Jar of Trash 2014
(Nicole Markwald)

Bea Johnson is proof positive that when you buy less, you can live more.

Since 2008, Johnson’s family has lived a zero-waste life in Mill Valley, California. What does that mean, exactly? The family of four—including husband Scott and teenage sons Max and Léo—generate a mere quart of waste a year. How do they do it? By following what Johnson, who has been dubbed the “Waste-Free Priestess” by the New York Times, calls the “Five Rs”: Refuse what you don’t need. Reduce what you need. Reuse what you consume. Recycle what you can’t refuse, reduce or reuse. And Rot (or compost) the rest.

Johnson’s journey to waste-free living began in 2006: “We were living in a 3,000-square-foot house where we had to drive everywhere—school, church, the grocery. We got tired of that.” Moving temporarily into a small apartment where they had room for just the basics, they found that they didn’t miss all the “stuff” they’d put in storage. “When we lived with just the necessities, we found it very freeing. We started asking: Do we truly need this? Are we hanging on to things for the wrong reason?” Ultimately, they decided to get rid of 80 percent of their belongings—and started educating themselves about the environmental impact of having a buy-buy-buy mentality.

Today, Johnson, author of both the popular blog zerowastehome.blogspot.com and the 2013 book Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (Scribner), says that her family is used to living light. “My kids have lived longer without waste than with waste, so they don’t even notice the difference.” And even though they live simply—for example, their wardrobes are spare (and mostly secondhand), and they donated all their books to the library—they also live what Johnson calls a “modern life, not a hippie one,” with a car (a used Prius) and a TV.

“People tell me two things: ‘I don’t have the time to live this way,’ and ‘Your lifestyle sounds too expensive,’ ” Johnson says. “But the opposite is true. When you buy packaged products, 15 percent of the cost is for packaging. And the more products you have, the more time you need to manage them.” In fact, Johnson’s husband, Scott, estimates that going “zero waste” has cut the family budget about 40 percent.

More important is that by cutting down, the Johnsons have gained in other ways. “Our life has switched to one based on experiences, not based on stuff,” says Johnson. “We have more time with the kids, more time on the weekends to go camping or backpacking. It’s put an emphasis on human relations.”

Five ways to lighten up:

  1. Arm yourself. When you go to the grocery, bring your own containers: reusable grocery totes, pillowcases to hold bread loaves, reusable jars to hold wet goods like bulk peanut butter or cheese.
  2. Find alternatives to disposables. For example, swap paper towels for reusable rags, replace sandwich bags with stainless containers and use cloth, not paper, napkins.
  3. Cut down on mail. Cancel phone directories, switch to electronic billing and get off junk mail lists.
  4. Compost. About two-thirds of household waste can be composted. Add a compost container to your kitchen. If compost is not collected in your town, consider donating your compost to a nearby community garden.
  5. Check out eBay. Johnson’s “reuse when you can” philosophy can be tricky when the item needed is more unusual. When one of her sons needed a science calculator for school, she found a “pre-owned” one on eBay, and asked the seller to send it in a re-used cardboard box.


Number of pounds of waste the average American generates per day. That’s three-quarters of a ton per person per year.

Number of pounds of that waste the average American recycles.

100 billion
Number of plastic grocery bags thrown away each year in the U.S.

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