‘The Zero-Waste Home’ by Bea Johnson was one of my more thought-provoking March break reads. It was a little more dry than I had thought it would be—I knew this lady had a blog, so I was expecting more of a memoir-ish feel, and this was pretty much straight-up information. But there were several aspects of it which interested me so I perservered.
This might seem like an odd title to review on a blog like this. What does reducing your household garbage have to do with reading books? Well, I have long thought that the digital revolution has played an interesting role in consumerism. I certainly would not be able to be nearly as ‘minimalistic’ if I didn’t have the option to shift DVDs, CDs, books, magazines and other former ‘objects’ into digital format!
Johnson begins by expanding on the traditional ‘3 R’s’ (reduce, reuse, recycle) by adding two more: refuse, and rot. Refuse refers to simply not letting objects into your house. Don’t take the free pens, free mugs, t-shirts and so on. Don’t take the sample-size shampoo. But ‘rot’ was a new one for me. It asks us to consider how the objects we acquire might decompose. For instance, she has asked her children’s school not to laminate their artwork, so that it might be recycled later And she briefly discusses buying computers from licensed refurbishment programs so that you can make full use of your electronic’s life cycle.
I don’t think it is realistic for most people to produce zero garbage for the rest of their lives. Sure, I can bring reusable grocery bags to the store with me, and I am making more efforts to buy items like peanut butter in glass jars instead of plastic ones. But sometimes there need to be trade-offs for sheer practically. I have no idea, for example, how easy or hard it would be to ‘rot’ my Kindle—that is, to break it down into its component pieces and dispose of them with the least amount of environmental footprint. But I do know that I have read over 400 eBooks since I got my first e-ink reader, and those are books I would have once bought, traded for or utilized in paper. It’s not just shelf space I am saving; it’s trees, water, electricity and so on. Even if I junk the reader in the landfill and don’t ‘rot’ it, I am still saving a ton of resources by having it.
I do think it is realistic to ask people to make more conscious choices though. We were getting sloppy with the recycling, because it’s hard in an apartment, but I think I want to get back to doing that better. I also have an art habit, and plan to experiment with conte crayon and pure graphite pencils, which are sold unadorned in bulk sticks. I don’t think I can give up my marker and pen stuff, but at least I can conserve resources by off-loading some of my art time to these more earth-friendly mediums; I can buy my pens from the bulk shelf and not in clamshell packages; and I can follow Johnson’s advise to use my art for making a practical thing, not just a random decoration.
And I think that allowing a reasonable quantity of tech toys into my life is also a fair compromise. We get so much use out of Netflix in our home. We get so much use out of the Kindle store and blog feeds and other media sources. Yes, that TV will be a beast to recycle. But that is actually regulated here and there are places I can take it to be disposed of. And since it will replace potentially hundreds of DVDs—just as the Kindle replaced hundreds of books—I think it is a fair trade-off.
I am not going to go off and make my own soap now. But I do think I can be a more conscious consumer and the book was a good wake-up call. A little dry, maybe. But worth reading if this interests you.
Thank you a lot for the review of this book. I want to buy it because I follow the blog of Bea and I like it so much. It really helped me to reduce the waste at home, so I decided that I should have the book too. Thanks again!