THE STORY OF STUFF

by Annie Leonard

  It seems to me that green waste—yard trimmings, leaves, and food scraps—fall into the category of our personal individual responsibility. We ate the food and planted the tree, or at least enjoyed its shade. It’s not too much to expect us, then, to manage this green waste responsibly, just as we manage other aspects of our homes. This could mean composting it ourselves or lobbying to institute a municipal composting program, paid for by taxpayer dollars.

  Then there’s all the other Stuff in the garbage: the Stuff that is the product of intentional choices in design and manufacturing, choices that were outside our reach of immediate influence.

  This Stuff falls under someone’s responsibility—the people who designed, produced, and profited from it. If you, Mr. Ketchup Producer, switch from a recyclable glass bottle to a squeezable one made of multiple plastic resins bonded together that can never be separated for recycling, you need to figure out how to deal with that at the end of its life. If you, Ms. Printer Producer, decide to make toner cartridges that are impossible to open and refill and so must be thrown out while still perfectly functional, then you deal with it. That is your choice, not mine.

  The official term for the “you made it, you deal with it” approach—of which I am a huge fan—is “extended producer responsibility” (EPR), which holds the producers of goods responsible for their entire lifecycle. This encourages producers to make improvements upstream, in the design and production phases, to avoid getting stuck with a pile of poorly designed, toxic-containing, nonupgradable junk. As I’ve previously mentioned, there are already strong government-mandated models of EPR in place, notably Germany’s Green Dot system and the European Union’s WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) directive, that illustrate how entirely feasible this approach is.

  Zero Waste

  True recycling and EPR are both elements of the broader Zero Waste plan. Zero Waste includes, but goes well beyond, recycling. Zero Waste advocates look at the broader system in which waste is created, from extraction to production all the way through consumption and disposal. In this way, Zero Waste is a philosophy, a strategy, and a set of practical tools.

  The cool thing about Zero Waste is that it breaks free from the self-defeating “what can we do with all this waste?” paradigm. Zero Waste challenges the very acceptability and inevitability of waste. It seeks to eliminate waste, not manage it. That’s why Zero Waste advocates can’t stand the term “waste management.” Their efforts don’t focus on better waste management, but on moving closer to zero waste. Unrealistic? Maybe so, but it’s the right goal to have. Just like factories have a zero defects goal and airlines have a zero accident goal. They aren’t there yet, but they are really clear about where they are heading. Can you imagine United Airlines saying “Zero accidents... or darn close?” No way; I’m aiming for zero.

  For a long time, when I would test the phrase “zero waste” in random conversations (with my dentist, the guy at the bus stop, the woman next to me on the plane), I’d get blank stares. For most people, “zero” and “waste” just didn’t fit together. It didn’t compute. We’ve all been taught that waste is inevitable, the price of progress. I still get odd stares on a regular basis, but I am happy to report that the term is catching on. Newsweek magazine’s 2008 Earth Day issue included Zero Waste on its list of “10 fixes for the planet.” The Newsweek article said, in essence, that recycling paper, plastic, and aluminum is a start, but oh so twentieth century.133 Jeffrey Hollender, executive chairperson of Seventh Generation, which makes nontoxic, recycled paper towels and other products, says, “Zero Waste is the mother of environmental no-brainers.”134

  That the concept is seeping into common vocabulary and the media is nice, but I’m really more interested in it seeping into practice. That too is happening. There is no one place that has it down pat, but there are lots of places that have, as we say, pieces of Zero. These pieces look different in different places because Zero Waste isn’t a cookie-cutter model, but a set of approaches designed to meet the needs of each place it is implemented.

  The international organization GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives) lays out nine core components of Zero Waste programs, which can be tailored and added to for different settings, from schools to neighborhoods to whole states or countries:

  1. Reducing consumption and discards

  2. Reusing discards

  3. Extended producer responsibility

  4. Comprehensive recycling

  5. Comprehensive composting or biodigestion of organic materials

  6. Citizen participation

  7. A ban on waste incineration

  8. Improving product design upstream to eliminate toxics and instead design for durability and repair

  9. Effective policies, regulations, incentives, and financing structures to support these systems135

  That covers it: you’ve got the upstream waste prevention and the corporate responsibility, the downstream waste reuse, composting and recycling, and the active, informed public and responsive government to create and implement the policies needed to make it all work. To get to Zero, we need this whole-systems approach.

  GAIA notes that “a Zero Waste approach is one of the fastest, cheapest and most effective strategies to protect the climate.” In its 2008 report Stop Trashing the Climate, GAIA explains that significantly decreasing the waste disposed of in landfills and incinerators will reduce greenhouse gas emissions the equivalent of closing one-fifth of U.S. coal-fired power plants.136

  Already there are many cities around the world that have adopted Zero Waste policies, goals, or actual plans: Buenos Aires and Rosario, Argentina; Canberra, Australia; Oakland, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco, California; Kovalam, India. In New Zealand, 71 percent of local authorities have passed a resolution to head for zero waste, and the government runs a national benchmarking system to track their progress called “Milestones on the Zero Waste Journey.”137

  In the United States, San Francisco was the first city to adopt a serious Zero Waste plan and to move aggressively toward zero. San Francisco committed to diverting 75 percent of its municipal waste from disposal by 2010 and reaching zero by 2020. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom acknowledged the roles of “producer and consumer responsibility to prevent waste and take full advantage of our nation-leading recycling and composting programs.”138 San Francisco currently has the strongest recycling and composting laws in the United States for households and businesses and, is now diverting 72 percent of its waste—the highest rate in the country.139

  On the other side of the world, the coastal town of Kovalam in South India is also aggressively working toward Zero Waste. Kovalam transformed in one generation from a quiet fishing town to a crowded holiday destination. The explosion of Western tourists led to an explosion of waste, or “dumping tourist syndrome” as my friend there, Shibu Nair, calls it. The beach, the roads, and makeshift dumps in the area overflow with empty bottles for shampoo, sunscreen, lotion, and increasingly, for water. Concerned, the local tourism department proposed building an incinerator in 2000. Local activists organized an international e-mail campaign, in which potential visitors from all over the world wrote to the tourism department, saying they wouldn’t come to a beach anywhere near an incinerator. The tourism ministry turned to a local environmental group, and Zero Waste Kovalam was born.140

  The Zero Waste Kovalam activists looked for opportunities to design waste out of the system. They set up stations for people to refill water bottles with boiled and filtered water, rather than buy new bottles. They set up worker cooperatives that trained local unemployed people to make reusable cloth bags from leftovers from the tailor shops, thus eliminating the formerly ubiquitous plastic bags.

  The founder of Zero Waste Kovalam, Jayakumar Chelaton, is proud of how the issue of waste connected to bigger issues like governance, environmental health, and economic justice in Kovalam. The Zero Waste philosophy for him “is about relationships. It is about people and communities and how w
e want to live together.”141

  And that’s exactly why I became so passionate about waste some twenty years ago. I understood waste was connected to everything else in our world. Unraveling the story of waste is what led me to the Story of Stuff.

  EPILOGUE

  WRITING THE NEW STORY

  When (if) people stop to think about it, we all worry at some level about the sacrifices that will be necessary to rewrite the Story of Stuff. We worry about big things like jobs lost in Stuff-producing factories, and we worry about little things like the lack of convenience when disposable bottles and cans disappear. Some worry that switching away from the growth-driven model of economic progress and redirecting our priorities away from amassing ever more Stuff will lower the quality of life, perhaps lead us back to living like cavemen.

  I want to start by challenging the fear of sacrifice and describing one version of what life can look like when we focus on the quality of our life, rather than the quantity of our Stuff. This is not some pie-in-the-sky scenario of how the eco-perfect person would live if she spent less time on the work-watch-spend treadmill; this is my actual lifestyle, right now.

  I’ve mentioned that I live in a tight community in downtown Berkeley, which can be considered a type of co-housing. It isn’t a hippie commune; we don’t swap partners; our children are perfectly clear on who their parents are. It’s really just a bunch of good friends who chose to live near one another—really near, like next door. We chose to relocate from various parts of the country to live in community with each other. We find life easier and more rewarding because we focus more on building community than on buying Stuff. We share a big yard; we often eat meals together; but each family has its own self-contained home into which we can retreat when we want to be alone. Some of us even watch TV, but usually together, so even that is a community activity.

  We share Stuff all the time. As the older children in the community outgrow their toys, books, and clothes, the younger children inherit them. Once, after my daughter begged me to let her try skiing, I sent an e-mail out to my community members asking for advice on where I should take her and what I’d need for the trip (not being a skier myself). When I got home from work the next day, there were three bags full of children’s ski equipment and clothes waiting for me on the front step. And that’s not unusual. Before buying some specialty tool that I need, I check to see if anyone else in the community already has one.

  We share advice. We coach each other when making difficult decisions in our personal or professional lives. I have had the best course in parenting one could ever possibly buy, in that I’ve had five sets of parents to watch as role models—this, of course, has been free. We swap services. Someone who can bake makes almost all the birthday cakes while another who is handy with a wrench helps us all with plumbing emergencies. We organize carpools. We trade off watching the kids or taking them on outings to provide one another with downtime. We host parties together, sharing the costs of setup and all pitching in to clean things up the next day.

  When I got really sick (in the last weeks before the manuscript for this book was due) with a 102 degree fever, one person drove me to the doctor while another one stepped in to watch my kid and a third brought me flowers. And you can be sure that I’ll return those favors the next time someone else in the community gets sick. Not out of obligation, but out of the pleasure of sharing.

  Because we share and borrow many of the things we need, we are able to consume less Stuff. Because we provide one another with services like baby-sitting, repairing, and listening, we pay less for services than others do. We turn to each other first, before relying on the commercial marketplace. My point is we’re living the same lifestyle as someone who’s paying for those goods and services. In all these ways, we’re not sacrificing; we’re sharing.

  And while there are material benefits to our sharing (saving money and creating less waste, because we consume less), the real benefit goes far beyond these. Rather than keep strict tabs on how many hours or how much Stuff we give one another, we cultivate a culture of reciprocity. In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam explains that “networks of community engagement foster sturdy norms of reciprocity: I’ll do this for you now, in the expectation that you (or perhaps someone else) will return the favor.”1

  Putnam talks about two kinds of reciprocity: specific, in which you actually measure and negotiate individual trades (“I’ll pick up both kids from school on Monday, you do it on Tuesday”) and the more valuable norm of generalized reciprocity (“I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back, confident that someone else will do something for me down the road”). A society based on generalized reciprocity is more efficient than one that negotiates every interaction. It provides greater security and is more fun. “Trustworthiness lubricates social life,” Putnam says.2 We’ve got one another’s backs. I know that I always have someone to call if I get a flat tire, if I need emergency childcare, if I’m hungry and too tired to cook. Sometimes I visualize this social fabric as an actual fabric that surrounds me and would catch me if I fall, as it has done metaphorically over the years.

  Individual Response

  So that’s my community-rich lifestyle. Without feeling any deprivation, we save money and resources and have more fun. However, let me be crystal clear: our community is not perfect and even if it were, living with a more community-focused life alone will not solve the world’s pressing environmental and social problems. If we want all six and a half billion humans on this earth plus future generations to have enough food in their bellies, fresh water to drink, and medicine when they’re sick, individual lifestyle shifts like mine won’t cut it. In fact, here in the United States we live inside a system so thoroughly based on fossil fuels, carbon emissions, toxic chemicals and wasted resources that no matter how much we scale back our consumption, we still can’t achieve a truly sustainable lifestyle—one within the earth’s capacity. That’s what Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, found when he spent one year with his family in Manhattan living as low-impact as possible: no trash, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air-conditioning, no TV, and no food from farther than 250 miles away. While he achieved the lowest impact of anyone I’ve heard of in an industrialized country, Beavan learned that in a metropolitan U.S. city today, it’s just impossible to achieve a sustainable life. The only way to do it would be to disengage completely from modern life and, as Beavan says, “it shouldn’t be that way.”3

  The shift we need to make in order to live within the planet’s limits is big. It requires our government, banks, labor unions, media, cultural trendsetters, schools, and corporations and business owners to get on board. Creating change this big requires that we move way beyond the simple lifestyle changes promoted as solutions through an endless parade of lists and books on “ten easy things that you can do to save the planet.” Michael Maniates, a professor of political science and environmental science at Allegheny College and an expert on consumption issues, says that the fundamental flaw of the “ten easy things” approach is that it implies: (1) our greatest source of power as individuals is in our role as consumers; (2) we humans, by nature, aren’t interested in or willing to do anything that isn’t easy; and (3) change will only happen if we convince every single person on the planet to join us. Let’s get real. It’s simply not possible to get 100 percent agreement from nearly 7 billion people on any issue, and our ecological systems are on such overload, that we simply don’t have time to try. Imagine if we had had to wait for 100 percent consensus before getting women the vote or ending slavery: we’d still be waiting.

  Not to mention that individual responsibility to save the planet can be a big drag. Let’s face it: you will become wildly unpopular if you become the disposable cup police and the PVC alarmist and the Debbie Downer about the toxins in cosmetics. People will stop inviting you to their parties if you insist on resorting their recycling for them (trust me, they will). Keeping track of all the corpo
rations you want to avoid because of their poor labor policies or their environmental impacts will cause you no end of anxiety and stress. There’s too much wrong with the system for even the most obsessive-compulsive among us to get every action and every choice just right. And because that scenario is so overwhelming, the individual-responsibility model of change risks causing people to freak out, throw their hands up in despair, and sink back into overconsumptive, wasteful lifestyles. People are busy enough already: rather than offering an overwhelming range of green lifestyle choices, we need meaningful opportunities to make big choices (for example on policy) that make big differences.

  In a 2007 op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Maniates lamented, “Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment. The hard facts are these: If we sum up the easy, cost-effective eco-efficiency measures we should all embrace, the best we get is a slowing of the growth of environmental damage... Obsessing over recycling and installing a few special lightbulbs won’t cut it. We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss... To stop at ‘easy’ is to say that the best we can do is accept an uninspired politics of guilt around a parade of uncoordinated individual action. What of the power and exhilaration that comes from working with others toward bold possibilities for the future?”4

  No doubt about it: humanity needs to undertake the much bigger and harder task of changing the way the system works. That way everyone, even those individuals too busy or too tired or too clueless to care, can still end up making low-impact choices—because that’s the new default option. With a solution of proper scope, the influence we have as consumers only gets asserted after the system has been fundamentally changed to serve sustainability and fairness—so there are entirely different choices about how to spend our money. First and foremost, the influence we have as individuals comes from our role as informed, engaged citizens: citizens who participate actively in communities and the broader political arena. And in that arena, there are an almost infinite number of policies, laws, systems, and innovations we can work toward that really would make a difference.