Trying a No-Waste/Low-Waste Lifestyle for 1 Week (5 days)

For one school week, myself and two classmates, Annabelle and Nikole, embarked on a journey to live a no-waste/low-waste lifestyle. This is a three part story. You can find Nikole’s project here and Annabelle’s here.

ESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES:

For the sake of this experiment, certain waste will not be considered or factored in to the data. There are three things I am not counting for this week:

1. Toilet paper: This is something that I’m not really willing to part with. Although I wont give up toilet paper completely, there are better options. Many mainstream toilet paper producers source their paper from virgin forests, and it takes 37 gallons of water (on average) to produce just one roll of toilet paper. Obviously, that’s not very sustainable. There are better and equally accessible options, like this toilet paper from Seventh Generation, which uses 100% recycled paper.
2. Tissues: I had a cold this week and I ended up using one box of Kleenex brand tissues. Once again, this is a luxury that I’m not ready to let go. Some people use handkerchiefs to blow their nose in. I’m not ready to practice sustainability at that level, but there are some more sustainable options like this box of 100% recycled facial tissues, also from Seventh Generation.
3. Waste produced at work: I work at a popular restaurant in downtown Valparaiso, so a lot of waste is produced. There’s nothing that I can really do about that. Of course, I am thoughtful of certain things like how many paper napkins I give out to customers and making sure that I use the right sized box for to-go orders or for boxing up leftovers. There’s really no way to track how much waste is produced or what I personally throw away, so this data wont be included.

GAME PLAN:

1. Food waste: Starting with coffee, I chose to make my own at home and use my travel mug. For the whole week, my coffee was made with a reusable Keurig cup, which can be found pretty easily online or in any major grocery store. Since this project, I always make my coffee at home before I leave. This option turns out to be more time and cost efficient for me while simultaneously reducing my waste output pretty dramatically. I carry a reusable water bottle every day. I find it easy to find places on campus to refill (I refill this water about four times a day) such as water fountains, specific water bottle filling stations, and soda machines. For food waste, I keep a small compost pile in my freezer at home which I take down to the Valparaiso Compost Site each weekend, so any food waste from the week was put into that pile. Because I am a vegetarian going vegan, I don’t eat a lot of processed foods or anything that comes with excessive packaging. Since I mostly eat vegetables, I simply avoid using the disposable produce bags and compost any kitchen scraps.
2. Paper waste: I was mainly concerned with paper towel usage this week. In public restrooms, paper towels are often the only option for hand drying. I carried these 100% cotton handkerchiefs, which go for about $1 a piece. Carrying one of these in my backpack saved at least 20 paper towels from entering a landfill, which I felt pretty good about. I also found that it wasn’t at all an inconvenience to reduce waste in this area, which is always nice. I also carry one of these in my purse in the case that public restrooms don’t have a hand dryer.
3. Beauty waste: I learned on day one that a lot of my waste output comes from beauty products. I purchased these reusable cotton rounds. Because the package didn’t arrive until the end of the week, I just avoided using my normal cotton rounds.

DAY ONE:

This day served, in a way, as a day for evaluation. The most waste was produced on this day as I realized when/where I produce waste and how I can prevent waste for the rest of the week. On my first day of trying out this lifestyle, I began my morning as usual. I noticed that my morning routine produced no immediate waste. In the mornings, I don’t find myself using any disposable beauty products such as cotton balls or paper towels. Of course, waste will eventually be produced as I run out of things like shampoo, makeup, and deodorant.

Since I am a student commuter, I pack my lunch 2–3 times a week. This could result in a large amount of plastic waste from sandwich bags, which I do use occasionally. I also occasionally get a coffee on my way to school. For this week, I tried not to produce any (paper or plastic) waste at all for my meals.

My lunch produced food waste in the form of a banana peel and an orange peel. This was put in the compost pile mentioned above.

Coffee, water, and lunch. This is what I carry every day, so I only took this picture once.

Paper towel waste for day one

On day one, I forgot to bring my cotton handkerchiefs to dry my hands with. I was only on campus for a few hours on Monday. I washed my hands twice and used two paper towels to dry them each time, producing 4 total paper towels wasted.

I noticed on day one that, although my morning routine produced no waste, my night time routine was pretty wasteful. For skincare, I use one makeup remover wipe and two cotton rounds. There is also the issue of my bottle of makeup remover, which will eventually be recycled.

Day one’s night time waste

I solved this problem by purchasing the reusable cotton rounds linked above and using a washcloth instead of a wipe. For makeup remover, I now use coconut oil which comes in a glass container that I can reuse.

Day one total trash output: 4 paper towels, 1 makeup remover wipe, 2 cotton rounds

DAY TWO:

Day two was Halloween. Although I didn’t go trick-or-treating, I kept thinking about how much waste is produced on this day. This article by earth911 discusses this issue in detail. This is also the day that my family celebrated my birthday. Most of my presents came in gift bags which I was able to fold up and save for future birthdays or holidays, but some packaging waste was inevitable.

Birthday present packaging waste

I felt good about day two. The only waste I produced on this day was the packaging from a few birthday gifts. I was proud of my thoughtfulness and I noticed that I wasn’t inconvenienced by producing no waste.

Day two total waste output: plastic packaging, small ribbon, small piece of paper.

DAY THREE:

On day three, I started to get frustrated with packaging. It seemed like just about everything had excessive plastic packaging. I understand that it’s nearly impossible to live a normal life with no packaging, which is why no-wasters only purchase items with paper packaging. As I ran out of certain products, I had to recycle or throw away a lot of packaging. For example, on this day I ran out of vitamins for my dog (she gets vitamins to help her joint pain because she’s an old lady.) I recycled the plastic bottle that they came in, but obviously I need to repurchase the vitamins. The plastic bottle is not refillable. This was one of the only times throughout the week where I felt that it was impossible to not produce waste. I didn’t produce any other waste on day three.

Day three total trash output: One plastic pill bottle (recycled).

DAY FOUR:

Yay! This was my first day completely waste-free. I was pretty proud of myself on this day.

DAY FIVE:

On the last day, I produced no conventional waste. However, I started to wonder what no-wasters do when things break. My auxiliary cable in my car stopped working and I had to repurchase a new one. I couldn’t donate my old one because it wouldn’t be of any use. I didn’t want to keep it because I was careful not to hoard things during this project for the sake of not throwing them away. After thinking about it, I decided there’s nothing I can do and ended up throwing the old cable away. The new cable came with plastic and paper packaging, which was all recycled.

My old auxiliary cable and the packaging for the new one.

CONCLUSIONS:

This week taught me a lot. First, I understood the rules of a no-waste lifestyle. I entered this project thinking that no-wasters produce absolutely no waste ever. I then learned that they produce no plastic waste and try to only produce paper waste when necessary. Secondly, I began to understand the importance of consciousness. I was able to produce a very minimal amount of waste this week solely because I was thinking about it. All it takes is awareness and thoughtfulness to significantly reduce your waste output. When you are reaching for something (paper towels, packaged goods, etc.) think about what will happen to the waste when you are done with it. Will it be recycled? How much energy will that take? Will it go to the landfill? Simply questioning the future of a product is probably enough to make you reach for something reusable.

Since this experiment, I have factored a lot of these principles into my daily life. For example, I still use the reusable cotton rounds and handkerchiefs for drying my hands. These are easy and affordable ways that anyone can reduce their waste output.