Living in alignment with our values is probably one of the greatest things we can ever do for ourselves. This is the sweet spot: the intersection between what we innately believe and how we actually live.
French-born Bea Johnson is a zero waste advocate and author of “Zero Waste Home”. She’s living her truth and luckily for us has spurned a global movement dedicated to reducing our impact on our planet. Her simple, but effective guideline to living a less wasteful life involves the Five R’s: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot (Compost). We know the Five R’s really well, however, implementing them in this order is crucial to really living as close to zero waste as we possibly can.
Taking her own family on a journey to zero waste was inspired by their relocation to America. When the time came to move from the small apartment they’d been living in for a year, they realised they hadn’t missed the majority of their possessions, which had been in storage. The simplicity of this forced down-sizing, had in fact up-sized their lifestyle in favour of more activities together as a family and allowed them to recognise which possessions were most useful and important. This then inspired Bea to do everything she could to continue to simplify their approach in every part of their daily lives.
First, Bea focused on decluttering. This “voluntary simplicity,” led to overhauling her wardrobe, home and family lifestyle with the goal of becoming zero waste. Then, she started refusing disposables, bringing her own totes and containers to shop, buying food in bulk and clothes second hand. For several years now, the total annual curb-side waste for her entire family of four fits in a single maison jar. Impressive? Bea, doesn’t think so. She believes this is not hard to achieve and is a much smarter way to live.
While these changes have been incremental, they’ve also been monumental. Bea and her family have cut down on expenses by 40 percent, which has allowed them to put the time and money they used to spend on things, into all sorts of amazing adventures. Living zero waste has allowed their focus to shift from collecting things, to making memories instead.
As a family, they reuse in place of buying and discarding, buying again and discarding again, and so on. As Bea points out, living this way is not only completely inefficient, but wastes so much time and money. The key here is to buy well. Buy things that are truly useful, that are made to last and that you love. Then you won’t need to or want to replace them. You’ll simply reuse them.
“When you use disposables and then throw them away, you are literally throwing money away, money that could be put towards that trip you wanted to take.”—Bea Johnson
For Bea—and we agree—recycling is a last resort. Of all the items that can be recycled, most can only be recycled, up-cycled or down-cycled once and then they become landfill or worse they’re incinerated. Either way, those resources are lost forever.
Recycling exists because of the over-production and over-consumption of products that have come to the end of their life either through poor design (think one-use disposables), poor quality (that’s fast fashion) or lack of use (yes, marketing sold us these things we don’t need and don’t use). For the moment, we’re grateful recycling is attempting to deal with the amount of waste that currently exists. However, our biggest and brightest dream should be that one day we’ll tread so lightly on the planet, there’ll be no need to recycle as there’ll be little to no waste at all.
“Every time we buy or accept disposables, it’s a way for us to perpetuate this unresolved recycling system.”—Bea Johnson
On that note, Bea has three simple steps we can take to reduce our impact, while raising our quality of life:
1. Eliminate single use products from our lives. There is a reusable alternative for every single disposable product we use, like paper towels, freezer bags and plastic wrap. The trick is to keep an open mind to the alternatives and take time adjusting to them.
2. Buy package-free. Instead, buy second hand and buy in bulk using your own containers (glass jars, bottles and bags). Check out the the global bulk locator on Bea’s website for shops with bulk offerings.
3. Stop accepting freebies. Bea says, “Accepting is condoning, just as buying is like voting.” When we take that free pen from a conference, or that trial-sized product promo from the local supermarket, we’re saying, ‘keep making this stuff.’ When we stop accepting freebies, we can free ourselves from the fictional needs marketers place on us. And, what a relief that is!
Like Bea, we firmly believe that sharing time and experiences with people fulfils us in a way that possessions cannot, especially when we know they come with a whole lot of unnecessary waste. There’s something to be said for living simply, aside from the amount of money, time and effort we save when we’re not constantly seeking out something new.
Check out Bea’s website for easy to implement tips to reduce your own waste. And, her Ted Talks: “Two adults, two kids, zero waste: One maison jar/year waste for entire family” and “Zero Waste is not recycling more, but less” are compelling arguments for making a permanent change to having less and living more.
x KT
Image by: Jacqui J Sze
Quotes sourced from Bea’s TedxMünster Talk: “Zero Waste is not recycling more, but less”
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