ZERO WASTE NOTES · PART 01 What Is Zero Waste? Where the Idea Actually Starts

There's a scene I run into all the time in my organizing work. Open a drawer and find plastic bags saved “just in case,” packaging piling up from every delivery, that moment of hesitation in front of the recycling bins wondering if this really goes here. Sorting through belongings and sorting through trash turn out to be the same job. At some point, I stopped seeing them as two separate things.

Organizing a space, in the end, means paying attention to where things come from and where they go. Follow that flow long enough and you run into the idea of zero waste.

People often tell me they want to make less trash but don't know where to start. I had the same question, so I started reading. What zero waste actually means, what the options look like — that's what this series is for. If you finish one of these posts and try just one small thing, that's enough.

Zero Waste Doesn't Mean Zero

Zero waste means exactly what it sounds like: no waste. But when the idea first took shape, it was never about hitting an absolute zero. It was closer to a direction — cut back on single-use items, choose recyclable materials, keep less ending up in landfills or incinerators.

Ask “can a person really produce zero trash?” and the honest answer is probably no. Ask “can I make less than I'm making now?” and for most people, the answer is yes. Zero waste starts from that second question.

A Movement That Started on One Person's Blog

Zero waste picked up real attention in the early 2000s, first adopted as a waste-management policy goal in California, then spreading to businesses and local governments.

But it became a personal practice largely because of one person: Bea Johnson. Starting in 2006, she and her family documented a waste-free life on her blog. The New York Times picked up the story, and it went global. Her 2013 book, Zero Waste Home, has since been translated into 27 languages.

In Korea, the turning point came in 2018, when China stopped importing recyclable waste. That single policy shift exposed how fragile the domestic recycling system really was, and pushed a lot of people to rethink single-use plastic for the first time.

Why Doesn't Careful Sorting Actually Reduce Waste?

Have you ever sorted your recycling carefully and still felt like nothing changed? There's a reason for that.

Of all the plastic humanity has ever produced, only about 9% has actually been recycled. The rest ends up in landfills, gets incinerated, or washes into the ocean.

(Source: Roland Geyer et al., Science Advances, 2017 / OECD, 2022 / Tsinghua University, Communications Earth & Environment, 2025)

Sorting doesn't guarantee recycling. Food residue, mixed materials like plastic fused to paper, pieces too small to sort — any of these can send something straight to incineration or a landfill after collection. There's a real gap between what goes into the recycling bin and what actually gets recycled.

Which is why the step before recycling matters more: making less, and refusing more, in the first place.

Zero Waste Is a Direction, Not a Destination

It's the same in organizing. Picture a perfectly organized space before you start, and the whole project feels impossible — you don't know where to begin, and it'll probably get messy again anyway. Zero waste works the same way. The moment “absolute zero” becomes the goal, you burn out before you even start.

So this series isn't going to push perfect execution. The plan is simpler: lay out what zero waste actually means, what the options are, how they work in practice — and let that understanding shift your choices, even slightly.

Skipping one plastic bag today. Remembering a tumbler. Small choices, pointed in the same direction, add up to zero waste. I'd like this space to be where we figure out that direction together.

Q. What's the biggest source of trash in your day?

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ZERO WASTE NOTES · PART 02 Bea Johnson: The Woman Who Fit 10 Years of Trash in One Jar

"Will This Even Last Three Days?" An Honest Confession About Organizing

Why Instagram Organizing Fails in Real Homes — And What Actually Works