r/ZeroWaste

No Food Waste

I work in a regional energy policy office in the Northeast, and we're trying to cut down on day-to-day waste, not just the big grid stuff. Small victory: facilities agreed to stop buying single-use coffee pods and put in a basic drip machine with a reusable filter.

Problem is we do not have a real kitchen, just a sink in the copy room. Folks are fine bringing their own mugs, but the carafe, filter basket, and a couple communal spoons are now in limbo. If I leave them on the counter they get crusty. If I wash them, people start assuming I will always wash them. If I put out a towel to dry things, it gets moved or thrown away. We are trying to avoid paper towels, so that is another mini battle.

I do not want to shame coworkers. The pod habit was a system problem, not a moral failing. At the same time I do not want to go back to pods because the shared stuff turned gross.

Has anyone found a low-drama system for shared kitchen items in an office with almost no space? I'm thinking a simple rotating schedule, a small drying rack with a sign, or a bin labeled dirty versus clean. I would love ideas that use frictionless defaults instead of asking people to be saints.

Bonus question: any tips for keeping coffee grounds from turning into a sink clog without relying on disposable sink strainers?

I have set of 2 chairs and an ottoman whose wood parts themselves are in great condition, but due to many years with various pets, the upholstery is faded and shredded in a lot of places. I’d hate to just throw them away when they seem like something that could easily have be rejuvenated, but I don’t have space for them anymore, nor do I have the time to learn to do it myself. They’ve also been in my family as long as I can remember and have sentimental value to me, so while I’m okay with letting them go, I hate the idea of sending them to a landfill all the more. Any idea how to get them to someone who can give them a second life?

I’m just being reminded of the plastic crisis affecting basically everything. I already buy everything second hand unless it is basically impossible to do so. But I produce a lot of plastic trash from food. I’m tired of the “it’s too hard” mindset when trying to make change in the world, speaking for myself.

Have any of y’all arranged a way to keep all of your plastic waste at home? This obviously would force me to reduce the amount I produce. But I just want to try for a little bit and just see how much I’m creating. I’ve seen people make rugs and nets with plastic. Anything else like that that you can think of? I could use it for insulation, repurpose it, or just find a way to compact it. Idk I’m just stressed and want to not contribute to the waste any more.

The self-centered perspective

In our modern consumerist environment, we often face the question: "Is it worth it? A question that has long since become the main driver behind our every action. Will this CHF 85 face serum wipe away our unimpressed expressions? Should we read this book to keep up in conversation? Are the prices of our cinema tickets justified just to see the new Christopher Nolan film 'as he intended' in an IMAX theatre? Reddit threads offer advice on how much of our monthly salaries we should be spending on Margiela Tabi shoes. Instagram feeds break down the number of calories one should consume to look 20% more like someone who spends three times our annual income on cosmetic procedures. And the list goes on…

Our realities have become a performance in which we carefully curate our own personas with the objects we consume. Through capitalist ideology, our daily lives are inherently structured by the lens of rationalisation and personal optimisation. Every second is an opportunity for us to assess our aspirations and curate our online shopping wish lists, cementing the rationale that everything is at our fingertips - at the right price! In our obsession with personal optimisation and branding, we have entered a state of constant comparison, where anything is compared to everything and anyone to everyone, ultimately turning our existence into a never-ending competition. As a result, our relationship with the objects we consume to express our identities, but ultimately also our relationships with each other, are extremely skewed and superficial. A reality in which every instance is valued in terms of our immediate benefit from it. Our material possessions become temporary extensions to fill in the gaps of our characters. Our conversations either personally challenge us and thus are a learning experience, or are an opportunity for us to flaunt our feathers and indulge our egos. 

If our whole being has become a performance manifested through our material possessions, it becomes quite revealing to observe this behaviour through the lens of an individual's dressing behaviour. Our clothes are conveniently part of our possessions that we are able to present to the world on a daily basis. As such, every item of clothing has become a tool for communicating who we are, what we value and who we aspire to be. And we are not oblivious to the meaning that our chosen skin, the clothes on our backs, carry with them. Our bodies are canvases, draped in textiles that are deliberately collected, assembled and combined, but perhaps also deliberately ignored. They become an identifier of where we belong, a marker of "our kind of people" or "the bubble". Looking at ETH specifically as architecture students, we've become a caricature of ourselves, clearly distinguishable from the rest of the student body. Not only are we proud of this fact, but most days it feels like we are actively reinforcing these aspects of ourselves. By exaggerating the distinct differences that we believe we possess, day in and day out we put on a show that can only be described as: Alumni Lounge Fashion Week. Aestheticizing our appearance so that as a collective we form a tableau vivant, perfectly stylized right down to the carefully selected footwear, the matching septum piercings and the obvious dark circles under our eyes. We try hard to appear low-maintenance, but as we morph more and more into each other, we realise that each of us spends a considerable amount of time pre-selecting the right combination of garments that together give off - nonchalance.

In 1987, Barbara Kruger debuted her artwork 'I shop therefore I am', appropriating Descartes' famous quote to critique Western consumerism. Her work suggests that it is no longer our thoughts that affirm our existence, but our shopping behaviour. Shopping has become both the proof and the performance of our being. As part of this performance, we've become experts at meticulously analysing our surroundings in as much detail as possible, only to make the slightest adjustments to the expression of our persona to conform to the milieu at hand. Existing (blissfully) within the systemically created illusion of complete freedom of choice under capitalism. Failing to acknowledge that our innate desire to differentiate ourselves, either individually or as a group, masks the banal sameness we embody in our expressive nature. But also neglecting to acknowledge that in a consumer-driven society this focus on material well-being as an egalitarian landscape is a meticulously crafted illusion. When consumption becomes a primary marker of social participation, non-consumers are viewed as redundant and often face exclusion. As such the ideology acts as the perfect smokescreen for structural inequalities that keep growing on a global scale and will continue to deny access to most social groups. 

The symbolism attached to our material possessions and our behaviour around them only creates an impression of diversity. This diversity, however, only applies to our isolated and immediate environment and translates into a constant pressure to consume, because without consumption we lack any sense of social legitimacy. Individually, we spend hours evaluating our outfits, sifting through all the possible combinations that line our (virtual) wardrobes to arrive at a seemingly unique end result. (Only to see that exact combination of clothes in the same colours and materials in the Vogue newsletter that hits our inbox every day). While in our minds we’ve long graduated to the status of ‘Trailblazers’, in reality we are just following the sugar trail that has been laid out for us by the market. Wearing the trap like a tailored suit makes us feel accomplished and validated. And even if our sense of self-worth, informed by consumerist ideology, is short-lived through feelings of instant gratification, we can be sure that the social expectation to continue consuming will remain.

Because we are constantly reinterpreting, reinventing or improving ourselves, we are in a constant state of becoming. Paradoxically, however, we choose objects in their finished and unaltered state to express this evolution. Clothing, which we are currently consuming at a higher rate than at any other time in history and which is available to us in abundance, itself lacks any of these qualities of reinvention, adaptation or change. Instead of investing the same time and effort in our clothes as we do in our image, we only have temporary custody of them. Each piece is a snapshot of who we were at the fleeting moment we bought it, but as quickly as our genetically modified avocados imported from Peru go bad, we find new clothes that better identify us. So, in our efforts to stay relevant and have enough options to represent our apparent mood swings, which depend on the content that pops up on our Instagram feeds, we regularly replace our wardrobes with T-shirts and jeans that we all buy from the same stores, are all cut from the same fabrics, and are all sewn together using the same copy and paste patterns.

We follow the fast-paced fashion cycles of the stores that line our wardrobes, stocking up to 6,000 new and trendier items every day. And despite our best efforts to resist the temptation of each new trend, we usually succumb by the second bad day in a row. And realistically, we know from the moment we buy new items that they will only be good for us for so long, so they might as well have an expiry date on their tags or descriptions like: ‘This lame slogan T-shirt symbolizes that you have finally accepted that the only constant in your life is that you lack a sense of purpose and will most likely never find one, but in exactly 48 days you will have a change of heart and adjust your self-assessment through a Buddhist lens, understanding that all your suffering is actually due to your vain desire for material goods, and in response you will discard all your clothing, such as this T-shirt, which expresses more than the colour of your daily porridge breakfast.’ This may sound ridiculous written out like this, but it is exactly this kind of thinking that begins to explain how the current short-lived fashion cycles survive through our even faster consumer behaviour.

The alienation we feel from the global production processes behind the textile industry, as well as the products we end up consuming, can certainly be attributed to our narrow view of value. In the current economic climate, our relationship with material possessions and the value we place on them is heavily influenced by market forces, virality on social media, and the potential for clout gains. A system that mostly serves those in power. We view most physical products on a flat screen and our decision-making process is almost exclusively based on the image of a particular product or brand. Despite the increase in digital information available to us and the apparent shift towards more ethical consumption, the total consumption of textiles has increased by 400% in the last 20 years. Consumption has this wondrous appeal and is perceived as a gift and our natural right. Our current abundance seems to magically appear on our phones and delivered to our doorsteps, rather than being the result of hard work and production. This disconnection from the realities behind production cycles is also a carefully crafted system that keeps the symbolism we attach to our objects of desire alive, and keeps us constantly yearning for our next acquisition. With the media too busy reporting on the latest trend colour for our next seersucker skirt to inform us of the realities behind that skirt, we remain largely oblivious to the exploitative working conditions.

Our consumption patterns merely extend the control systems once dominated by industrialisation. The shift away from production doesn't represent a real change, but rather a substitution of values. In our research, we've looked at the relationship of dependency that existed between the rural textile workers in Zurich and the urban merchants who traded in goods. Today, this hierarchical system has merely shifted towards our personal subordination to the market and is only disguised as our liberation, while holding on to cycles of systemic control.

The less self-centered perspective 

If we consider that within the textile industry, 53 % of the global market share is produced in only five countries – China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Turkey and India – it is no wonder, that we’ve become detached from the production processes at large and it is evident that a shift in how we perceive and use our clothes is overdue.

Looking back at what we've explored in our historical research on the textile industry in Switzerland, we must emphasise that the processes and production have always been a global enterprise. This was possible mainly because of the strategic quality of Switzerland's position on the world map, with its excellent infrastructure and strong trade links. But the textile industry also flourished because of the large number of workers engaged in the time-consuming work of textile production, at wages that neither reflected their efforts nor the value at which the products they made were sold. The relationship between workers and industrialists was carefully crafted and strategically maintained to avoid any change in the dependency on the industrialist and the exploitation of the workers. The textile industry, like many others, is still heavily influenced by this systemic oppression. The only difference today is that we are on the side that benefits from that system, and the workers are just far enough away for us not to notice them directly.

The textile and fashion industry currently employs around 75 million people, 75% of whom are women. However, less than 2% of these workers earn a living wage. These women become prisoner-like figures of their employers, dependent on the low wages they're paid. And children are often forced to work from the age of 10 in order to generate the extra income needed to keep the family economy afloat. It is a workforce that remains largely anonymous behind the employment figures of individual companies that provide us with abstract figures of how many people work ridiculous hours for the companies success.

The sweatshops of our world have sadly relied for too long on the physical labour of workers to mass-produce affordable clothing. Their bodies are often seen as parts of the industrial machine, their wellbeing secondary to profit margins. Sexual harassment, violations of workers' rights and anti-union rules remain the norm. And it is not uncommon for women to suffer from bladder infections because they are denied 5-minute toilet breaks. Or that employers force their workers to take contraceptive pills under duress so that they don't drop out of the workforce because of motherhood. And because they are not covered by health insurance, workers often skip necessary treatment, leading to chronic health problems. The physical aspect of the work keeps the workforce very young - and manipulable. And as soon as the productivity of the workers begins to decline, the worn-out workers are forced to leave. This underlines the process of ejection after labour exhaustion, which follows a cycle of recruitment, exploitation and disposal.

The physical working space in sweatshops clearly supports an aspect of workers' bodies as interchangeable and temporary. The evidence of the profit-driven sweatshop regime is materialised in its infrastructural failures. As recently as 2013, workers were threatened by their employers to continue reporting to work despite known structural damage to the building. Ultimately, an eight-storey building in Savar, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing 1,134 garment workers and injuring another 2,600, many of them permanently. The Rana Plaza incident shone a light on the precarious working conditions and the spaces that surround them, specifically to make products for major Western brands such as Primark, C&A and Mango. While the incident undoubtedly shocked the world, and the textile industry in particular, initially measures were taken to improve the conditions surrounding textile production. Safety standards have been raised through private governance initiatives such as the `Accord on Fire and Building Safety’ and the `Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety’. However, these initiatives rely heavily on brand cooperation to enforce these protocols directly in their own member factories. As indirect sourcing through intermediaries remains a common practice for cost efficiency reasons, the position of these labour laws remains weak at best. The indirect and equally opaque production chains make it almost impossible to enforce safety standards, as factories often fly under the radar and lack the necessary investment in infrastructure and technology to enforce them. This complex network of global brands, local factories, countless subcontractors, workers and consumers often exerts conflicting pressures on each other, perpetuating the cycle of low-cost production.

The promise that industrial employment could be a path to women's empowerment has proved largely illusory, and the expected autonomy for women through factory work in a globalised economy has largely resulted in employment at minimum wages and in extremely poor working conditions. Our current global production lines are designed to be very flexible. The promise of efficiency on the production line often translates into an unstable working environment with no protection for workers. As a result, the predominantly female workforce enters a cycle of disposability that responds to market fluctuations. Female workers are often seen as little more than the raw material they process. They are denied any security of employment, health insurance or social welfare. This is still largely linked to the cultural stigmatisation of women as uneducable and their efforts not seen as legitimate work. Because of the persistence of these stereotypical gender roles, women are more likely to be pushed into low-paid, short-term employment, neglecting their potential for skilled work and thus their potential to acquire skills. Ultimately, these hiring practices only reinforce narratives of female inferiority. 

Garment making is rightly a manual process, but it needs to be recognised as such: workers are not just a tool or a machine in the industry, but bring essential dexterity to the process. While patterns can be laser cut from textiles and fabrics woven on fully automated looms, the human element of guiding individual pieces of fabric through a sewing machine cannot be replaced. The assembly process requires a high degree of precision and is a skill acquired through time and practice. However, as a predominantly female occupation, garment making continues to be labelled as 'unskilled work'. It is unlikely that these working conditions will be addressed until our consumer habits and values begin to change.

The outcome of the public vote exposes a central contradiction in Switzerland's global position. While our self-projection has always centred on our neutrality and humanitarian concerns, we are reluctant to impose enforceable standards on powerful corporations that fall under our jurisdiction. This result, in itself, exposes the true nature of our structure around neutrality. That in reality we've always been very adept at personal gain on a global scale, regardless of the political alliances of our partners, and is further supported by our mastery of political loopholes and regulatory leniency, and mirrors the very structure of global capitalism.

Conclusion

The spaces we inhabit have become places that focus on our individual consumption, and the stores we visit have become our main source of entertainment - physical and virtual. So anything that is not popular or marketable is overshadowed in our contemporary cultural landscape. Our notions of success, happiness and self-worth, derived from our consumerism, have trapped us in a loop of constantly seeking more, better and shinier, while completely ignoring how the objects we buy are produced. We value objects more for their cultural symbolism than out of necessity or simple function. We've replaced fulfilling experiences and community-based activities with the acquisition of status symbolism and exhibition. We believe it is necessary to re-evaluate the world of consumption on a level that goes beyond the act of simply buying things, but also addresses the individual and cultural practices that surround it. We need to ask whose voices are being heard and whose bodies have the capacity to be seen.

But we also need to address how we approach the way we express our individuality within a globalised world. In a world where we are all entangled with one another in some shape or form, because of the predominant production chain. The erasure of the people involved in the production chain until clothes reach our markets comes hand in hand with the erasure of them as soon as they have any traces of use. While somewhere in the back of our minds we have faint memories of our mother sewing a pink penguin patch onto the torn knees of our jeans, making them undeniably our own, we never see people walking around town with patches on their clothes, even though we know from personal experience that clothes still get torn and tattered. The term “unusable” is being assigned to those pieces far too quickly and we clearly lack a sense of the materials beyond our short-term satisfaction and current cycles of fashion. With an approach that focuses on the reuse of used textiles, we'd like to bring the creative aspect of creating garments to the forefront, highlighting the individual skills and imagination of ourselves and of each worker. The result should be unique garments that tell a story not only of where they have travelled on our backs, but also of who owned them before us and whose hands made them for us. While this approach won't solve the immense web of total exploitation and inequitable global relations, we hope to start a conversation by engaging with the thought experiment of: what if we had to find a solution and where we would start.

How do you take home lettuce and other produce that gets sprayed with water in grocery store produce sections?

I've been washing and reusing the plastic produce bags that the store provides, but they don't look good after they've been washed and crumpled, and they don't last long because they tear so easily.

I want to find (recycled/recyclable) plastic bags that are similar in size and shape but thicker and sturdier enough to last much longer and still look clean and smooth. Ideally transparent or translucent, and preferably not designed to fold into four quadrants at the bottom, because that makes cleaning, rinsing, and drying them more difficult.

Does anyone know if a bag like this exists?

The closest I can think of would be gallon-sized ziploc bags, but even those show wear and tear pretty quickly, and they wouldn't accommodate long bunches of kale, tall stalks of celery, etc.

I would like to volunteer and start an initiative at my local grocery store.

My idea: have people drop off their excess reusable bags..I would wash them, and then offer people a clean bag if they forget theirs instead of buying new. this would be me volunteering to do it.

So there would be a box for used bags and a box for clean bags that are free to take.

There are a couple problems I have with this idea.

1. Bed bugs. (I am scared to take random bags I to my apartment to wash. I had thought about getting a zapp bug. But they are like $300.
2. The extra money it would cost me for washing bags in hot water, detergent, etc. (it wouldn't cost a lot more in detergent, because I have it in bulk.)
3. Convincing the store to do it. I haven't asked, but would they be willing to do it if they make a profit off their bags?

Can someone help me think of some solutions to these problems?

1. possible ideas: we do have a reuse centre in our city where we have a giant bin full of used reusable bags that people have dropped off. they are free to take. So I could get many bags from here.

I know using nothing is ideal, but I’m thinking about situations like having guests over or after cooking when I want to get rid of lingering smells and freshen up the space.

Also, I’ve been using candles that come in reusable jars, but I’m not sure how to repurpose the containers. Any ideas?

I’ve always hated the feeling of top sheets so I’ve now got a collection of some. I’ve made duvets with a couple, throw pillows, a tote bag, and a bag to hold my iPad. I have one left a white floral that’s a thin polyester. Maybe something for a pet? I have lots of pets.

Quick idea I’m working on and I want real opinions, nothing sugarcoated.

Most floss picks get used for like 30 seconds and then thrown away. That adds up to a ton of plastic waste for something so small.

My friend and I are considering launching a product in the next 2–4 months:

Biodegradable floss picks (bamboo/wood handle + silk floss)

A small, clean travel case to carry them so they’re not just loose in your bag/car

The goal is to make flossing on-the-go easier and reduce waste without it feeling like a “downgrade” product.

Couple questions:

Would you actually use something like this?

What do you like/dislike about current floss picks?

Does “biodegradable” even matter to you, or is convenience everything?

Would you pay a bit more for this if it looked and felt premium?

Be brutally honest—if this sounds pointless, say that too. I’m still early and trying to figure out if this is worth pursuing.

I wanted to create a list of sustainable/zero waste/heathier (?) options below that i've come across/been told to use for people who are also thinking of making a change :) also to hopefully reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed, since there's so much on the internet of what direction to go, and make a go-to list of places to start.

I'm very new at all this sustainable stuff. i've always turned lights off when i leave a room, lower the thermostat, recycle as much as possible, etc, but that's as far as i went.  but ever since the beginning of the war with Iran, global warming/climate change at an all time high, and a very real food crisis on the rise, I've been making sustainable changes to my lifestyle. 

i want to note everything below has been recommended to me and i haven't actually tried any other the products. i will probably edit this post in the future once i've had a chance to try them out.

this is what i have so far:

- shampoo and conditioner bars: top brands i've been recommended are ethique and lush

- toilet paper: plant paper and who gives a crap both are tree-free and use either bamboo or recycled paper. also are unbleached which is better for the booty

- toothpaste: waste free toothpaste brands like bite (would recommend the fluoride version), desesh (also have shampoo bars, shower, skincare products), and canary are pretty decent

- detergent: diy laundry detergent (mixture of grated castile soap, baking soda and wash powder) is pretty good but apparently if you have really hard water adding white vinegar helps, and dropps are the main two i've been told about. also blueland and seventh generation (not zero waste but a good middle ground since they dont use any chemicals that are terrible for you)

- paper towels: caboo makes their paper towels from bamboo (they also have toilet paper) or you could switch to reusable rags 

- pads: for those who go through the dreaded red each month, new moon pads and Butter Dragon Creaative on etsy make cloth pads that are reusable. I already use period underwear and it gets a little nasty eventually so i thought that reusable pads which are easier to clean would be better switch

- removing plastic in kitchen: no more cutting boards, cups, cutlery, plates, etc. everything can be replaced with wood, glass, silicone, or metal (or other materials i cant think of right now). I'm also paranoid about micro-plastics being all up in my business so i'll definitely be doing this

- growing your own food: I came across Toni Farmer's page on ig about a month ago and i really appreciate her approach to this whole food crisis/shortage fear. she's upfront about what's happening but also provides in-depth and researched solutions on how to actually maintain a self-grown garden.  this is her page on ig is tonifarmersgarden

that's the list i have at the moment. if anyone has any thoughts/comments/anything to correct me on or add, please go for it! this isn't by any means a bullet-proof list, some things will work for some and others not, so the more options the better! 

on a separate note, I hope everyone keeps well and healthy during this time. there's a lot of uncertainty and anxiety being thrown around, but there's always a way around these things. humans and smart as hell and thrive off of community, so talk to your friends, call your family and protect your joy :0

Hi all, I’ve just started to change to plastic free living to avoid microplastics in my day-to-day life. Here are things I’ve purchased/ changed already. Let me know if you have any thoughts on anything I’ve missed/ recommend for certain products! I’m located in Australia.

Personal:

metal razor

plastic free floss sticks

shampoo and conditioner bars

soap bar

bamboo toothbrush

bamboo hairbrush

toothpaste tablets

stainless steel soap holder & toothbrush holder

recommendations for a good deodorant that works, skincare, makeup

Food:

Yogurt maker

Produce bags

Buying food from butchers/ delis

Beeswax wraps

Plastic free drink bottle

Glass bottle milk

Whole foods shops - waste free

Recommendation: milk that’s plastic free?

Kitchen:

Containers - replaced with stainless steel and glass

Bamboo utensils

Wooden chopping block

Bamboo handle peelers

Stainless steel measuring cups

Wooden dish brush

Stainless steel soap and dishwasher liquid dispenser

Linen Bread bags

Organic plastic free sponge

Recommendations - dishwashing liquid, hand soap, spray and wipe + general cleaning supplies, laundry liquid.

I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of research trying to find a plastic-free solution to my Florida pit sweat, but I (along with so many others on this sub) can only seem to find deodorants that are anti-science and aluminum-free.

Which is why I decided to let these companies know that there is an untapped market for this product!!

So far I have emailed these companies:

- meow meow tweet

- humble

- fussy

- native

- upcircle

- seekbamboo

- chagrin valley soap and salve

- the ever good

- free the ocean

- ecoroots

- stinkbug organics

- attitude living

- ethique

If you are like me, and want to reduce plastic while also not sweating, please email them along with me!! Let them know people want this!!