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This website introduces the Zero Waste lifestyle, and its positive environmental and social impacts, while also addressing the unattainable expectations of the Zero Waste lifestyle due to barriers of time, effort, and money on low-income individuals and students.
What is the Zero Waste lifestyle?
What is the Zero Waste lifestyle?
The mainstream Zero Waste lifestyle known today started in the early 2010s with Bea Johnson, a US-based environmental activist, credited as the initiator of the Zero Waste lifestyle movement. The Zero Waste lifestyle emphasizes the importance of individual behavioral changes in reducing waste production. Individuals are expected to reduce, reuse, refuse, recycle, and compost goods in order to limit their waste production as much as possible, essentially producing zero waste. With Zero Waste, there is an emphasis on moving beyond recycling and towards prevention of waste entirely through a rather indefinite reuse of a material good. A key component to the movement and lifestyle is maintaining a circular economy. Through a circular economy, products are maintained and reused for as long as possible to eliminate the rapid production of waste. Overtime, society has moved from a circular economy due to popularity of consumer culture. In participating in consumer culture, society is constantly buying material goods and throwing them away when they get worn down, broken, outdated, or are no longer trending. By emphasizing the reuse of products, Zero Wasters are aiming to reestablish a circular economy to eliminate the production of waste.
Zero Waste Goals:
Zero Waste Goals:
Reduce, Reuse, Refuse, Recycle, and Compost
Zero Waste to Landfills
Waste Prevention
Circular Economy
Maximal Reuse of Products
Eliminate Single-Use Plastic
Reduced Consumption
The modern Zero Waste lifestyle promotes waste management and prevention practices that can positively impact the environment, however, there is an overwhelming emphasis on consumers being responsible for changing their individual behaviors in order to reach Zero Waste goals. High expectations, such as producing absolutely zero waste and reusing all products, make the modern Zero Waste lifestyle unattainable as individuals are driven away from the movement feeling incapable of carrying out such a lifestyle. Furthermore, the extreme and unrealistic standards cannot be met if the products themselves are unsustainable. Waste prevention at the individual level is important, however, the Zero Waste movement should hold companies and manufacturers accountable for their massive contribution to waste production.
The modern Zero Waste lifestyle promotes waste management and prevention practices that can positively impact the environment, however, there is an overwhelming emphasis on consumers being responsible for changing their individual behaviors in order to reach Zero Waste goals. High expectations, such as producing absolutely zero waste and reusing all products, make the modern Zero Waste lifestyle unattainable as individuals are driven away from the movement feeling incapable of carrying out such a lifestyle. Furthermore, the extreme and unrealistic standards cannot be met if the products themselves are unsustainable. Waste prevention at the individual level is important, however, the Zero Waste movement should hold companies and manufacturers accountable for their massive contribution to waste production.
Sources
Sources
Admin. “Who Started the Zero Waste Movement?” Zero Waste, 17 Aug. 2020, www.zerowaste.com/blog/what-is-it-who-started-the-zero-waste-movement/#:~:text=The%20zero%20waste%20story%20really,become%20what%20it%20is%20today.
Mauch, Christof. “Introduction: The Call for Zero Waste.” RCC Perspectives, no. 3, 2016, pp. 5–12. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26241370. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021.
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