Excerpt from an article on Vox, published on April 26, 2017 – the second installment of Climate Lab.
Lauren Singer lives a nearly waste-free life. How near? Her total trash for the past four years fits into a single Mason jar.
If that makes you sputter with disbelief, you’re not alone. Singer’s lifestyle provokes strong reactions: Some people think it’s great and want to learn how she does it, some insist that she’s a fake, and others respond like her way of life is somehow an attack on theirs.
“They feel like they’re under a microscope, like the fabric of what they believe in is being threatened,” she said.
Singer experienced this reaction close to home. In college, she tried to persuade her mom to switch to organic milk. It didn’t go well. Her mom felt like she was being backed into a corner, like Singer was criticizing her choices. So now when Singer talks to people about living a zero-waste life, she takes a different approach.
“Once people are presented [with] the topic in a way that breaks it down a little bit, they realize, oh, this isn’t so hard. This isn’t so isolating. This is something simple,” she said.
Andy Murdock 