The Year of No Garbage
A Conversation with Eve O. Schaub by Sari Fordham
Here is what we know about plastic: minuscule pieces have been found in human placentas, near the peak of Mt Everest, and in the deepest trenches of the ocean. We can also find plastic in our refrigerators, our kids' lunch boxes, our cupboards, our laundry rooms, and especially our trash bins. The contradiction between our concerns about plastic and how prevalent it is in our lives has never been sharper. Into that tension walks writer and humorist Eve Schaub. After reading about the Pacific trash vortex and attending a bingo fundraiser where armloads of disposable tableware was dumped afterwards, Schaub began to wonder what it would mean to live without any garbage at all. Would it even be possible?
Schaub answers that question with The Year of No Garbage (Skyhorse Publishing, Inc), a hilarious and informative book in which she describes her family's attempt to live a zero-waste life. During her year, she researches solutions for each piece of trash her family creates and looks for practical ways to avoid creating that type of trash in the first place.
I discovered Schaub's book when I was trying to minimize my own trash footprint. I listened on audiobook, pausing occasionally to write down notes. Her struggles were so relatable and her solutions were so smart that I knew I needed to talk with her further. Our conversation took place over a series of emails.
Sari Fordham: Thank you so much for talking with me, Eve! Not only did I love your book YEAR OF NO GARBAGE, but I was spurred to action. For those who haven’t read your memoir yet, you and your intrepid family spend an entire year without throwing anything away. Yes, you have a small medical trash bin, but nothing else gets thrown away. Could you tell us a bit more about the genesis of your project and the parameters you set for your experiment?
Eve Schaub: Would it be weird if I said I've always been kind of fascinated by garbage? I mean, even when I was a little kid, I clearly recall gazing into that big black plastic bag under the kitchen sink and being like: “Really?” Back then, of course, absolutely everything went in there: metal cans, glass bottles, food waste. And I remember wondering: what happens next? Fast forward a few decades, and I have a family of my own and I see folks online talking about a concept called “Zero Waste.” This sparked my curiosity and I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would really be like to throw nothing away at all.
Then I had to convince my family! That was a whole enterprise unto itself because we had done family “give something up” projects before (previously, we had done a Year of No Sugar and a Year of No Clutter, both of which became books), and they knew how very challenging they could really be. In fact, my younger daughter predicted that garbage would be the hardest of all. She was right.
In terms of parameters–I’m a very literal person! So with the exception of medical waste (band-aids, mostly) in our home, we would literally Not. Throw. Anything. Away. We could recycle, repurpose, give away, compost–you name it–but nothing could go in a trash can. In fact we got rid of all the waste baskets and trash cans in the house. We set the 96-gallon wheelie bin provided by our garbage service in the back of the garage, where it sat sad and lonely for the entire year.
SF: While I didn’t get rid of trash cans while reading your book, I did start immediately making changes in our household, and my husband would ask: “What is it we’re no longer throwing away?” I don’t want to make it sound like your book was homework, though. Your writing was such a joy to read because you’re so funny. And in addition to making me laugh, you also taught me a lot, which spurred me into action. Let’s say that someone reading this interview would like to create less garbage. Let’s triage the situation. What are three first steps you would recommend? Where should the average American begin at reducing waste?
ES: That’s something I love about the subject of trash–we all have it! So everyone can relate. And, of course, the idea of not throwing anything away is like an impossible challenge–it’s totally unreasonable! So there’s a lot of potential humor in that, which I love. So many folks assume my book will be just a festival of guilt or unbelievably depressing facts, and yes, many of the things we learned were upsetting, but there’s a lot of surprise when folks realize the book is also, at heart, a funny story about my family.
But the question of where to start in reducing garbage is such a great one! Because even if folks feel overwhelmed by the state of the planet or just life in general, there’s always something out there that you can do. There are a lot of articles out there that give highly specific suggestions like “buy a bamboo toothbrush and tooth tablets!” or “build a compost pile!” (both of which are certainly great things to do, by the way), but those aren’t things everyone can necessarily do. Instead, I prefer to give more general guidelines that everyone can tailor to suit their own specific situation:
Choose Durable Goods over Disposables. This is where we began in our Year of No Garbage, and I highly recommend it as a great starting point for everyone: as much as you can, switch out your disposables for durable goods. Look at whatever you throw away on a regular basis and consider how you could stop throwing that thing away. This could mean using hankies instead of Kleenex, dish towels instead of paper towels, a reusable mug at the coffee shop instead of a disposable to-go cup. You could wrap gifts in newspaper, or cloth in a method known as Furoshiki. I like to make my own chicken broth and where I once froze it in disposable Ziploc bags, now I freeze it in glass jars, leaving enough headroom for the liquid to expand. There are so many possibilities!
Avoid plastic. Throughout our day, we all make dozens of choices, all of which matter. In the course of our Year of No Garbage, we learned that plastic, unlike glass, metal, or paper, does not lend itself to recycling, and as a result, is not getting recycled (95% of plastic doesn’t get recycled). Instead, all that plastic bound for “recycling” is getting shipped around the world and dumped in developing and impoverished nations that do not have the infrastructure to prevent it. Consequently, when it comes to being good citizens of the planet, plastic is Enemy Number One. The best thing we can do is avoid plastic whenever we have the choice, which is actually very often: choose the eggs in cardboard rather than plastic. Choose ketchup in glass rather than plastic. Tell the take-out restaurant you don’t need straws or plastic cutlery. Whatever you’re doing, try to do it without- or with less- plastic.
Don’t recycle plastic. Recycle everything else! What many people do not know is that plastic is not a harmless material. It contains myriad toxic chemicals that have never been tested for effects on human health but which include known endocrine disruptors, fertility inhibitors, and carcinogens. When you recycle plastic, all that chemistry combines and creates what scientists call “non-intentionally added substances,” which means “God knows what is in this!” As a result, much recycled plastic is unsafe and that’s why, despite dozens of corporate pledges to incorporate recycled plastic, you don’t see it more often. Plastic is unique: every other material- paper, glass, metal, wood, natural fibers- has some good place to go where it may be recycled, reused, or at the very least break down. But plastic? The safest thing we can do, and it’s not a great solution- is to put it in the landfill.
SF: Thank you so much for that practical list. Right now, our ketchup is in a plastic bottle. Buying ketchup in glass is a very do-able action item. As you note, 95 percent of plastic is not recycled, which consumers increasingly don’t like. In response, trade groups are saying that chemical recycling is the answer. It sounds good, right? We like recycling. But in your book you discuss the problems with chemical recycling. Why do you think it's actually harmful? If chemical recycling isn't the answer, what is?
ES: Like everyone else, the plastics industry knows the world has a plastic waste problem. Instead of looking for non-plastic solutions, however, they would like to triple the amount of plastic they are making by 2050. I’m not making this up; these are numbers they aspire to very publicly. But how to justify making so much plastic when our world is already choking on it? Well you can decide that burning plastic is a simply terrific idea and rename it “recycling.” That’s what “chemical recycling” is: burning plastic. You end up with some energy, along with toxic ash- that you still have to landfill!- and toxic fumes. There actually is a whole host of lovely-sounding euphemisms for this. You may hear about “advanced recycling,” “pyrolisis,” “resource recovery,” or “waste to energy,” all of which sound great until you realize they all mean burning plastic.
Burning plastic is not the solution to the Plastic Waste Crisis, making less plastic is. Remember: plastic is made with fossil fuel, so when we talk about Big Plastic, what we really mean is Big Oil, and we know that Big Oil has almost limitless resources, all pushing hard for more and more plastic to be used. If you’ve noticed that the mayonnaise you used to buy in glass is now only available in plastic or that you can’t buy loose lemons anymore because they only come in a plastic tray wrapped in plastic film, you can thank Big Oil/Plastic for that. When people talk about plastic as a problem of demand, I disagree with them. I don’t think the Plastic Waste Crisis is a problem of demand- it’s a problem of supply.
We know it isn’t in the economic best interest of companies to actually reduce their production and use of plastic, so corporate reform isn’t going to happen. In the place of actual meaningful changes, most corporations have opted for greenwashing and empty environmental pledges. A study by the European Commission actually found that two-thirds of corporate pledges to go greener either fail or are dropped. So we can’t count on the industry to resolve the plastic problem. Instead, we need to support good legislation to reduce plastic, and not by burning it.
The good news is that we’re already seeing that happen with plastic bag bans, Styrofoam bans, the 2023 Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act wending its way through Congress, and the Global Plastics Treaty currently being formulated by the UN.
SF: Near the end of your experiment, your husband tells you, “You’re killing this family.” Reading that sentence was like a laugh-or-cry moment for me because your book had already inspired me to install all these trash rules, and while my family members had been good sports, I also worried about how the rules were landing. Do you think your family could survive another year without garbage? Could you?
ES: I really wanted the book to be real and include all the messy and uncomfortable bits, and that moment was definitely one of them. I think there are so many folks out there who want to make changes but are confronted with the fact that not everyone in the household wants to implement them. For instance, I will tell you that I was, and am still, the only person in my house willing to take out the compost— because, ew!— and that certainly gets old. It can be really dispiriting to work so hard to eliminate single-use plastics only to have your loved ones show up at home holding plastic-lined disposable coffee cups or plastic water bottles simply because it was convenient. (Oh, the siren song of convenience!) For folks out there who are trying to make better choices for themselves and the planet but are despairing or feeling frustrated, I want you to know you’re not alone. Just keep going. As best you can. When you least expect it, your family just might surprise you with how many of your new habits they’ve actually internalized. My husband even voluntarily dumped the compost the other day, and I nearly fainted.
When we officially finished the project, I have to tell you that there is a great relief in being “allowed” to throw things away again. Even though I firmly believe that there’s really no such thing as garbage, it is inextricably woven into the way our society and culture functions– swimming against the tide of that all day, every day, is exhausting. Could we survive another Year of No Garbage? Yes, if we had to. But I’m not volunteering!
SF: It’s now been three years since your experiment. What habits have stuck?
ES: Before our Year of No Garbage, we reliably filled up our wheeled trash bin in time for garbage day, 96 gallons of trash per week, every week. Today, we throw away nine gallons of trash per week, all of it single-use plastic food packaging that we haven’t figured out how to avoid–yet. That might be the change I’m proudest of, although you will not be surprised to know that I want more— or rather, less.
I still collect things like plastic bottle caps, wine corks, and twisty ties because I know that once I get enough of them, I can post them online, and someone will take them for a craft project. I still compost far more than I used to, including crazy things like hair from hair brushes and greasy pizza boxes. I even compost our used cat litter, which you can do provided you don’t plan to use the compost in your vegetable garden.
More generally, I feel like my whole outlook has changed. I like knowing that, with the very notable exception of plastic, every material we encounter has somewhere good to go, as long as we take a little bit of time to find it. One of the biggest lessons of our yearlong project was the slowing down aspect of it, the taking time. Our contemporary culture doesn’t encourage us to be thoughtful about what we bring into our homes and what we send out of our homes, and how. But if we want to truly address the grave environmental and human health problems that confront us, slowing down and being thoughtful is exactly what we will need to do.
SF: Having lived through the year of no garbage and the year of no sugar, an earlier experiment that you wrote about, what’s next? Do you think you’ll ever try another year-long experiment?
ES: In order to get my family’s cooperation, I had to promise that this would be the third and final family project. That was fine with me because three felt like a nice neat number. Also, my girls, who started out in the earliest book at ages six and eleven, have grown up and are now young adults out in the world! It feels right to close that chapter, so to speak.
But I do love the year-long experiment, which I feel is such a compelling format. Come to think of it, I never said I wouldn’t do another year-long experiment myself, did I? Hmmmm.
Eve O. Schaub is an internationally published author and humorist. The author of Year of No Sugar (2014) and Year of No Clutter (2017), her third family memoir is Year of No Garbage (2023). She has been featured in The New Yorker, on the Weather Channel, NPR, the Dr. Oz Show, and USA Today. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Hebrew, and Spanish, and her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Newsweek, the Boston Globe, and Vermont Life. She holds a BA and BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Sari Fordham is a writer, professor, and environmental activist. Her memoir, Wait for God to Notice, narrates her childhood in Uganda during and after the dictatorship of Idi Amin. Her essays have been published in Brevity, Best of the Net, Booth, Baltimore Review, among others. She teaches creative nonfiction at SUNY Oswego and writes a free monthly newsletter for busy people who care about the environment called COOL IT: SIMPLE STEPS TO SAVE THE PLANET.