COVER- Two years, two bags: How she makes almost no trash

When your day job is measuring the health of waterways, it's a given you're going to be more aware of just how much humans can resemble parasites, sucking the very life out of the host we call planet earth.

That realization can result in eco-despair, depression, or even heavy drinking. Or you can do something about it.  

For one Charlottesville woman, the flash of insight came at the end of 2008, when she took her garbage can out and looked up and down the street lined with filled trash cans, including her own.

"I couldn't pretend any more that my trash wasn't going to end up buried in someone's land or in the water," says Rose Brown. "There's not enough room on the planet for all the trash."

The now 32-year-old decided not to produce any trash the next year. Talk about a New Year's resolution. 

On December 31, 2008, Rose Brown threw away her last bag of garbage and embarked on a journey that ultimately would be life changing. It's not one that she typically proselytizes about, but it's inspirational nonetheless. And as a result of her "zero garbage challenge," during the course of 2009, Brown produced just half a pound of rubbish that she couldn't otherwise recycle, reuse, or compost. 

Let's say that again: approximately 8 ounces of garbage in one year in a country where the average citizen throws away 4.5 pounds of trash a day.

"So many things are going wrong in the environment that sometimes I think there's nothing I can do," says Brown. "I realized this was something I could do."

Zero garbage begins at home

The first thing you notice walking into Brown's Belmont abode is the lack of clutter. The small rooms don't feel stark, but simple, airy. What you'd notice on garbage day: no trash can on the street.

The notion to stop her own contribution into landfills began building in mid 2008.

"The idea got into my head," says Brown, a project manager for the nonprofit StreamWatch. "There's so much bad news in the state of the world and the environment. I was almost immobilized by guilt."

From garbage expert Annie Leonard, who wrote The Story of Stuff, Brown learned about planned obsolescence–- products are designed to fail within a certain period of time–- and that 99 percent of what we purchase will end up in a landfill within six months.

And then there's the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a trash vortex in the Pacific twice the size of Texas.

"Because I work for watershed health, I was really struck by how much of our garbage is in the water," says Brown. And from local streams into rivers into the Chesapeake Bay, the oceans are getting clogged up with waste, much of it plastic, most of it coming from the land.

The word "challenge" is big for Brown and became a way to deal with her eco-guilt and channel it into positive action.

"I wanted to challenge the assumption that it's okay and correct to package my waste in plastic bags and send it off to someone else's land to be buried–- or to end up in a river or ocean," she writes on her blog. 

And then there's the challenge of just saying no to garbage, no matter what the inconvenience.

"I realized I could make an impact on my own garbage, even if not everyone else's." But going to zero garbage is not like flicking a switch.

"I realized I'd have to do tons of preparation figuring out what products I could use," says Brown.

That's because garbage out begins with garbage in.

"I walked through the house and picked up anything I thought could break in the next year," says Brown. That meant getting rid of her automatic cat feeders, tons of toiletries, especially tubes and pump-top dispensers, her vacuum cleaner–- and rugs, so she could sweep instead of vacuum.

Four easy steps for food disposal

Because so much of our food is packaged, Brown had to change how she shopped and how she ate. She made a bunch of cloth bags and frequents places like Integral Yoga, Whole Foods, and Rebecca's that sell bulk foods. She uses her own bags to load up on beans or rice, and writes the product code in pencil on the thick drawstrings. She even brings her own container for bulk peanut butter.

"They weigh the container," says Brown. "They're very nice about it."

Unless a plastic item has a recycling symbol on it, Brown almost never buys it, and one that's tricky is the tamper-proof plastic under the lid of some containers.

"I remember missing cottage cheese because I couldn't find it without plastic," she says. "Now I find it with a foil top." (Foil is one of the most valuable recyclables.) 

It helps that she's a vegetarian, so she doesn't have to bring home dripping slabs of beef or raw chicken in a cloth bag–- although she notes that butcher paper can be composted.

"My diet improved," says Brown.

With all that buying in bulk, and fewer prepared foods, she's cooking more. 

And she's learned that a compost pile can degrade a multitude of sins: napkins, paper towels, "even a pizza box that's all gooey," she says, if you tear it into smaller bits. "There are tons of things that you can compost."

One of those biodegradable-but-noisy Sun Chips bags sits in her compost pile, and so far it hasn't broken down. (And most flavors of Sun Chips lost that packaging last month after complaints from noise-sensitive Americans.)

Brown assures us that she doesn't do any turning or rolling her "lazy" compost pile, and lists four easy steps on her blog for composting: 

1. Assemble food scraps

2. Walk into your yard

3. Put food scraps in a pile

4. Wait

Zero garbage dining out

Even when she goes out to eat, Brown is determined that no scrap or disposable fork will go into the garbage stream because of her. So she carries the following in her purse: a travel mug, water bottle, a plastic bag, a container for leftovers, a cloth napkin, and silverware.

"This covers most situations," says Brown. 

Even a disciplined re-user can encounter a learning curve in avoiding disposable dishes. "If I forgot my travel mug, I'd buy one," admits Brown, who says that such self-imposed punishments helped her get into the habit.

"If I'm eating out and I forget my container, I either eat all of the food on my plate, or I wrap the leftovers in a soggy little napkin and try to get them home before that napkin falls apart in my pocket," she writes on her blog.

If she's starting to sound saintly, it's only fair to point out that Brown admits she really misses junk food. When one thinks about greasy plastic bags, it's easy to see why those would be a casualty of the zero garbage life.

Travel, too, can be difficult–- and stressful.

"If the people I'm visiting don't have compost, what do I do with my leftovers?" she asks. Her friends in Boston have found a community compost. But San Francisco is the best.

"They have massive community recycling," Brown enthuses about the City on the Bay. "They've outlawed plastic bags and stryofoam. I could do the zero challenge there with no problem."

And the dark side of being on the road? Convenience stores and gas stations.

"There's almost nothing I can buy there except drinks," she notes. "Maybe some fruit, like a scary looking apple."

La toilette

If you think about it, there just aren't recyclable mascara or lipstick tubes. Good thing Brown doesn't wear makeup. But even shampoos and lotions can be problematic.

"I ended up finding shampoo bars on Etsy," says the ever-resourceful Brown, about the website where people can sell their handmade items. And it turns out there are conditioner bars as well.

A reporter frets about Brown getting cracked, chapped lips over the winter. "I just recently found Burt's Bees lip stuff in a recyclable tube," says Brown.

We start to edge toward more personal matters, like shaving.

"That one stumped me for a while," says Brown. "I tried not shaving, but I couldn't do that. And the things I'd read about trying to shave legs with a straight razor were too scary."

She found a razor with a blade that's not recyclable. "In this case, convenience trumped," concedes Brown.

We get even more personal: What about dealing with periods?

She mentions "The Keeper," a reusable silicone cup, and GladRags–- washable menstrual pads.

Brown does use toilet paper, and reminds that her goal was to keep stuff out of the landfill, not the local water authority's compost pile.

"I'm not counting what I flush," she says. "I'm not going there."

Whew.

Another sensitive topic arises. Safe sex and contraception seem to require some waste. In Brown's half-pound of garbage for 2009 are several birth control-pill packages.

"Some things I'm just going to accumulate," Brown concedes, also mentioning contact lenses and the little razor blades.

From a link on her website to a composting site, we learn that latex condoms can be composted. Brown says she hasn't tried that, but she has put rubber bands in her compost.

The side effects of zero garbage

Brown readily acknowledges that going zero garbage is not for everyone and that her lifestyle is well situated for the challenge. She's single with no kids, she's a vegetarian, and she lives in a rental house, which means that unlike homeowners, she doesn't have to worry about getting rid of the asphalt shingles on the roof or that burnt-out water heater.

At the end of 2009, she was excited to weigh the detritus she accumulated over the year–- and she kept on going. Brown insists she launched the challenge for herself, not to guilt people into adopting a lifestyle that frankly is inconvenient.

"I had to keep telling people, I'm not the garbage police and not there to judge them."

But just as no woman is an island, Brown's decision to go garbage-less affects the people in her life. So gift-givers, beware.

"Not everyone in my family is onboard," she says. She mentions a solar-powered rainbow maker that broke. "Should I fix it or hang onto it forever?" she mulls. Worse, its packaging isn't recyclable. And some presents are destined for regifting–- but that happens even when not on a program like Brown's. 

The zero garbage challenge also can also strain romantic relationships.

"It's like dating a vegetarian and you can't cook meat," says former boyfriend Repp Glaettli. "You have to be careful."

Glaettli is prepared for the question, and no, the zero garbage challenge did not break them up, and he and Brown remain friends though the garbage thing added pressure.

"It was very liberating when we broke up," he concedes. "She says don't be guilty, but I stopped being guilty when we broke up." His awareness of Brown's effort remains.

"Everything I touch is garbage now," says Glaettli. "I have to make a decision about what do I want to do about it."

To Glaettli, the greater pollutant and bigger concern is untreated storm water.

"We're in the infancy," he says, "of understanding the effects of what we put in the water, like pharmaceuticals in urine." 

He does see benefits to Brown's challenge and how it raises awareness about conserving natural resources. "It may be extreme what she did, but it can bring people to the middle."

Jennifer Bedrosian lives across the street from Brown. "I recycle and think I'm pretty conscious of trying to throw less away," she says, "but I was really inspired by Rose."

Bedrosian tells other people about Brown. "She's not trying to make people feel guilty," echoes Bedrosian. "It's made me think twice before I purchase anything or forget my bags when I go to the grocery."

Brown has worked at StreamWatch for about five years, first as a volunteer and now pretty much running the place, according to founder John Murphy.

What impressed him about Brown's zero garbage challenge was that "she did it with entirely internal motivation and with very little publicity and very little interest in gathering personal notoriety. She shared it with friends who were interested." (The Hook heard about it from an attendee to a natural food symposium.

Meanwhile, Brown has almost finished year two of the zero garbage challenge, and expects her garbage for this year to be on track with last year's at well under a pound.

Does she ever feel like cheating–- maybe having a friend buy a bag of potato chips and then covertly throwing away the bag so it doesn't end up as part of Brown's trash tally? She seems amused.

"I haven't had that moment of wanting to cheat because I structured this as fun," says Brown. "I don't feel I'm depriving myself. I like the challenge of figuring it out."

For Rose Brown, the lessons will stick with her regardless of whether she loosens the reins of orthodoxy.

"Even if I stop," she says, "I'll always pay attention to my habits."

It's pretty clear that there's no going back to blithely tossing trash in a can after living the zero-garbage life. "I don't know how I'd ever stop," she adds. "I can't imagine ever stopping."

Rose Brown holds two years worth of garbage that she couldn't recycle and that would have gone into a landfill. Most Americans toss more than that a day.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Rose Brown took a photo each month of the items she couldn't recycle, reuse, or compost.
PHOTO COURTESY ROSE BROWN

Brown buys in bulk as much as possible, and has eliminated the twist ties by writing the bin number on the drawstring in pencil.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

When Rose Brown dines out, she can avoid paper and plastic-ware with her own cup, utensils, cloth napkin, and container in which to put leftovers.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Rose Brown's shelves don't have an array of packaged food items.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Quite a bit more than vegetable scraps can be composted, Brown discovered, like pizza boxes.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Her recycling bin is full, and Rose Brown hasn't thrown out a bag of garbage since 2008.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

A styrofoam bowl, plastic stickers and flea medicine packaging are among the items Brown couldn't recycle in 2009.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

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