- Hey Shawheen. Is it wrong to be zero waste?
- I don't know Auri.
♪ We're just two adults ♪
♪ Who studied Liberal Arts ♪
♪ And we smell our own farts ♪
♪ And we're talking about the things ♪
♪ We have no business talking about ♪
♪ We're no moral authority ♪
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(laughs)
- So...
what's wrong with you?
- Okay, so let me tell you
how I became zero waste in the first place.
Basically only 9% of plastic actually gets recycled
and there are huge plastic gyres in our oceans.
And you could even find microplastics in beer and tap water.
And one study claimed that we were ingesting
a credit card's worth of plastic each week.
- That's crazy because I have a buddy who ate a credit card.
- Who? Which buddy? I don't believe you.
- My friend Kevin. He actually did it, back in college.
He wrapped it in pieces of dough. He ate it.
- Why?
- He won $25.
- After seeing the problem with plastic pollution,
I heard about this thing, zero waste.
Which basically means trying to send
as little as possible to landfill.
Zero waste isn't a new concept.
Our grandparents were living in more zero waste ways.
Indigenous cultures continue to live
with zero waste practices,
but recently there has been a zero waste movement.
- White ladies on Instagram,
holding a Mason jar of how much trash they made last month
or holding a Mason jar of some really nice looking
snack they got at some store I can't afford to shop at.
- Yes.
- It seems to me like it would be pretty good thing
for everyone to be zero waste.
- That's what I've been thinking.
But,
I want to investigate that assumption,
which is why I've come up with a list of things
about why zero waste could potentially be wrong.
Let's get into it.
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- [Auri] The pretty jars that you see
that a lot of zero waste influencers have
don't include recyclable materials
or their food waste.
So it also doesn't include all the trash
that went into all of the things that they are consuming.
If me as a zero waste person goes to eat at a restaurant,
and I use real plates and utensils,
okay, I'm getting my meal without trash,
but the trash that happens in the kitchen
that's not included in the jar.
I think it's great and catchy,
but I don't do the jar because I think it's important
for people to see beyond the jar.
- Wow. Thinking outside of the jar. I like it.
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- [Auri] In order to be able to do zero waste properly,
you need to have an incredible privilege
of time and money to do it.
Which makes it inherently elitist.
- How do you challenge that?
- I agree with this.
And you actually have to go out of your way
and spend money to try and not make trash.
But I think that if you do have the luxury
and privilege and time, I think it's a responsibility.
- The fact of the matter
is that you're just a pain in my ass right now.
(laughs)
And the whole movement is a pain in everyone's ass.
And what would be really nice
is if you guys just publicly apologized.
- We're publicly sorry
for making you feel bad about ourselves, yourselves,
and we're going to smash all our Mason jars.
- And walk on them.
- Walk on them with our bare feet.
- That's right.
(laughs)
- Is that what everyone wants?
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- The average American makes about 4.9lb of trash
per day, according to the EPA.
But industries are making so much more.
Yes, individuals make trash,
but industries are the real culprits here.
I think zero waste can't stop on an individual level.
If we want real change,
we also have to get governments and corporations involved.
- Even if everyone did it.
Would account for a smaller fraction than the amount
that would change if the way things are produced
would change.
- But then in America,
I feel like consumers have a power
to vote with their dollar.
And so if you are making different choices,
then governments and corporations will follow.
In a similar way that the organic movement shows us.
People wanted organic produce,
and now you can get that in the grocery store
pretty readily available.
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According to an NPR article,
by Laura Sullivan,
"starting in 1989, oil and plastics executives
began a quiet campaign to lobby almost 40 states
to mandate that the recycling symbol appear on all plastic.
Even if there was no way to economically recycle it."
Recycling is a business.
And people are only gonna recycle something
if they can make money off of it.
- [Shawheen] Hmm.
- [Auri] And so it's frankly just cheaper and easier
to use virgin plastic than recycle something.
- [Shawheen] Slutty plastic.
- Yes. So slutty plastic.
If the public thinks that recycling is working,
then they're not going to be as concerned
about the environment.
They put a bunch of money into marketing recycling to us,
starting with this Keep America Beautiful ad in 1971.
- [Narrator] Some people have a deep abiding respect
for the natural beauty that was once this country.
And some people don't.
People start pollution. People can stop it.
- And that was partly funded by SPI,
which was a plastics company.
- I heard Denzel Washington
actually took the whole tear thing from that guy.
- They don't wanna take any responsibility
for the products they're creating.
They just want us to think it's our fault.
And we as consumers need to do all the work.
- And you've been doing this work for them for free.
- Yeah.
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- The American Chemistry Council
says that switching to alternatives to plastic packaging
would double greenhouse gas emissions
because if you're shipping plastic bottles
versus glass bottles across the country,
you will need to use less gas with plastic
because glass is heavier.
So less emissions are needed to transport it.
But the American Chemistry Council reps big plastic
and funded the study that says this.
This also doesn't consider the health impacts
of microplastics to ourselves and ocean life
or the cost of having to clean it up
from our oceans and coastlines.
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Plastic production has increased
from 2 billion tons per year in 1950,
to 381 million tons in 2015.
And that number is just going up.
Plastic production is expected to quadruple by 2050.
And half of all plastics ever made
have been produced since 2005.
So we're making more and more and more
and more and more and more and more plastics.
- I always say 2007 was the last good year.
It was like when people with Facebook had a nice day today.
(scoffs)
- Yeah.
So...
why am I even bothering?
- Yeah, why are you bothering me?
(laughs)
Being lazy and doing whatever you feel like
really does pay off.
- Really?
- I don't question myself at all ever.
And neither should you.
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- So what do you say?
Do you think it's wrong to be zero waste?
- Seems to me like it's almost a fashion statement.
Like, this is the "I care about the Earth" toothbrush
and this is the "I care about the Earth" jar.
And this is the "I care about the Earth" car.
While my mere existence in this country,
is damaging the lives of countless people
who I'll never meet.
(laughs)
Right. Is that like something that ever-
- No I think that's a fair critique.
I think a lot of zero waste influencers
are promoting a lot of products.
I do think though,
in order for something to be viable in American society,
which is capitalist.
If you can sell it, then it has legs.
So I don't necessarily fault people...
- You can sell snakes.
They don't have legs.
Here's the thing,
I think bugs me the most about this movement.
Honestly, it's the name.
I mean, just by the virtue of the fact that we poop,
I feel like it's impossible to not make waste.
- Well you can do humanure.
Harvest your feces on your fruit trees.
- So for all the big influencers out there
who claim to be zero waste.
This is the new standard.
- Okay. I'll start (beep) buckets.
- What do you think?
- For me zero waste is a symbol
because you can't see the carbon
that you were putting into the atmosphere
when you're driving or flying.
But you can see the trash that you make.
And so I think zero waste is a really good stepping stone
for people to engage with their impact
and start to see the impact that they're having.
And that's, I think the real power of zero waste.
Does it actually make that much of an impact?
No.
- I see it as performance art, personally.
- [Auri] Yeah.
I really do.
Somehow it has become this thing where it's like,
oh, they are telling me that this is what I need to do
in order to be a good person
and in order to save the World.
- That's not true.
And this is another thing I say all the time.
We don't need everyone to live zero waste perfectly.
We just need everyone doing it imperfectly.
- That's right.
Yeah, you do say that a lot.
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