Book Review: Zero Waste Home
Zero Waste Home written by Bea Johnson and published by Scribner in 2013 is a biography of how a housewife and her family living in a 3000 square foot "McMansion" downsized to a more moderate 1420 square foot cottage more in tune with her childhood in Provence, France. She charts their transition from filling a 26 gallon trashcan of waste per week to a single quart of landfill waste per year for a family of four.
Bea explores every way of avoiding "throw aways" and at one point even considered ditching toilet paper for foraged moss (spoiler: she decided flushing was OK in the end)! The majority of her tips are useful, like bringing your own bags shopping, minimizing packaging when possible, and refusing cheap throw away items (like pens at conferences), but some of her suggestions like bringing your own pillowcase to collect fresh bread at the bakery are a little far fetched, at least for where we live. She does address some of the major time sinks she had adopted as a way to avoid waste, like making her own butter, which in the end she decided was OK to buy as the paper wrappers were compostable, and her time was better spent elsewhere, rather than hand churning cream.
Bea's mantra modifies the familiar Reduce, Reuse, Recycle with Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot, which more closely follows the European Union Waste Framework Directive, where prevention is the first step and aids in preventing the creation of waste from the beginning. Even recycling is minimized in Bea's house, particularly plastics, as their recycling potential is limited.
Reading
this book prompted me to really consider some of the items in my
closet, and brought back into focus some of the wastes in my daily life
(styrofoam cups and disposable cutlery in the
cafeteria at
work)
that would be easy to eliminate with a bit of planning.
I've already gone through my closet and pared down my
selection of clothing (although I didn't cut down as much as Bea and
her family, as they have just enough clothing to fill a suitcase!), and
will be making a donation to Goodwill, as I'm sure there's someone who
can get more use out of them (Reuse). The simplicity in
having less was immediately apparent as the closet was no longer
cluttered, and for the first time since moving I was able to close the
closet doors.
Having
less laundry to clean, fold and put away, and having an easier time
finding what I'm looking for, helps prevent wasting both energy and
time, which is another key element in Zero Waste Home.
Having
a child, and knowing that the planet I leave behind will be his to
inherit has made me want to go beyond minimizing our impact through
energy conservation (something we already do, not only for the Green
factor, but also because it saves us money) to having a more active
role in making the world a better place by preventing waste from ending
up in a landfill.
Bea
also offers a smartphone app called Bulk to help in finding sources of
bulk food near you, but unfortunately, there's nothing listed near us
in State College.
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Overall, I enjoyed Bea's writing style, her systematic approach to reducing waste in different functions of the house (kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, etc) and her recognition of where conservation at the cost of sanity needed to be tuned down a little. Some of her suggestions are a little difficult for us to implement (where can you buy bulk peanut butter to put in your French Mason jars in State College?), but she did give me a new approach to simple, waste minimized living.
She also provides useful recipes for eco-friendly, non allergenic cleaners, home made tooth powder, and even lip balm!
You can visit her website at zerowastehome.blogspot.com for additional tips and hints, and you can purchase her book, Zero Waste Home, below from Amazon.com, or check it out from your local library.
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