10 Ways to Cut Waste when You Have No Other Choice

Garbage strike exposes throwaway culture

Soon after Teamsters walked off the job at garbage hauler Republic Services on July 1st in Boston, in solidarity, workers followed suit in California, Illinois, Georgia and Washington, halting curbside pickup in dozens of communities. This week more cities have been impacted, including Los Angeles. (Pickup continues at essential businesses, however, like hospitals and nursing homes.) Cities are in crisis-mode. In Chula Vista, a city in San Diego County, for example, the mayor may declare a state of emergency if stagnant waste becomes a health hazard.

The last Republic strike, in 2019, lasted seven weeks—with no contract reached. This could be a long, smelly summer.

The Teamsters have had it with Republic. We will flood the streets and shut down garbage collection in state after state. Workers are uniting nationwide, and we will get the wages and benefits we’ve earned, come hell or high water. — Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien

Here in the Bay Area, several city governments have attempted to mitigate the crisis. Residents of Union City, Fremont and Newark, for example, have access to a small number of temporary dumpsters—with proof of residency. But a few dumpsters in a large city will hardly suffice. In some instances, Republic has brought in substitute workers (i.e., scabs) to cross picket lines and pick up trash. (Republic, a publicly traded company, has a market value of over $75 billion.)

Hide and seek not

We don’t see the effects of our throwaway system. Like magicians, drivers pull up in trucks to our curbs every week, pick up our trash (landfill, recycling and yard waste) and haul it away out of public view, making it disappear. The trucks lure us into believing we have designed a sustainable system. Only when they stop running and the garbage piles up at the curb, do we see—and smell—the reality of our system.

Corporations benefit from throwaway culture. Products sold in inexpensive, single-use plastic packaging rather than returnable, refillable packaging boost profits; disposable everything means consumers buy products over and over and over, like a never-ending subscription from hell; cheap synthetics, made of fossil fuels, make fast fashion possible. And in the case of the garbage itself, waste management is a trillion dollar industry globally.

We need regulations to cut the flow of waste at its source—production. In the meantime, we the people can make changes to reduce the amount of trash going out on the curb.

10 waste-reducing strategies

The following tips will take bites out of several slices in the pie below: paper and paperboard, plastics, yard trimmings, food and textiles.

Most recent municipal solid waste (MSW) numbers from the EPA

#1 Compost

Smelly trash emanates from rotting organic waste—food scraps and wasted food. If you compost this organic material, your trash will remain dry and shouldn’t smell. (You can even compost doggy doo doo in a dedicated bin!) Done properly—composting is pretty easy—your compost bin won’t smell. And rich, earthy, finished compost smells wonderful!

If you have space outside, set up a bin. You can also pit compost by burying food scraps in a hole you’ve dug in the ground. Or create a pile directly on the ground. We have three compost piles: a closed bin, an open bin and a pile on the ground. (But you really need only one setup.)

Indoors, you can keep a worm bin. Again, it won’t smell. Although you are more limited in what you can put into a worm bin, you can feed the worms all kinds of food. Another method, Bokashi, starts indoors. You have options! Go here for composting indoors or out.

If you start composting due to the garbage strike, you may not want to stop even after the strike ends. Finished compost provides a free amendment for the garden that retains water and adds nutrients to the soil, reducing the need for fertilizer. If you don’t have a garden, you may have gardening friends who would appreciate your compost. And, if you made a worm bin, you now have pets! (People do grow attached to their worms.) Depending on your municipality, you may be able to downsize your trash bin and reduce your collection bill.

If you don’t want to or can’t compost, you may be able to find someone near you who will accept your food scraps. MakeSoil is like Tinder for wasted food and food scraps. If you need to find an eligible compost bin, look on the MakeSoil map for a neighbor who has one. Or if you have a compost bin and accept food scraps, perhaps you’ll want to sign up as a Soil Site.

Many people who compost do not put meat or bones into their bins so you will likely be stuck with those until garbage pickup resumes. You could eat more delicious beans, chickpeas and lentils in the meantime. (You’ll save money.)

While compost deals with smelly garbage best, these other options will reduce additional trash.

• Stop buying from Amazon. Boycott Amazon not only to protest Jeff Bezos’ obscene wedding and broligarch status but also because every time you receive a delivery from the online behemoth, you will be stuck with copious amounts of cardboard and plastic packaging. (Quit Prime while you’re at it.)

• End the junk mail. Go here to get started.

• Dine in. Bags, boxes and tubs from takeout orders fill up the trash bin quickly. Consider going to the restaurant and dining in rather than ordering takeout.

• Bring a container for leftovers. Before you head to the restaurant, pack a couple of containers to fill up with any leftovers. You won’t bring home throwaway plastic or paperboard containers.

• Reduce wasted food. You will need only a small compost bin if you reduce the amount of material going into it. (Again, not that composting is difficult if you have a space for it!) Go here for 21 tips to waste less food.

• Choose reusables. Before the dawn of single-use products like plastic baggies, paper towels, facial tissues and throwaway razor blades, reusable items were the norm. Metal tiffins, thin cloth towels (or unpaper towels), cloth handkerchiefs and safety razors cost more up front but over the long run, will save money while keeping trash out of landfill. For so many everyday items, you can find reusable versions to replace the disposable ones.

• Repurpose yard waste. Leaves, branches or logs can go into a hügelkultur raised bed. Use grass clippings for mulch or add them to the compost bin. Or shrink the lawn and plant some natives: asters, goldenrod, milkweed, oaks. Native plants require very little maintenance—and no mowing. (Go here to get started.)

• Repair stuff. Does your town have a cobbler? A tailor? A sewing machine and vacuum repair shop? Take in your broken stuff. Or repair items yourself. I can’t tell you just how satisfied I feel after sewing a patch on a pant leg or darning a sock. Search YouTube for a tutorial on, well, whatever you want to fix.

• Find a take back program. These aren’t perfect and some (many?) surely serve merely to greenwash. So do some research. Patagonia runs a robust program and takes back clothing to repair, reuse or, if beyond repair, recycle. Speaking of Patagonia, you may enjoy its 2024 documentary, The Shitthropocene: Welcome to the Age of Cheap Crap.

Twenty-four cities in the Bay Area have been impacted by the strike. My city has not. But if our hauler’s employees did strike, years of zero-waste practice will stand me in good stead.