Category Archives: Year Of No Garbage

More Comedy- And More No Garbage

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I realized that due to that pesky zombie apocalypse I completely forgot to post my two most recently published comedy pieces- both Xmas themed- here are the links so that you may read them and have your life changed forever: 

In other news, I’ve been doing a lot on the front of Year of No Garbage, which as an experiment took up all of 2020, and which I spent a good part of 2021 turning into a book manuscript.

Another thing I spent A LOT of time doing this past year was figuring out how to incorporate No Garbage into my “New Normal,” and how to proceed with a life that exists somewhere between Zero Waste and What Most People Do… not to mention trying to navigate those ideas within a household that at any moment includes between 2 and 4 other people besides me, who may or may not have their own ideas about all this stuff.

So stay tuned! The conclusions I reached will be the subject of my very next blog post, along with some ideas about anti-plastic activism and where you can go to learn much more about just how bad plastic really is for us and the environment. Hint: it’s the class taught by Bennington College Visiting Professor, and former EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck entitled “Beyond Plastic Pollution” and it is offered over Zoom… click the image below for details. If you have any interest in the environment, garbage, and/or advocating for a greener planet, you could do NOTHING BETTER than to start with Judith’s class.

Please tell her I sent you. I’m hoping she’ll introduce me to Barack Obama.

Diving Deep On No Garbage

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Although it may seem quiet here on the Year of No Garbage blog, in person I’ve gone into high gear. These days I am working on the book manuscript, tap dancing for publishers, and generally talking about No Garbage ALL. THE. TIME.

One of the nicest people to talk to about No Garbage with is Janet Hulstrand of Downsizing the Home who asks wonderful insightful questions. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Q&A with Eve Schaub: On Zero Garbage

Year of No Garbage Featured in Hyperallergic

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I am super excited to announce that I have an opinion piece recently published in the online magazine Hyperallergic, on the state of contemporary recycling. Please check it out!!

As I’ve spent the last few months finalizing Year of No Garbage the book, I’ve continued to learn more about contemporary recycling, and the outlook is, well, bleaker than I ever previously realized. When you read the piece, you’ll see what I mean. 

The bad news is that as individual consumers, the game is rigged against us. Bamboo toothbrushes and reusable bags are great, but I’ve come to realize that no amount of lifestyle changes by themselves are going to be enough to slow climate change or make the oceans clean again or fix environmental injustice. We can’t recycle our way out of this. It’s going to take legislation.

But part of the problem with achieving the popular support that will be required for such legislation is that it’s a difficult mental leap from garbage to climate change: what does my disposable plastic bag or coffee cup have to do with global warming?

Tell everyone you know: disposables have everything to do with climate change. Plastics are fossil fuels. Plastics are fracking. Plastics are the famed Cancer Alley in Louisiana. Microplastics are showing up not just in our bottled water and food, but our poop, babies placenta, the air we breathe- you name it. We are literally killing ourselves and the planet with our addiction to convenience.

The good news is that we can do this. Once people make the connection that something is really, really bad for us, no matter how hard corporations try to lie, mislead, or muddy the waters, the truth still comes out, and thats when you get actual change. It happened with cigarettes. It happened with sugar. It is about to happen with plastic.