When convenience meets consciousness
Using the styrofoam cup at the office because you left your mug at home. Picking up your favorite Thai takeout in a plastic container because you're too tired to cook dinner that night. Leaving your compost in the freezer for weeks—let's be honest, months—on end because you keep forgetting to put it in the compost bin outside, and just throwing food waste in the trash.
There's a word for all of these things: convenience. Single-use plastic makes life more convenient and easy, to the point where many of us don't even think about it. I was an intermittent recycler who didn't blink at grabbing paper towels at the store until I became close friends with Samuel McMullen a few years ago. Samuel and I had known each other vaguely in college, and I knew he had done a TEDx talk about going "zero waste" for a year. That year, all of the waste Samuel produced fit inside a pizza box. In our adult life in New York, he ran a nonprofit called ZeroWaste.org to help individuals, organizations, and cities build "zero waste systems."
In this beautiful metropolis of New York City, residents generate a collective 44 million pounds of garbage every day. People here don't produce more waste than other places, but it's more visible. We see it in the way it clogs our sidewalks, litters the soil, and provides free dining for the rats. We don't see most of it, though—the majority is either incinerated or sent away to landfills in New Jersey or upstate New York.
For the most part, Samuel isn't contributing to that mountain of waste. It took me a while to notice because he's not proselytizing the zero waste gospel all the time. But after spending more time with him, I observed that Samuel will never use a paper towel, accept a LaCroix, or get spur-of-the-moment takeout. He'll find the rag in the house, fill up his water bottle, and bring his own reusable container to the restaurant. None of it is hard—but it's certainly not convenient.
So I was only a little bit nervous when I committed to a week of being zero waste. But truthfully, I only committed to minimal waste. I put a small cardboard box next to the trash in my living room, and for a week, my waste went there. The steps were small but telling. I didn't get coffee from a coffee shop all week because I kept forgetting my reusable mug. I didn't bring my reusable produce bags to the grocery store, so I had to walk all the way back home to grab them. I emptied my compost bin more times in a week than I'd done in the past year.
But there were also small failures that revealed the depth of our convenience culture. I stood in front of the strawberries at the grocery store for far too long, because I wanted them but I didn't want that plastic container. I ended up buying them, and when I asked Samuel how to get strawberries without packaging, he told me that vendors have reusable containers at the farmers markets. So in order to get strawberries without a plastic container, I would have to wait five days and go to the farmer's market.
The real change I made wasn't bringing reusable bags or hiding my paper towels so I didn't accidentally use one. It was not buying anything online or anything that I didn't directly need to survive the week. Being zero waste requires a modern-day Bartleby the Scrivener attitude—saying, "I would prefer not to," in the face of new clothes, new trends, new technology.
In Samuel's TEDx talk nine years ago, he told the audience that 90% of a product's environmental impact happens before you even open the package. A recent study finds that "75% of an apparel product's environmental footprint stems from areas of impact beyond carbon emissions, and reveals raw material choices and specific manufacturing processes—not packaging, distribution, or even assembly—contribute up to 90% of product impact." It would be easy to look at those numbers and feel helpless. But just by abstaining from the cycle entirely, by buying clothes secondhand, by turning your head from the hot new trend, you can make a difference.
"We talk about upstream framing," Samuel explains. "A really good example is recycling. A lot of people jump straight to recycling as a solution, and we have to debunk that and say recycling is great, compost is great, but by basically a factor of ten, eliminating the purchase of something is better. If you can reduce the purchase of one new thing, you're doing so much more than throwing it away correctly." This means shifting decision-making from the throwaway moment to the purchasing moment.
At the end of the week, my cardboard box was almost full. There were the usual suspects: an empty bottle of allergy pills, an empty yerba mate can, two protein bar wrappers, a birth control packet, the plastic wrapping from the laundromat.
So it wasn't perfect, but it was something. Samuel explained that the point isn't to get everyone to produce only a mason jar's worth of trash each year, but to influence others to shift their behavior slightly. "I don't personally believe that the sort of loud or judgmental version of behavior change works. I don't think it's as sticky as if people come to things with curiosity, which you can't force on someone. You just let it happen." He cited studies suggesting that if you know someone committed to environmentally friendly behavior, you're more likely to try it yourself. "So it's not really about getting everyone to do the whole thing all the way, but just getting a small number of people to start."
That's the real lesson from my zero waste week: not that we all need to fit our annual trash into a pizza box, but that small shifts in consciousness can ripple outward. And the best way to start is to simply, radically, pay attention.
Sources
Baranzini, Andrea, et al. "What Drives Social Contagion in the Adoption of Solar Photovoltaic Technology?" Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, 6 July 2017, www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Working-Paper-270-Barranzini-et-al.pdf.
Glimpact. "Glimpact Report: 90% of Apparel's Environmental Impact Occurs Before Consumer Purchase." Yahoo Finance, 15 Mar. 2024, finance.yahoo.com/news/glimpact-report-90-apparel-environmental-120000014.html.
McMullen, Samuel. Personal interview. 22 Sept. 2025.
Polansky, Joey, et al. "Finger Lakes Landfills Booming; Monroe, Ontario and Seneca Counties Residents Angry." Democrat and Chronicle, 6 July 2018, www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2018/07/06/finger-lakes-landfills-booming-monroe-ontario-and-seneca-counties-residents-angry/754940002/.
Quantis. "Measuring Fashion: Environmental Impact of the Global Apparel and Footwear Industries Study." Nature, vol. 563, 2018, pp. 508-512, doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0647-4.
Rodriguez, Sabrina. "New York City Trash Problem: Packaging Reduction Bill." Inside Climate News, 14 June 2025, insideclimatenews.org/news/14062025/new-york-city-trash-problem-packaging-reduction-bill/.
Sutton, Candice Choi. "NYC Tries New Approach to Reduce Mounting Trash on Sidewalks." Associated Press, 3 Aug. 2024, apnews.com/article/nyc-trash-garbage-bins-694694360479c6c31a75d55b4c784755.
