Elissa Farrow

ZERO WASTE LIVING: THE 80/20 WAY. THE BUSY PERSON’S GUIDE TO A LIGHTER FOOTPRINT

Book Review by

Elissa Farrow

By Stephanie J Miller, Foreward by Thomas Lovejoy

ABOOK about creating a lighter footprint for a busy person, sounded exactly what a busy futurists like me needed. Something practical and absorbable with concepts that were easy to share with my family and friends. “Zero Waste Living – The 80/20 Way” is a play on the pareto efficiency concept created by philosopher and economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). Pareto pondered the notion of uneven distribution of wealth and discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. He investigated different industries and found that 80% of production typically came from 20% of the companies. So too in Stephanie Miller’s book one of the “Resetting Our Future Series”, she outlines how a few, relatively simple and easy lifestyle changes can create significant positive impact. She demonstrates through a mixture of story and research that 20% of activities we all can do in our homes and communities when it comes to waste reduction can make the biggest (80%) difference in reversing the climate and waste crises. The best thing is that she experimented and self applied the concepts she and others created to come up with a practice, easy and informative read.

The book begins with a forward and context setting by conservation biologist Dr Thomas Lovejoy. He discusses the challenge and changes in the concept of waste over time from the scarcity eras in western countries during war times, compared to the current where there is “three times as many people alive” compared to when he was born, “a growing appetite for affluence” and the “demonizing of the environment” by conservative political advisors. He also sets the context and imperative to “rebuild with humility and imagination, while always conscious of the health of the living planet on which we have the job and privilege to exist”. This hopeful theme continues with Stephanie Miller writing in first person about her own “aha moment” where she practiced the concept of “zero waste” that is a movement that “promotes living with less consumption and less or no waste”. This is where the pareto rules comes in as she realised that for her and her family, the zero waste actions that would have the biggest impact were in the domains of food, plastics and recycling right – her “magic three”.

The next three chapters outline ideas to reduce the amount of food waste by focussing on what we eat (her preference is more plant based) and its carbon footprint, how we cook our food, and where we source our food from (Chapter two). Chapter three is all about purging plastics, simply it is about reducing the single use plastics by even picking a few items and finding a non-plastic alternative. Stephanie Miller gives a lot of practical examples of how she does this. Chapter four is about recycling right, a common area for errors by people who may think they are doing the right thing, but are not because they are not being conscious of the flow on effects of the recycling process such as don’t put dirty containers in recycling, rinse them first, or seek out recycling centres that can take specific items. The final chapter (5) is the change management piece, looking beyond the individual to the broader community starting with members of our family. I really enjoyed this book and it is in a form that is truly accessible – it made me immediately see even as a busy person I could do a few additional small steps that would make a big impact.

Pareto, Vilfredo, Cours d’Économie Politique: Nouvelle édition par G.-H. Bousquet et G. Busino, Librairie Droz, Geneva, 1964