The first thing people ask me when I tell them we've gone to a zero waste household is what does that mean. The immediate follow-up is, does that include recycling? Well we'd definitely have some serious trouble if it didn't. So a zero waste household is a household with no garbage can. Thus no magic garbage faeries to come whisk away our "waste" once a week. No more out of sight out of mind with our twenty-first century disposable realities. And yes, this does mean getting super serious about recycling.

Zero waste is about embodying the whole triple R threat - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Granted our society is currently really big on the last one, the first two being a little under-supported in their invariably anti-capitalist practice; however, zero waste is kind of an all encompassing life style shift that has begun to alter how I relate to material objects. Things that used to get tossed in my garbage can now sit on my dry rack, packaging taken apart, wrappers and tubs cleaned and made in good enough shape for the mixed plastic bin at the recycling depot - a place where my initial zero waste endeavor started four weeks ago.

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