The Best Way To Do Zero Waste is To Do it Imperfectly

Photo by Danielle Johnson // In Our Nature

I was walking up Orrington Avenue toward campus recently after grabbing brunch with some friends, and the snow on the ground was slowly turning into ice each time someone stepped on it. I found myself walking toward a woman on the phone with a cup of coffee in her hand, and the only reason I consciously noticed the coffee was because of what she did with it.

She paused her walk toward me for a moment, took a step across the sidewalk, crouched down, set her coffee in the snow, stood up and proceeded to walk past me. I stopped, surely dropped my mouth wide open and turned around. Maybe if I had the guts or if she weren’t on the phone, I would have confronted her, but even then I was so shocked that anyone in this day and age would just blatantly but also carefully place their litter on the ground that it took several seconds to process what she just did.

I watched her walk away, resuming her pace and her conversation as if nothing had happened. After it was clear she didn’t care and wasn’t coming back for it, I proceeded to pick up the cup—half full, mind you— and walk the 20 or so yards across the street to throw it in a trash can, one of many in the city of Evanston that the woman would likely pass within the next few minutes.

I’d really like to think she had some kind of excuse. Maybe she likes her coffee cold and was going to come back for it. Maybe she was leaving it for a friend who was going to be passing by shortly. Maybe I take for granted that most of the people around me are more environmentally conscious than that…

Encounters like these remind me of the extreme differences in importance we place on the environment and waste. On one hand, there are people who are actively using countless disposable items and sending them straight to the trash (or perhaps the snowy ground). On the other hand, there are people living near zero waste lifestyles, fitting all of their trash from multiple years in a single mason jar. Zero waste does not have a single definition, but the Zero Waste International Alliance defines it as “the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.” Other definitions include the diversion of as much material from landfills as possible or the idea of a circular economy in which waste from one process acts as a resource input for some other production to maintain a closed loop.

In between those who produce lots of waste and those who produce virtually none are people like me who recycle, have a reusable water bottle, try to avoid single-use items and appreciate zero waste but can’t fathom how they would live that kind of life. I was lost after I realized zero waste obviously meant making your own soaps and shampoos and whatnot. I didn’t have the time commitment or will to figure out how to do zero waste, and several years later I still content myself with doing the little everyday sustainable things and trying to reuse or donate objects before throwing them away. In the grand scheme of things, would me going zero waste really matter?

Maybe it would if more of us didn’t have that mentality. Zero waste inherently sounds like an all or nothing commitment. People aren’t really pushing “25 percent waste” programs to my knowledge. A quote by zero waste chef Anne-Marie Bonneau sums up what we should be encouraging: “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”

Perhaps I commit to a reusable straw and silverware to eliminate my plastic utensil use. Maybe someone else learns how to make their own shower soap bars and gives them to friends. Another cuts out plastic and paper bags. Another commits not to order packages online.

Colleges like Northwestern have so many programs, events, resources and fundraisers that could get students thinking about reducing waste in less conventional ways before they graduate and revert to lifestyles where waste is just more convenient. Northwestern and sustainNU do provide items like reusable bags, water bottles and utensils occasionally (though they may have gone a little overboard with water bottles—if there’s one thing Northwestern students love, it’s free stuff—and I know I’ve taken countless water bottles on the premise that they were free and not because I needed them or would use them).

But aside from giving out things that might make more waste if they’re not used, there are all kinds of events and workshops that would be fitting for teaching students, say, how to make their own shampoo or cleaners perhaps. Student organizations are in need of fundraisers all the time, and offering products without packaging could be a resourceful way to make money and spread the idea of reducing waste.

By now, you’re probably thinking, “Well I recycle everything anyway, so that’s essentially zero waste, right?” That’s definitely more helpful than not, but just because you throw it in the recycling bin doesn’t mean that’s where it ends up. A 2017 study found only 9 percent of plastic was recycled, 79 percent made it to landfills and the remainder was incinerated. Likewise, just because something is plastic or has the little symbol on it doesn’t mean it gets recycled. Different plastics mean different things, and even those that are recyclable don’t always make it to the right place if they have food scraps on them or the cleaning staff mixes them in with the trash, for example.

I would feel much more inclined to try to make the jump from just recycling to truly reducing my waste if it were a more widespread effort that I felt like I could contribute to. Even more encouraging, though, would be stronger commercial and institutional initiatives to reduce waste. The closest things to zero waste products I could go buy in an average grocery store right now are probably fruits and vegetables, assuming they let me use a cloth bag instead of their plastic ones.

Some places like Whole Foods have good zero waste “infrastructure” with the dispensers for bulk food like nuts and dried fruits that allow you to purchase the amount you need, as well as use your own container. However, if I want granola bars or milk or a bag of marshmallows or nearly anything else, I’d have to find places selling bulk goods and learn how to make granola bars, as well as invest in a cow. Just like we don’t always invest the time and money to find organic goods to the point that they’ve taken on a connotation of being “premium,” for example, the same happens with finding and purchasing bulk zero waste goods. That implies I have money and free time on my hands to pursue the less convenient option. So now the solution sounds like it involves using our Northwestern degrees to make enough money and free up enough time to go zero waste… Well, maybe this is where we accept that we don’t have to go zero waste.

However, there are a number of businesses beyond groceries that offer bulk items or BYOC (bring your own container) like Frio Gelato, for example. Food places like this implementing BYOC programs in the same fashion that stores like Aldi encourage you to bring reusable bags (by charging you for plastic or paper ones) is a great way to give consumers the choice to have a zero waste snack. (Another great example is 7-Eleven’s BYOC days where customers bring in all kinds of fun containers to fill with Slurpees.)

While it’d be amazing if every gas station and coffee shop did this, you might also get some grumbles about sanitation and standard container sizes. (For example, I’m not sure Andy’s Frozen Custard would love me haggling over my own container on a warm June evening when there are 20 people behind me in line and they close in 10 minutes.) Zero waste, unfortunately, isn’t always practical in the packaging-heavy, disposable-oriented society we’ve come to live in. Just because zero waste is hard, though, doesn’t mean some level of waste reduction isn’t worth it to reduce your environmental footprint, and perhaps if you find yourself in a place to promote zero waste, whether in a business, grocery, campus club or elsewhere, you choose to do what you can, even if you do so imperfectly.