Why Zero Waste Matters.
Celia Ristow | Litterless
Last night at my company holiday party, I sat down to dinner to find a plastic fork at my place. It was a fancy event, so I hadn’t expected that - and didn’t have my usual bamboo utensil on hand. Some would say it’s not a big deal. To me, it was. I’ve spent the last year and a half working toward zero waste, winnowing my trash and recycling output down as much as possible. A month’s worth of trash can now fit in the palm of my hand; a month’s recycling can fit in the crook of my elbow. I skip produce that comes in plastic packaging - blueberries, my beloved favorite fruit, are now a special treat in July & August, the only time I can get them locally, without the single-use plastic carton. I’ll travel a little farther by foot or train to a grocery store where I can buy flour, spices, tea, olive oil in bulk, decanted into my own containers so that I don’t leave with anything that needs to be thrown away. While out and about, I tuck my food waste - orange peels, apple cores - into a jar so that I can bring it home and
compost it. Which is why the plastic fork wasn’t just a fork. Over the past few years, objects that formerly seemed normal - ubiquitous plastic food packaging, single-use serving pieces, even plastic pens - have come to seem weird to me. The fork was made of petroleum pumped from the ground, shipped across the world, manufactured into the shape of a fork, and shipped back across the world to land in Chicago, Illinois. Only to be discarded at the end of a 30-minute meal, to sit in a landfill for the next thousand+ years. That’s pretty weird. Each year, Americans throw away 40 billion plastic knives, spoons, and forks, all because that seems more convenient than washing a reusable utensil. Because we have systems in place that mask the social and environmental costs: we can just throw them “away.” Really, “away” doesn’t exist. Zero waste isn’t just about keeping things This week, with the Paris climate talks happening, I’ve been thinking more about
