I really struggled with this blog post because…I wanted it to be perfect. The irony! As one of my creative writing teachers told us, just write “s&!%, s&!%, s&!%” over and over and over if that’s what you must do to get words onto the page (or screen).
Like perfection, the zero in zero waste can be paralyzing. It’s so absolute and unforgiving. But remember calculus class—you never actually reach zero. My calculus professor explained it this way: You walk toward a wall. If you cut your distance in half each time you walk toward the wall, the distance to the wall grows infinitesimally smaller and smaller. But it will never reach zero. The distance to the wall will only approach zero.
I hope these ideas help you both approach zero waste and retain your sanity.
1. Do start small
With a new diet, if you starve yourself, you set yourself up for failure—and weight gain. Eliminating your waste cold turkey can also lead to frustration and failure. You may feel overwhelmed with the new regimen or not start at all, and just give up and start eating fast food for breakfast, lunch and dinner (which also leads to weight gain).
Instead, start small. Take a reusable cup to the cafe, start shopping at the farmer’s market where you’ll likely find lots of produce without plastic packaging or try to make one meal a day plastic-free. Then, take another step. Here are some more ideas to get started.
2. Do something
For some, the goal of perfection—and our inherent inability to reach it—can serve as an argument for doing nothing. No, I can’t fix the plastic problem in our oceans but I can do my best to avoid worsening it by making different choices and avoiding consuming plastic. As a bonus, these alternatives almost always have other beneficial side-effects. Food that I cook myself tastes much better than processed food-like products packaged in plastic. I eat a healthier diet—because when you cut the plastic you eat real food—and I rarely get sick. Saving and freezing my vegetable scraps to make broth saves money.
3. Do experiment
We have abandoned many skills. Part of this comes from the fact that schools stopped teaching subjects like carpentry, gardening, cooking and sewing. This lack of skills has rendered us helpless and dependent on corporations to fulfill almost all of our desires and needs—and that convenience contributes to waste probably more than anything else. The maker movement is changing this situation though. Rather than passively consume, a growing number of people want to be active makers. So try stuff (if you want to), like making your own yogurt, mending a pair of pants or growing a tomato plant. What’s the worse that can happen? You might waste some milk, jab yourself with a sewing needle or get your hands dirty.
4. Don’t feel you have to do everything yourself
I happen to enjoy cooking from scratch—and eating the end result. That’s just how I am—completely obsessed with food. Everyone is different. You may not want to bake bread. And even if you do want to, you may not have time. You can just buy the bread. It’s okay. At many bakeries, you can bring your own cloth bag to buy loose, unpackaged bread. I do this sometimes for my younger daughter. She dislikes my “sourdough hippie bread.” A rebellious teenager, she has also taught herself how to make white bread using commercial yeast. Farming out the work to your family is a good option if you want to eat more food made from scratch.
I also enjoy making stuff. I have since I was a little kid. Again, that’s just me. Whenever I post pictures of my very basic cloth produce bags, people always ask where they can buy similar bags. Not everyone knows how to sew or wants to know how to sew or has the time to sew. Just buy the stuff. You can buy cloth produce bags from Life Without Plastic, from an Etsy shop or at some grocery stores. For my daughter’s summer job, she plans on making reusable cloth produce bags and embroidering the tare on them. I’ll sell them on here. That’s our plan anyway…summer is quickly approaching…
5. Don’t feel you have to give up activities you love
Speaking of makers, to create stuff, you usually have to own a bunch of stuff and many hobbies are inherently messy. You need tools or equipment or materials, and to create something such as pottery or paintings or sculpture, you first have to roll around in the chaos and get dirty. If you go zero waste, you don’t have to stop doing things you enjoy—within reason. If you love to make figurines out of rhinoceros horn, please stop.
6. Don’t feel you have to buy a bunch of stuff
You’ll need some equipment to get stared on the zero-waste path: glass jars, reusable shopping and produce bags, lunch containers, reusable water bottles, cloth napkins and so on. However, if you turn zero-waste living into another consumer lifestyle, you sort of defeat the purpose. We can’t shop our way out of global warming.
Try to make do with what you have on hand before you buy all new stuff. For example, instead of buying a new to-go fork, you could just take a fork out of the kitchen drawer. Who doesn’t have a fork? Matching jars look nice but they cost a fortune. I’ve found so many flip-top jars at thrift shops, I probably need a crazy jar lady intervention at this point. That is if it were possible to have too many jars…which it is not…
I still have some plastic items in my kitchen that I use—a large tupperware container, my food processor, and several glass pyrex dishes with plastic lids. I’m not going to toss them in the trash. My goal is to not buy any new plastic.
7. Do accept that sometimes you’ll have to compromise
If you live with other people who don’t share your zeal for reducing your waste, you’ll have to make compromises. Unless you actually enjoy conflict. In that case, fight with your husband over using bar shampoo if that’s your cup of tea.
My younger daughter feels much less enthusiastic about all of this than I (but she hardly complains either). No way will she wash her hair with baking soda (although she does like a vinegar rinse…so eventually maybe she will try the no-poo method). Choose your battles. I want my kids to require as little therapy as possible.
8. Don’t compare yourself to others
This has always been difficult for people and it has only intensified with social media. Like anything else, social media has its good and bad aspects. On the one hand, we can share information and organize like never before. On the other hand, we are constantly bombarded with stylized images of unobtainable perfection—bodies, families, vacation spots, food porn, minimalism.
Social media can become like an arms war of images—I see your spartan white backdrop with a loaf of homemade sourdough bread and raise you two sourdough loaves I made with my hand-ground home-grown wheat and baked in a solar oven that I built from reclaimed materials. Which brings me to the next point…
9. Do remember: zero waste isn’t a contest
Reducing your waste, cutting your carbon footprint, living more sustainably—they can become a grand you’re-not-doing-enough-look-at-me competition. If you have reduced your waste to zero, good for you. Try to inspire others rather than judge or preach. No one wants to listen to proselytizing. On the left, some of us attack each other over small differences—and give the right—which sticks together seemingly no matter what happens—ammunition with which to attack us. We all want the same thing—a better environment, the mitigation of climate chaos, a livable world. We have to work together.
10. Do what you can
I am not a huge consumer but I do need to eat so before I cut the trash, most of my waste came from the kitchen. Here in Northern California, I can shop at fantastic farmer’s markets year-round and buy my produce unpackaged, bulk bins abound and some grocery stores here actually encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable containers. I don’t find living zero waste all that difficult here. (Plus I can wear flip-flops almost every day…)
However, I regularly get comments from people who live in the UK (and elsewhere, but a disproportionate number from the UK…) saying that they don’t have bulk bins they can shop from. You have to eat. Just do your best. I wrote about some shopping strategies for areas with limited choices in a post “Good, Better, Best Zero-Waste Shopping.”
Even if you do have access to bulk olive oil and you choose to buy it in a bottle at the grocery store—maybe you like the flavor better, it costs less or you simply want it—don’t beat yourself up over it.
11. Confession is for Catholics
(I was raised a hardcore Catholic so I can say this…)
This goes back to the previous point. Do what you can. I get comments regularly from people who feel that they fall short because they don’t bake their own bread, they buy canned beans, or they recently ate a chocolate wrapped in a piece of plastic.
Not coincidentally, about 85 percent of my followers are women (you learn a lot about your followers’ demographics when you manage a Facebook page, something you might want to keep in mind before you go on there next…). We women (and society in general) are too hard on ourselves. I don’t want to add to that pressure. I’m glad we have consciences but if you aim for perfection, you might lose your mind. Or develop OCD. Or both.
Of course, if confessing makes you feel better, by all means do it. Break any of these “rules” as you like.
We have just started our waste minimising journey so this post is very timely
Great! I’m glad you found the post helpful. Enjoy your journey 🙂
Lovely article. Had to share on our Zero Waste Country facebook page 🙂
Thanks for that and for sharing 🙂
From one hardcore-raised Catholic to another—Thank You!!!
My pleasure. We have to stick together 😉
I love this list, Anne Marie, and yes, I am the one guilty of arguing with my husband for not wanting to use a shampoo bar…so silly, the poor man’s scalp did not sit well with the shampoo bar I bought and suffered minor dandruff as a consequence. Oops, confession!
The countless, positive, well-meaning messages to let go of perfection and instead, strive for excellence, or even just “good enough” (*gasp* the horror) is finally sinking into my obstinate mind and boy does it feel good not to flip out whenever something doesn’t go my way. “Progress over perfection” is another one I repeat to myself when I feel that sneaky perfection-itis creeps up again. Thank you for the reminders for this recovering perfectionist!
Thank you Natalie. Glad you liked the post. Good of your husband to try the shampoo bar. I must have been channeling you when I wrote this. I too am a recovering perfectionist. I think it’s like alcoholism. I’ll always be in recovery. I love your mantra. That’s perfect :p ~ Anne Marie
I find it very, very difficult not to do things 100%. I spent most of the weekend agonising over a couple of choices.
We are almost out of dish liquid, which for years we have been able to refill at a health food shop. They no longer keep the same liquid and I don’t like what they are now stocking (very synthetic smell). So I thought, do I go online and buy a ten litre container of the organic liquid myself or try to convert the family to using a metal soap saver with bar soap? Although we’d all prefer the ten litre bottle of liquid my problem with it is that it comes in plastic. This has really worried me with many refills – we are not seeing the plastic come into our homes, but it is there nonetheless.
The second issue is our shampoo soap. It works really well (not easy to find one that does) but comes in a thin slip of plastic and also contains some synthetics. I have found another one online that comes unwrapped and is all natural – hopefully it works!
I agonise about this stuff all of the time but was particularly trying to make better choices as a friend forwarded an article to me stating that in a recent test of 17 brands of sea salt, 16 contained micro plastics. It shouldn’t have been a surprise as we all know about fish and plastic, but I was really staggered. And of course my sense of urgency not to contribute to the problem grew even more.
I know at the end of the day we can only do our best and you have some great thoughts on that Anne Marie. I particularly liked your suggestion to use what you have even if it’s plastic rather than trying to buy our way out of this.
Madeleine.x
Hi Madeleine. I know just how you feel. I’ll have my routine down and then a store will change a product or no longer carry it and then I am back at square one. I feel the same way about the large plastic bulk vats of dish detergent. I’ve been buying it lately because my kids dislike the homemade stuff. Even though I buy it in bulk, I’m still contributing to plastic pollution. I will have to make some more of my homemade. At least I will use it…
Shampoo is another hard one. But a small slip of plastic is so much better than a big bottle of the stuff. Plus the soap bar is concentrated. A bottle of shampoo has lots of water so to ship the equivalent amount of shampoo would consume way more energy.
I read an article about the sea salt too :/ The stuff is everywhere. I have this same sense of urgency. It’s like an air raid siren going off in my head! At least there is way more awareness now than even five years ago. We can only do our best and corporations have to do their part (which they don’t).
I’m so glad you thought I had some good ideas in here. Thank you 🙂
~ Anne Marie
Hello again Anne Marie,
I so appreciate your thoughts about the shampoo, they helped 🙂 The most recent one I tried left my hair in oily strips – not a great look! I bought my son something called ‘moustache soap’ which apparently is good for face, body, hair, and all natural. Hopefully it goes well for him, he has very short hair which might cope better. I realised that if I can’t get it ‘perfect’ I need to go to the source and contact the makers of the shampoo bar – it wouldn’t be hard to sell the soap in compostable paper, for instance.
I had a look at zerowastehome.com yesterday and couldn’t help but notice that the beautiful bags of bulk nuts, fruit etc.. were all in big plastic bags! More and more I am realising that aside from what we do at home, we all need to be much more vocal about stopping plastic at the source. Things are just not set up to allow people to be plastic-free, and they need to be.
Only 50 years ago when I was born, there were no plastic shopping bags, vegetable bags etc…Our bread was delivered on our door step in a thin slip of paper (no one died from supposed poor food hygiene) and our milk came in returnable glass. Medicines came in glass bottles and ointments in metal tubes. This gives me hope that we can do something if we can convince the manufacturers to change.
Here in Australia all of these issues are FINALLY becoming much more mainstream – perhaps this is when the tide will turn if we are vocal enough.
Madeleine.x
Hi Madeleine, I hope the moustache soap works out. I hear you about the big plastic bags. The food has to arrive at the bulk store somehow and that’s often in a giant plastic bag. So although we don’t bring home garbage from the bulk store, we still contribute, albeit that contribution is much smaller. I said to my daughter the other day that Australia seems more aware than the US. I think you are seeing the effects of climate change and plastic pollution more than we do here. The corporations that produce all this junk have put the burden on us to clean it up. It has to change. I feel another rant coming on… ~ Anne Marie
Do you have any suggestions on how to get the tare weight permanently on a glass or metal jar? I saw on your Instagram that you use a china marker for the contents, and that seems great for if you want to wipe it off (I should see if my parents have one they don’t use). But I want to be able to wash the jar without losing the tare and having to get the jar re-weighed every time.
My bf marked the tare on a couple of my jars using a Sharpie marker and that stays on for a long time but not forever. You could etch it but then you need etching cream, which comes in plastic tubs and I assume is full of nasty chemicals. I used some about 20 years ago to frost glass. Maybe things have changed. What if you took a pic of the jars with the tares so you don’t forget? Then you could write it on with the china marker if you can find one. I use a lot of the same jars over and over for the same items so I know the tare. I have a few that I have to get tared occasionally though. I’d rather skip that step too.
How do you wrap meat and cheese for the freezer without plastic wrap or ziplocks? Thanks.
Love the post. It’s spot on. When i started out on the zero waste journey I was obsessed. Two years on and I’m much calmer and more pragmatic about the changes that are sustainable for my family.
Some of the most ardent environmentalist, recycling, home made granola gifting, weekend hike enjoying folks I know are conservative. This movement has to be for everyone if we are going to save the planet from waste. We need to unite, not the left against the right, but people for the planet.
Hear hear, Ryan! We can’t waste our precious time arguing about politics! We have so much work to do. ~ Anne Marie
[…] adore her “Don’t Be Perfect” attitude about the zero-waste movement, the name of which is so intimidating that it can […]
I bought a “permanent” marker for glass in the crafts section at Meijer. Craft stores should have them, too. So far so good on the permanent part. Plastic in the pen, though.
Thanks for the encouragement! Have been heading toward a sustainable life forever… Still traveling. You do good work, and thanks for your clear and grammatically correct posts! English major-ness can be just as much a lifelong curse as Catholicism can be.
Hello Anne-Marie,
Thank you for your inspiring recipes.
Would you have a recipe of cider vinegar and wine vinegar without the mother only from apples or grapes?
Your title “do not be perfect” makes me really smile because it was followed by your first picture of jars “The perfect”, name of the company that makes these jars in France. We usually call them here the “perfect jars”.
I also use them every day for the lacto-fermentation (sauerkraut, sourdough, fermented tomatoes, etc …)