There are many people that claim to live a zero-waste lifestyle and produce zero waste. In my project I hope to see weather it is a feasible lifestyle and document my experience. This projects goal is to reduce and reassess water, plastics, and food usage. Trash has become a huge epidemic in the US, making major contributions to greenhouse gases and climate change. As the waste in a landfill decomposes, it produces a number of air-toxics, carbon dioxide, and methane. Plastic wastes are being found in oceans and are harmfully impacting marine life.
Project Outline:
- Reduce Food, Plastic, and Water waste
- Eat proportionally or donate leftovers/compost
- Stay away from plastic products and packaging
- Timed showers
- Re-purpose “waste” items when possible
- Document all waste
- Collect and compare with Mikey and Brendan
- Research and Reflection paper
The zero-waste lifestyle experiment will be a week long competition between Michael Gonzalez and Brendan Campbell. My predictions are that Brendan will produce the most solid waste while I will waste the most amount of water.
I will write a paper and connect my experience of the zero-waste lifestyle to a global effort to reduce waste and link the EPA’s sustainable materials management plan and look at how a circular economy system could reduce waste.
