How can we reduce waste at home? Follow a family for two years to learn how they implemented accessible tactics to cut back on their trash.
At the end of 2020, I saw a photo online of a family holding a jar full of a year’s worth of their trash. Like a true nerd, I slanted an eyebrow, did some research, and then copied them. I filled a spreadsheet with 60 lines of various plastics and laminated materials, along with outlets for upcycling, downcycling, and recycling. An oatmeal container became our family’s trash can.
Now, for the first time in two years, our brown metro trash bin has returned to the alley full of 90 pounds of broken toys, plates, spent gum, and ripped flip-flops to be hauled to middle Tennessee’s full landfill, out of sight. According to J.R. Lind’s February 2020 article in Nashville Scene, Nashville residents average more than 2 pounds of trash per person per day. With just a little effort, our family’s project managed to decrease that by around 90 percent.
We’re not “zero-waste,” but we are “zero-sacrifice,” and our project is now routine. We do weigh on our environment, eating from non-recyclable chip bags, shopping at big-box stores, trick-or-treating, online shopping, and hosting parties. Our extended family enjoys our plastic gifts. Nicaraguan coffee beans are delivered to our house by truck, and we travel. Zero-waste? We’re as close to that goal as technology is to saving humankind from its environmental conundrum: never happening. We want to share our trash-diminishing experience to improve our city and empower other people, not to limit our way of life or sow guilt.

Given the space they require and the methane they spew, landfills are a preposterous concept. But completely avoiding plastic pollution today is a fool’s errand. And recycling, which can be wasteful in itself, is only the last line of defense. So, if you’re short on bandwidth but you want to shrink the size of your trash can, start with these four steps:
- Research the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021, a federal bill that outlines policy solutions to plastic pollution, and support similar local and federal bans.
- Avoid single-use plastic. Plastics #3 through #7 have no viable secondary market. The recycling arrow symbol on these plastics is a ploy by lobbyists.
- Learn the guidelines for proper commercial and home composting.
- Learn to recycle correctly. Metal cans, paper, and cardboard are actually recyclable, while plastic recycling has failed. If it isn’t a metal can or clean, dry paper or cardboard, it’s probably compromising your whole load of materials. If you’re not sure, don’t try to recycle it.
These steps represent an hour of time invested. With a little additional effort, you can decrease your trash by 50 percent or more. By additionally using mail-order boxes for downcycling, in just two years, we’ve converted our former year’s worth of trash bins to one 96-gallon bin. We’ve been strict about properly sorting everything we bring into our house.
Opportunities for improvement are everywhere. We’ve explored ethically sourced coffee in truly compostable bags, shopped bulk goods, used smarter products, gardened, and recycled old electronics at Best Buy. We haven’t purchased paper towels, napkins, disposable cups, plates, or trash bags in 20 years. Small increments are key. Nix or replace one thing at a time. Extra expenses in one category will be offset by efficiency in another.

The social cost of extreme living to completely avoid waste is high. Nevertheless, the personal return, the social example, and the environmental benefit of these simple steps beats the hell out of bowing to an absurd system.
How Can We Reduce Waste at Home?
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, formerly a powerful message, is quaint today. Our family now suggests supporting plastic bans and avoiding some categories entirely as part of “Reduce,” composting as part of “Reuse,” and recycling correctly, although single-stream recycling programs make this expectation impossible.
As containers for these practices, we use:
- Three kitchen-sized bins for recycling, commercial compost, and stretchy plastic (#4 bags and films, for drop-off at Publix or Kroger).
- Four small bins, one for garden compost, one for glass, one for usable items for donating, and a plastic packaging downcycle box from Terracycle (one per year, 15 pounds), which gathers blister packs, chip bags, freezer bags, and miscellaneous plastic packaging. We also use a service called Trick or Trash, a mail-back recycling box for candy wrappers.
- Six small tubs, one each for scrap-metal bits; batteries for municipal collection; razors and cosmetics; office bits for Terracycle; arts and crafts items for the local reuse store; and electronics for Best Buy.
Only municipal recycling and garden compost are taken out weekly at home. The remaining drop-offs are every 1 to 3 months. These bins take up some space, but our only other options are to buy less, make more room, or conveniently bury it all in landfills near other people.
While managing your waste stream is rather easy, the larger obstacle is the social side. Waste output is surprisingly personal. A few of our like-minded friends were immediately on board, but most are either mildly curious or indifferent. Some feel judged or suspect, even though we don’t push it. We only answer questions, and only in our home. “More hippie stuff,” thinks the extended family. But despite the pervading ambivalence, we know not a single person who would dig a hole in the yard and drop in their trash. As an antidote to that paradox, here are some steps for the serious:
- Ban. Banning disposables and single-use plastic is crucial. The aforementioned Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act is a monumental gesture against this crisis. Solo cups and plastic foam (both #6) pave the plastic hellscape. The world-famous levels of microplastics in the Tennessee River puts this mess right at our doorstep. Why is it still legal to slap greenwashing terms wherever we want and print the recycling symbol on items no recycler will accept?
- Avoid. This is the smartest, cheapest, and easiest solution. Figure out what you can do without, and for what you can’t, shop bulk sections, thrift stores, and zero-waste markets. Keep drink bottles, disposables, household cleaning products, and plastic diapers out of the ground and waterways. Invest in reusable implements; use vinegar for cleaning and a toilet sprayer for cloth diapers. You’ll save hundreds and never run out. Avoid synthetic clothing too. Millions of microfibers wash into our rivers from every washing machine.
- Compost. Learn to compost your food and yard waste in garden setups and commercial compost bins. Composting (and sink disposal for a small amount of cooked food) alleviates the need for trash bags. Before composting packaging or utensils, keep an eye out for greenwashing terms, including “biodegradable,” “bioplastic,” “plant-based,” and “eco-friendly.” Look for and insist on “certified compostable” labels. “Bioplastic” #7 is simply unrecyclable, despite its greenwashed name.
- Recycle correctly, and only as a last resort. Recycling isn’t the main solution, but to then say recycling is pointless is a cop-out. If you recycle in your metro bin only your clean, dry cardboard and paper (not tissue and paper towels), cans, bottles, and paper cartons, most of it will be used. Reuse and recycle glass. In most places, everything else is unrecyclable: #3 through #7 plastic, paper takeout boxes, coffee cups, yogurt cups, and ice-cream containers. Dirty or incorrectly recycled items can ruin single-stream recycling and drive the narrative that it’s not worth it. Use your municipal collection facility for metal, hazardous waste, batteries, mattresses, tires, and many other items.
Recycle stretchy plastic, but avoid all you can. Shopping bags, bubble wrap, air-filled padding, plastic envelopes (with the stickers cut off), zip-close bags (with the zipper cut off), and any plastic film you can easily poke your thumb through is all the same: LDPE #4. It’s absolutely everywhere, and its presence in curbside bins can disrupt single-stream recycling. Take clean #4 stretchy plastic to Kroger or Publix. Their process is unregulated, but it beats burying it.
Our two-year project has plenty of shortcomings. The trash in our alley can is only what we bring home, so we can track how much trash we’re producing. So our bin doesn’t include Capri-Sun pouches from cousin visits and grandmother’s Sonic wrappers. Our travel trash is scattered in various landfills.

We avoided construction for two years. Pressure-treated wood, concrete, and construction waste are a massive problem.
We pay $10 per month to ship our non-recyclable plastic to Terracycle for downcycling – an unsustainable practice. Homemade potato chips are fine but only last 24 hours, and we can’t seem to live without chips. Upcycling and reuse don’t hurt, but they’re a small part of the solution. Downcycling is delayed landfill trash.
Any effort beyond banning and avoiding single-use and non-compostable materials is merely a short-term solution. But we do our best. Our linear waste system is a complicated code for which there are no certified public accountants, but solutions do, or can, exist. For example, our city, Nashville, has a robust Zero Waste Master Plan. Major packaging companies could be restricted to truly recyclable products and required to reclaim it all. Burying recyclables could be penalized. Inspectors with a citation book at the landfill truck line would certainly send some reform up the chain. Make us pay for our convenience waste and watch manufacturing change.
All disposables need to turn back into dirt without any effort or expense from the consumer or municipality. The world’s largest plastic polluters should charge or absorb a few cents more per disposable item to begin to solve this problem. For now, they’re just charging it all to our local tax bills, landfills, and waterways.
Locally, we can support bans, avoid disposable plastic, learn to compost, and limit our buying to recyclables that work. These efforts will pay us back in lower taxes and improved quality of life.
Resources
A Plastic Ocean, directed by Craig Leeson
Can I Recycle This? by Jennie Romer
The Unsettlers by Mark Sundeen
The Last Beach Cleanup and Plastic Pollution Coalition.
Matt Glassmeyer and his spouse, Shara, raise two girls in Nashville, Tennessee. He has also lived in Florida, New York, and California.