Menu
The zero waste lifestyle has gripped social media and became one of the most frequently discussed green living options. Those who practice it reduce their waste to the unavoidable minimum, to send nothing to the landfill.
However, even if a zero waste lifestyle is not your end goal, you can still utilize many of its principles – such as the 5 R’s of zero waste proposed by Bea Johnson in her book A Zero Waste Home – to live more sustainably and make conscious choices every day.
After all, to quote another popular sustainable lifestyle guru, The Zero Waste Chef, we don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly – we need many people doing it imperfectly. If we all pick up some of the basic principles of zero waste and start implementing them in our everyday lives, we can make a bigger difference than if we were to leave it up to the most dedicated to go all the way.
Many of us see zero waste as a trend that originated on our social media timelines – while that’s not entirely true. Although social media played a big role in popularising the lifestyle, its origins are much more complex.
Essentially, rather than a solution for each of us to individually reduce the amount of waste in our home, it was an initiative at the governmental and organisational level – guidelines for towns or businesses to follow – which evolved from a series of conferences and talks and gave rise to the Zero Waste International Alliance in the year 2000.
This happened long before Instagram or Pinterest were a thing, capturing an idealised version of the lifestyle.
That was until Bea Johnson helped popularize the use of these principles in the home – she studied up on the zero waste principles, which were only directed towards businesses and governments at the point, and applied them to the way her household managed waste. She then wrote the book A Zero Waste Home based on her experience and research, detailing principles such as the 5 R’s of zero waste.
As more people read her book worldwide, they began applying her tips and sustainable lifestyle principles to their own homes, sharing their journey on social media – which is where the zero waste movement in its current form began to take shape.
What makes zero waste such a popular option for those looking to live a more sustainable lifestyle? Why has its popularity risen so drastically in recent years?
We all want to take charge of our own environmental footprint – to feel like what we are doing truly makes sense and transforms the world into a better place. In a world where we’re given the liberty of choice of what we buy and how we live our life, we don’t want to wait for our local government, or the businesses offering the products we buy, to make a change – we want to make change ourselves.
A zero waste lifestyle allows us to do exactly that – take charge of the waste leaving our home and limit it as much as possible. It encourages us to take action and makes us feel good about what we’re doing to help the environment.
However, we can’t also forget that social media also often portrays a zero waste ideal, which is much more glamorous and aesthetically appealing than the lifestyle we will live if we chose to incorporate more zero waste principles into our lives. In this case, social media is a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it promotes zero waste and helps others learn about more ways to limit their individual impact. However, on the other, it can also make us feel like to live zero waste, we need to replace the food storage containers we use with matching mason jars, buy every zero waste gadget available and throw out all the plastic items we own, etc.
While the aesthetic side of zero waste social media is helping popularise it, we need to be careful about what we portray and accept as the zero waste ideal we strive towards.
The 5 R’s of zero waste is a simple model consisting of 5 consecutive steps: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot. When trying to tackle a source of waste in your home, go down this list and apply the first possible option.
The first option is to simply refuse what you don’t need. This helps you tackle waste at the very beginning – before it comes into your home. Choose not to buy or receive something that would otherwise bring clutter and become waste without being enjoyed. This also helps reduce the overall demand for wasteful items, which means less will be made in the future.
Freebies and items you don’t have to pay for may seem like a good deal, but they’re usually things you wouldn’t otherwise be bringing into your home, only adding clutter which will eventually become waste.
Plastic isn’t the only material to refuse (paper or glass waste is still waste) but it is a good place to start if you’re just getting started with a more sustainable lifestyle. If, on the other hand, you’re a little more experienced with a plastic-free lifestyle, you may want to refuse all materials too. As a general rule, it’s best to refuse things you have no use for.
Here are a few examples of moments in everyday life when this zero waste principle can be applied:
The exact items you’ll want to refuse depend on your lifestyle and habits. To get started, observe when you’re accepting wasteful objects and become more mindful of refusing them whenever you get the chance to.
The next best action you can take is to reduce what you need. This offers an opportunity to rethink what are the necessities you can’t live without and what is just bringing waste to your home and unnecessary expenses to your bank account. Become more mindful of what you’re adding to your life and where it ends up after it no longer brings you any benefits or joy.
It’s important to be realistic when deciding what to reduce, as we’re exceptionally good at convincing ourselves that we absolutely need a new piece of clothing, or some décor for our home. The best way to avoid mislabelling unnecessary purchases and necessities is to sleep on it. If you feel like you still need that jumper after a week, go ahead and buy it – that way, you can avoid impulse purchasing items that would only become waste after a few weeks or months.
To reduce what you buy, it’s also important to take proper care of what you already have. From following the care instructions on a garment label, to regularly cleaning your laptop, make sure you’re getting the best use out of your current possessions to prevent having to buy new ones too early.
Again, this will vary massively based on your individual lifestyle, but here are a few simple examples of products to reduce if you want to live a more sustainable lifestyle:
If you can’t refuse or reduce it, reusing is one of the best ways to lower your environmental impact and live a more sustainable lifestyle. We often feel as if we need to buy new items to solve a problem we are facing – when in fact, we could often just reuse what we already own. This applies to all kinds of items, but clothes are a great example – re-wear what is already in your closet instead of buying a new outfit for an event.
When items break, learn to mend them or take them to a specialist to do it for you, so that you can keep reusing them, instead of buying a replacement. In the throwaway culture we live in nowadays, we often forget about the importance of repairing things that can easily be repaired.
Here are a few different ways to reuse what you already have instead of buying new items:
If you do need to buy new items, opt for reusable, zero waste alternatives rather than single-use options which would end up in the landfill very quickly. Most everyday items have reusable alternatives which will help you substantially reduce your impact, from basics such as shopping bags, through alternatives gaining in popularity like menstrual cups, to completely new nifty inventions such as reusable Q tips!
Here are a few other reusable zero waste products to help you live a more sustainable lifestyle:
It is important to recycle – however, we first need to talk about what this word actually means. Recycling refers to reforming the material into a new product, indefinitely. This can be done with glass or metal, but not plastic or paper, which lose quality through the process and can only be ‘recycled’ a handful of times. Therefore, it’s best to refuse, reduce or reuse them if you can.
However, you may also be able to get of carboard and some other paper in the following step – rot. It is also worth noting that if you have a choice between paper and plastic packaging (and no other option is available, remember that paper can be recycled more times than plastic and decomposes quicker, without polluting the environment with microscopic plastic particles, after it is thrown away.
Aside from recycling materials by throwing them in the appropriate recycling bin, you can also upcycle them – make something new out of them or find them a new purpose in your home. Here are just a few simple upcycling ideas to help you live a more sustainable lifestyle:
Lastly, it’s important to rot your food scraps (and other compostables such as cardboard, cork, dust, leaves or stale pet food) in a compost rather than sending them to landfill – so that they’re given optimum access to oxygen and can decompose properly. In a landfill, they would release methane and contribute to climate change instead.
You can find 10 easy things to compost at home here.
Composting has evolved and there are plenty of options for giving it a try in an apartment too! Bokashi bins, worm bins, or simply making use of a community garden are some of the top options. Alternatively, you may have friends or relatives with a garden compost that you visit frequently – you could make use of their compost by collecting all your scraps in a dedicated bin and emptying it on their compost every time you visit.
Here are some of the things you can commonly compost both in a worm bin or garden compost:
Some of these items, on the other hand, need to be shredded to cut into pieces before being added to your compost:
Lastly, avoid adding these to your compost:
On a journey towards a sustainable lifestyle, there are bound to be a few mistakes. These are a few to watch out for. However, don’t get discouraged if you find any other hurdles on the way – these are a part of the journey.
Focusing on living a more zero waste lifestyle is an amazing thing. However, don’t do so at the expense of other sustainability causes. Sometimes, if we are trying too hard to live more sustainably in one way, we struggle to see the big picture.
Only taking the waste an item produces into account could potentially lead you to choosing items that may, for example, come without plastic packaging, but have a massive carbon footprint.
Make use of what you already own before switching to zero waste alternatives. For example, don’t rush to throw away your plastic Tupperware just so you can buy a glass or stainless steel alternative. If the items are already in your home, you’re only going to do more damage to the environment if you throw them away without getting the best use out of them.
Additionally, if these items are not fit for the purpose they were designed for anymore, you can also upcycle them and give them a new purpose.
As we’ve touched upon before, social media tends to portray a zero waste lifestyle in a very specific way – one focused on aesthetics. While it’s great to look at content that inspires you, it also establishes the notion that to live a zero waste lifestyle, we need to achieve this aesthetic and invest in the latest sustainable gadgets – which is simply not true.
The best way to live a zero waste lifestyle is to make more out of less, which often involves prioritising use over aesthetics.
You don’t need to go all the way to zero waste to make use of the movement’s ideas and principles. Quite the opposite – we could all use a little less waste in our lives, which can be easily achieved by taking the first few steps zero waste suggests.
The 5R’s of zero waste are a brilliant concept if you’re just getting started on a sustainability journey. The framework is as easy to follow as going down a list and choosing the first option that applies: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle or rot. Give it a try!
A 30 second read delivered to your inbox
with tips for self care and sustainable living.
Start your day with something good.
In order to grow our small business, daably earns revenue in a few different ways. Our Site will occasionally contain (paid) links to, and quotation of, material from other sites. This is an arrangement between the retailer and daably, readers never pay more for products. We publish several sponsored posts each month, which are always labeled at the top. These are the ways we support daably and allow us to run the site and engage with this community we truly love. daably is not responsible for the content or the privacy practices of other sites and expressly disclaims any liability arising out of such content or practices. Under no circumstances does daably accept responsibility for, nor shall daably be liable for any damages or detriment arising out of content, practices, or other media of third party links.
© daably 2021
