Every few months I head to the local hardware store for another box of 100 contractor bags. Most of it is for the photography studio that I run, which generates an off-putting amount of garbage, but plenty of the bags go towards my own waste, which I haul out to the curb maybe twice a week. So I was astonished to see that Lauren Singer, who like me lives in New York City, has generated the following amount of trash in two years' time:
I was so stunned that Singer may as well have hit me in the jaw with that jar. How is it possible to live as your average consumer in NYC, eat three square meals a day, buy the things you need to survive, and not generate the 4.3 pounds of trash per day that the average American does?
Singer was profiled in Laura Ling's "Seeker Stories," providing some insight:
If you're like me, you still had tons of questions after the video: How does she handle takeout food? How does she find package-free cleaning products? Where does she shop? What kinds of compromises does a person have to make in order to live a zero-waste lifestyle? (It should be noted that Singer has not thrown that small jar of trash out but is hanging on to it, so I think it's accurate to say she's living zero-waste.)
Singer has the answer to the questions above, and more, on her Trash is for Tossers website, which details her adventures in zero waste. You'll have to poke around a bit to find specific answers, but that's the point; the more we learn about what Singer's doing and how she does it, the better.
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