waste in a mason jar — yes, in just a tiny mason jar. That made me think about how we could truly make a real change if we wanted to. Don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware that one of the main problems is that Governments all around put economic interests before the environment.

However, I believe that we can also be the change and that each one of us has a responsibility to protect the planet we live in. Because every little act counts. So after a lot of consideration and thorough research, I decided that I wanted to try to live as waste-free as I could for a year — with the intention of keeping it up forever.

What does living waste-free mean?

Living waste-free is commonly referred to as a lifestyle that focuses on reducing a person’s impact on the environment by creating little to no waste. And by waste, I mean any item that can’t be reused, recycled or composted and is therefore sent to a landfill.

But throughout this journey, I learned that living waste-free looks different to everybody, and there isn’t a right or a wrong way of doing it. So for some people, living zero waste means creating so little trash that it can fit into a mason jar. For others, it just means aiming towards no trash even if there are some failures along the way.

The challenges:

I am proud to say that I was living a pretty eco-conscious lifestyle before this little experiment of mine. I always used reusable bags and water bottles, I never used plastic cutlery, I purchased a menstrual cup to make my period waste-free, and I always walked places or used public transportation.

But in my way to living the waste-free dream, I encountered some challenges that turned out to be harder to figure out than I initially thought.

Food

I am not vegan nor vegetarian. I am a picky eater so I actually ate quite a lot of meat before all of this, which was clearly a problem. I also knew that I didn’t want to go vegan — which was my first fail in this journey— , so I had to compromise. I reduced my meat intake to once every two weeks, and I made sure that all the products I was buying were as eco-conscious as they came and that they arrived from local businesses.

According to research, livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2e per year or 51% of annual worldwide GHG emissions.

The other problem that I faced with food is the way they packaged it. I was used to going to the supermarket and buying most of the food wrapped in plastic packaging, which was cheaper and more convenient to store. Living waste-free meant that I had to buy things in bulk, from fruit and fresh produce to snacks or other dry goods.

Finding a store where I could obtain goods in bulk that was near my apartment and not extremely expensive was a nightmare.

The last challenge regarding food was eating out. In the country where I live in, restaurants serve you water and drinks in plastic bottles, which was an obstacle when going for a bite with friends. Receipts were also something that I wasn’t aware of and that isn’t biodegradable, so I had to ask for no receipt everywhere I went, which earned me some weird looks.

Clothing

I love buying clothes, but 90% of the clothes I own are from fast fashion retailers.

Fast fashion is the term used to describe clothing designs that pass quickly from the runway to stores to meet new trends. Fast fashion allows consumers to purchase trendy clothing at an affordable price. However, that means that the clothes are produced in huge quantities, without taking into account sustainability and generating a lot of waste.

In addition, of the clothes produced, approximately 20% are never purchased, so they quickly find their way to landfills, where they stay for hundreds of years until they finally decompose.

According to the United Nations Environment Program, 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to the clothing industry — more aviation and shipping combined, per the Los Angeles Times. It’s also responsible for a large portion of water pollution worldwide and uses copious chemicals.

In order to generate less waste, I decided to stop buying from fast fashion stores, and instead buy fewer pieces from more quality and eco-friendly stores, or buy thrifted items. That made me actually save some money — as I thought long and deep before getting a piece of clothing — and it made my apparel choices better.

Beauty products

I’ve always been very aware of the amount of plastic that we use on a daily basis. However, there are many products that come in plastic packaging that I wasn’t paying full attention to — which was annoying.

It’s estimated that as much as 91% of plastics aren’t recycled, which is a problem since many forms of plastic take between ten years and a few hundred years to degrade, with many plastics not degrading because they’re hidden in landfills.

Products such as deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste or makeup, all come in plastic packaging. And products like plastic razors or plastic toothbrushes had to be switched to sustainable options too.

Finding those replacements was hard — extremely hard. I wanted to finish my products before throwing them away, so I slowly substituted them with items such as bamboo toothbrushes and hard shampoo.

What I learned

Taking into consideration that there were some things that I couldn’t quit or that I was not willing to sacrifice — taking cold showers to save energy for example — ; I didn’t achieve my goal of fully going waste-free. However, in the process, I learned that everyone can live more waste-free than they think, as some changes are pretty easy and inexpensive — or are worth it in the long run.

I learned that zero waste isn’t about perfection, it’s about making better choices and being conscious of what you are consuming. For instance, if there’s a plastic bag full of pasta and a recyclable box full of pasta, instead of purchasing the plastic bag, go for the box and recycle it later. Because even if all you can manage is to cut out two pieces of trash a day, that’s still 730 at the end of the year.

After this journey, I also learned that it’s okay to fail sometimes, because being waste-free all the time is extremely hard. All of us can slip, go out to eat and ask for the receipt or buy a plastic bottle in a desperate situation. But you need to accept that perfection is impossible and that the crucial thing is to try to be consistent and reduce waste as much as possible.

My biggest advice for those who want to live a more sustainable lifestyle is to start small. Going waste-free doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time and money. That’s why instead of cutting all waste from your life at once, you should ease into it and assess and prioritize your waste. For instance, you have to determine what can wait — fully quitting meat for example — and what you want to remove from your waste for sure — like buying things wrapped in plastic packaging.

Furthermore, trying to replace all of your not-sustainable items is a poor choice. You should substitute the items as they run out, otherwise, you’ll be generating waste and not making the most of all your products.

Another thing that truly helped me was to establish my ‘why’s. Deciding why I wanted to do this gave me the courage to keep going, and it provided a place to return to as my inner motivation when I started doubting myself. By doing this I stopped thinking about waste-free as a fun challenge, instead, I thought about it as a mindset change. And consequently, it kept me excited and grounded.

Final thoughts

Reducing your waste can seem like a daunting task the first time you hear about it, but it’s actually very easy to make small changes that have a big impact.

Remember that this is not about a waste-free lifestyle, it’s about a mindset.

And if you’re wondering how to start, the answer is rather simple. Start small and make your way up. Begin by using reusable water bottles and bags, making your period waste-free, refusing to use plastic cutlery, or lessening your meat intake a bit. After achieving these small — but significant — goals, you’ll feel more motivated to take on a bigger challenge, and you’ll be one step closer to fully living waste-free.