When Eve O. Schaub decides to write about a problem, she enters into the research with gusto, and in a very personal–and empirical–way. This deep-dive approach has led to the publication of her two books: Year of No Sugar and Year of No Clutter, the latter of which she discussed with me in this post. She is currently working on her next book–Year of No Garbage, to be published in the fall of 2022. She recently took the time to answer my questions about this very challenging–and laudable–project. Thank you, Eve! Janet Hulstrand
Janet: You recently published a really interesting article in Hyperallergic titled “Fun Facts I Learned from a Year of Producing No Garbage.” Of course our readers may want to read the whole article; there’s a lot of valuable information in there. But maybe to entice them, can you tell us one or two of the most important facts you learned in that year?
Eve: Well, I’m afraid the news isn’t good. The biggest take-away I had from our Year of No Garbage is that most of the things folks are doing in the name of recycling and environmentalism are, at best, a meaningless drop in the bucket, and, at worst, actually harmful. The key problem is that right now the manufacturing and recycling industries don’t see any profit in recycling, or in being more environmentally friendly, so instead they pretend to be recycling and pretend to be environmentally friendly. Which is another way to say that they are lying to us.
Janet: What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your Year of No Garbage? And the most important piece of advice you have to share with our readers about trying to achieve (or even greatly minimize) the harmful kinds and amount of garbage we create?
Eve: Without a doubt the most important thing I’ve learned is the truly horrific harmfulness of plastic. No one wants to talk about this, but regardless of what your recycling provider is telling you, any plastic with a recycling number other than a #1 or a #2 is not getting recycled. 91% of plastic never gets recycled.
So what happens to it? Well, it can go to the landfill where it will never degrade. Instead, it will slowly emit toxic chemicals over the next several hundred years, ultimately leaching into our groundwater and the environment. Or, it goes to an incinerator where burning it creates toxic ash and releases carcinogenic gas into the air we breathe. Or, it gets dumped in our environment, showing up in one of the seven giant plastic garbage patches we have in our oceans, or dumped on the landscapes of impoverished nations which lack the infrastructure to deal with it.
The important thing to know is that, while plastic as trash is horrible, it’s not even the whole story. From the moment of its production, which uses fossil fuels and fracking, to the polluting nature of the plastic refining process, to the disposal of these products at their end of life, every step of the plastic process is bad for people and bad for the planet.
Finally, because plastic is so very durable, it’s a problem that never goes away. Scientists are finding microplastics in our bottled water, and in our food. We all have plastics in our bodies; we all eat a credit card’s worth of plastic a week. They’re finding microplastics in our poop and in the placenta of human babies and in the air we breathe.
Janet: What are some of the myths, or perhaps simply bits of misinformation floating around about recycling? And what about composting?
Eve: Ever since China stopped taking our recyclable plastics in 2018, nothing except recycling numbers #1 and #2 are getting recycled. Many garbage services and communities accept all numbered plastics, from #1 through #7, but this is a deception. There’s simply no market for these materials, and therefore no financial incentive to recycle them. Period.
Another deception is compostables. Many people have encountered “compostable” single use products at their local coffee shop or in the aisles of their supermarket, as a more expensive but eco-friendly alternative to regular disposable products. They look and feel like plastic, but the materials come from plants. People buy these thinking “Hey, I’m doing something good for the environment,” and that’s commendable. Unfortunately most of these products are not actually compostable. If you put them in a home compost pile and come back a year later they will still be there and look exactly the same: like garbage.
Instead they are “industrially compostable” which means they require very specific conditions of pressure and temperature to allow them to degrade. So how do I dispose of my industrially compostable take-out plastic cup? Do I… put it in recycling, where it will contaminate anything actually recyclable? Or do I… put it in the trash, where it will be landfilled in conditions so airtight that it will never break down at all?
Compostables are one of those examples of where people are trying to do the right thing, but because of false advertising and the rampant confusion around these issues, end up doing something just as bad or worse. A recyclable #1 or #2 cup is better than one of these non-compostable-compostables. At least then it’s got a fighting chance to be recycled!
Of course, the best case of all is bring your own reusable cup- but even the most die-hard conscientious of us is going to be caught cup-less sometimes.
Janet: This kind of an activity–like a Year of No Sugar, or a Year of No Clutter, of necessity involves a whole family, right? Any words of advice, wisdom, or perspective about how to convince members of a family that these efforts are, well, worth the effort? Or just strategies for making it less tedious, maybe even kinda fun?
Eve: Throughout all three of our family projects, No Sugar, No Clutter, and No Garbage, it has always been a family endeavor, and that has always been one of the most appealing aspects to me. It always feels so much more meaningful and allows us to have multiple perspectives on a problem. It also virtually guarantees that there will be drama- which is great from a writer’s perspective, although not so great from a parent’s perspective!
My advice on taking on any big family project is: first, everyone must go into the family endeavor as an equal partner and feel listened to and respected. Second, don’t be a totalitarian–recognize that there will be mistakes and misunderstandings and even downright I was not supposed to do this and I did, so now what? In any project, no matter how ambitious, you have to leave room for people to be human.
Janet: What do zero garbage and downsizing/decluttering have to do with each other?
Eve: I think one thing that people who are “Keepers” have in common with zero wasters is that we hate the idea of waste and we see potential everywhere, in everything. We hate the idea of something not being realized to its fullest- there’s a loss in that which we find distressing. For Zero Waste folks it’s primarily focused on the waste of resources and the environmental impact of a throw-away society, whereas for Keepers I think the issue is often more personal and emotional.
Of course, for anyone who’s ever watched an episode of a decluttering show knows, the typical advice for getting rid of too much stuff is to put lots of bags by the curb. Certainly, during my last project, Year of No Clutter, I did throw some things in the garbage, but in my book I talk quite a bit about wanting to find good homes for all this perfectly good stuff.
Doing a Year of No Garbage was like taking that enterprise to another level. Not only did I have to find homes for all the perfectly good things, I also had to find homes for things most folks call “garbage”: all the things we’re used to sending to the landfill without a thought. But what is “garbage”? Garbage is anything we are done with, but that doesn’t mean no one else wants it. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. It’s just a matter of perspective.
So I came up with a mantra: wherever an object made me want to despair, I’d look at it and say, “Someone, somewhere, wants this.” Then it became my job to find that person.
Janet: What is the most effective thing we can do as individuals to minimize the amount of harmful garbage ending up in our landfills, and in our oceans? What do we need to be doing collectively? And how do we manage to really DO it? What are the first steps?
Eve: Most people won’t wake up one day like we did and say HELLO! HENCEFORTH I SHALL BE ZERO WASTE! and that’s good because it’s probably the worst-ever way to go about it. Rather, taking it one step at a time, trying one thing at a time seems to be the best way to make it stick. Even though our Year of No Garbage is officially over I’m still trying new things out, seeing what works for me. I never thought I’d get to the point where I’d use a bidet, but you know what? Since we bought one this year I actually love it. I buy half as much toilet paper now and that makes me unreasonably proud of my bathroom habits.
One practical tip I recommend is doing a garbage audit. What this means is take apart a bag of your garbage and take an inventory: what do you have more of than you thought? Are there recyclables in there that got missed? If there are lot of food scraps maybe consider making a compost pile. Maybe you use more aluminum foil than you thought and could try using containers for leftovers instead.
One day as I was sorting through our recycling I realized that we went through a bazillion aluminum cans of seltzer every week. Sure, the aluminum cans are recyclable, but even better would be not to have those cans or use that energy at all, and so as a result we bought a Soda Stream. Now we save money AND I make fewer trips to the basement to sort recycling.
Janet: During this year were you able to keep from being discouraged? Any words to keep us all from becoming discouraged also, and instead galvanize us into some kind of productive action?
Eve: Our Year of No Garbage also happened to be the year 2020, which has been politely described as a raging dumpster fire of a year. For us this meant that the year did not play out at all the way we expected. For one thing, legitimate measures to protect health and safety during the pandemic also meant that as a society we were all using more disposables and plastic than ever before: our supermarket banned reusable bags, restaurants did only take-out, even at our beloved farmer’s market, they started putting all the produce in plastic bags!! Of course, those measures were understandable at the time, but it was disheartening.
There was a moment, a few months in, when my husband and I looked at each other and said “So? Do we keep doing this?” I mean, when the world is falling apart around you, sometimes it feels silly–or maybe even offensive–to keep on washing your cereal bags and obsessing over what to do with used staples. We decided to keep going, in part because the world doesn’t always cooperate with your plans and that’s just reality. The time is never going to be perfect to confront the difficult problems of garbage and plastic.
I’m so glad we did. It gave us something meaningful to do during a difficult time, and forced us to find new solutions on the fly. Also, the pandemic shutdown provided an amazing demonstration of what people can do when they all work together, and that gave me hope for solving the existential crisis that disposable plastic on our planet represents.
There were–and continue to be–many moments where I think that the problem of garbage, the problem of global warming, the problem of the environment, is all just too much. The manufacturing industry is just too powerful, and they’ve got us running in circles trying to recycle and remember our reusable bags, meanwhile they’re quietly ramping up plastics production to quadruple in the next 25 years. That’s four times as much disposable plastic as we have now — still not getting recycled. And if this happens, emissions from the plastic lifecycle will equal 50 times the annual emissions of all the coal power plants in the United States.
But I never remain discouraged for long because I know from experience that all this can change on a dime, if enough people actually have the facts. That’s what happened for us with sugar. One minute people were like “Why are you avoiding sugar, again?” and the next they were sending me pictures saying “LOOK HOW MUCH SUGAR IS IN THIS!?! ARE THEY TRYING TO KILL PEOPLE???”
The very best thing we can do is be informed, and to act on that information. Understand that perfection is literally impossible, so instead just try to focus on doing one good thing. And then another. If we know how very bad plastic is, try not to buy it. Don’t buy the greeting card wrapped in plastic, buy the other one. Know that every plastic bag you say “no thanks” to, is a victory. Take note of how it’s pretty much impossible to buy so many products today without plastic wrapping and wonder: What did we used to do before plastic? Could we try that again?
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher. She is coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home and author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You. Eve Schaub is author of Year of No Sugar, Year of No Clutter, and the upcoming Year of No Garbage. You can learn about her adventures and books at https://eveschaub.com/
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