Hello fam. This is a post brought to you by aPatreonrequest—I know, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these—from Sarah G, asking my thoughts and opinions on theZero Waste movement that is sweeping across certain parts of the online strata,
particularly on youtube and pinterest. (Links are in bold for ease of
access and viewing, and are non affiliated.)
Sarah writes: Hi Joy, I know this isn’t exactly in the realm of vampires (can’t wait for Phangs!) but I feel this is something you might have some good advice on if you have the spoons to talk about it. I recently started looking into more eco-friendly ways to live after your posts about allergies and toxic synthetics made me realize I had several things in my home that were triggering my asthma and I came across the concept of zero waste, which sounded really cool at first, and then I looked into it some more and it just sort of seems fake and I was wondering what your thoughts were on it.
Zero Waste is indeed something I’m familiar with, and like you, I have mixed feelings on the community around it. The principles of Zero Waste i.e. reducing the amount of waste you produce an the types of waste you produce, are great. I think it’s a solid, good idea to try and promote more ethical produce and buying habits, both for the planet and from a personal financial stand point. The more you can reuse and recycle the better. But I also feel the … fandom (can you call it that???) can be quite off putting and at times extremely self righteous and judgemental in attitude. Amidst the crunchy hippies, the minimalists and those just straight up trying to live a little better, are those who have managed to make something meant for the betterment of the planet into something about themselves, and they’re willing and ready to make sure we know just how evil we are for still having plastic straws with our drinks. Cause, y’know, it’s not big companies doing the most damage to the environment, no sirree it’s you and your plastic water bottle, you monster. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to why the war on plastic is being handled wrong.)
Yea, those people are very fake and very off putting, and I see a lot of them on youtube. And a lot of the time, they’re actually giving contradictory advice toward actually living a zero waste lifestyle.
When talking about this with other people, I have taken to calling this The Mason Jar Aesthetic.
A while ago, while I was talking about sustainable living with a friend (hi Michael!), and he mentioned that he and his wife were thinking of using mason jars as an alternative to buying expensive glassware, because if one breaks, you’ll always be able to replace them easily and you’ll always have a matching set. Which blew my mind as genius because not only is that a super cost effective, but it’s also a really sustainable way of living, both from a zero waste ethic standpoint and financially too.
For example, where I am in the US, for $15 I can usually get 12 half pint mason jars, if not for less depending on where I shop. They come with lids and seal top discs, which are easy to replace if I ever use them for canning and can also be safely frozen, sanitized and reused again and again, meaning they are long lasting and multi-purpose. And, if you are using them as drinkware and this is important to you, they all match.
For me however, the real benefit of the humble mason jar, is that they can be fully recycled, though it is important to note that in some regions, the tops may need to go to a separate facility from the glass jar itself, so you’d need to check with your local recycling center on that. But regardless, the whole thing is recyclable, sturdy, multi-purpose, easily transportable (seal your drink and off you go!), cost effective, and some may even argue, aesthetically pleasing.
Pinterest certainly seems to think so:
[ID: a screenshot from the website Pinterest depicting many diy crafty projets for home and the kitchen involving mason jars]
Some of the larger pint ones, would also fit nicely into a mobility aid like a cup holder, for those of us who need easy to grip handles. (Also as an aside, if you need more stability and often lament that there is no such thing as a two handed mug—or even if you find most mug handles too small to get a good grip—those things are great, they just clip right on. Life changing.) Because if your argument for sustainability isn’t inclusive, it’s not good enough.
Which is where the war on plastic comes in. Looking at you “lets ban all drinking straws regardless of the fact that plastic straws are a vital necessity for some people with disabilities”, and no, pasta straws are not a safe alternative for everyone (allergies/celiac), metal is expensive and also inflexible, and neither are the bamboo, glass or silicone ones. Banning plastic straws at this moment in time, is not the solution.
Brighter minds than mine have tried to solve this, but as a general proposal, instead of an outright ban, until a sustainable and disabled friendly alternative is found, plastic straws in food establishments could be issued by request, without—and this is important—without shaming disabled people for needing to use something which you can easily opt to avoid if you desire to do so. Because once more kids and with feeling, if your argument for sustainability isn’t inclusive, it’s not good enough.
(I am fully prepared to get hate over this, the arguments over this shit on twitter were wild. And no, it is not the responsibility of disabled people to come up with a solution to this, while subsisting on restricted income, restricted access to resources, and often times restricted mobility to boot. If you feel this strongly about disabled people using plastic straws, be part of the solution that helps to find a valid alternative. You want this problem fixed, you do it inclusively.)
Now, where was I, oh yeah. Mason jars.
By contrast, a box of 4 glass tumblers of roughly the same volume, can be anywhere from $10-$20 or even more depending on where you look. And while they might look nice, they are single purpose, expensive, and also—and this is important, cause not a lot of people know this—cannot be recycled.
But Joy, you say, waiting to throw the shards of the broken glass you just swept up off the floor into the recycling, how much damage can it really do? Glass is just glass? Right?
Well, here’s the thing about this type of glass. In order to make it thin and aesthetically appealing, it has to be treated with special chemicals (like molten potassium nitrate) to toughen it up and make it shock resistant to temperatures. The problem with this however, is that treated glass, doesn’t melt at the same temperature as untreated glass, which can cause several problems at recycling facilities, ranging from damaged equipment at the plant (not good!) to creating flawed, glass which is too fragile for use, and will ultimately, you guessed it, end up on the landfill. [Source] The same is true of mirrors and glass from doors and windowpanes. [Source]
So if you do drop your glass and it breaks, please don’t put it in the recycling, wrap it up in brown paper and throw it in the trash. Similarly, if you are sick of the sight of your old glassware, don’t pitch it. Instead consider giving it to goodwill or your local equivalent. Someone will use it.
And don’t feel bad if you didn’t know. I never knew this either till a while ago, but it made me really think twice about how non-eco-friendly and sustainable my home life is. And I’m not saying this to guilt anymore or make you feel bad that you don’t do more, heck knows I never used to give a crap about any of this stuff until I started getting sick and developed multiple chemical sensitivities (Hi if you’re new here, I’m allergic to the modern world due to some frankly dystopian levels of auto-immune problems that emerged in the last few years, send help) and realized just how very not good a lot of the things I was doing are, for both me and the planet.
I am not a crunchy hippy by choice, but by necessity of survival. You have to be when plastics and most mattress fillers and couch stuffing starts bringing you out in a rash/makes you wheeze and suddenly you find yourself wandering the aisles of “eco-friendly" stores wondering if the sales rep you’re listening to actually knows what they’re talking about or if they’re a tinfoil hatter who also puts essential oils in their drinking water. (We’ve been over this, do not.)
But do you know what I also noticed in those supposedly eco-friendly stores?
Mason jar drinkware being sold at $20 a pop. Surely, I thought to myself, surely it’s $20 for a set of at least four?
Nope.
And do you know what else? This wasn’t just a regular mason jar glass that had been tinted blue, no, this was “treated shock resistant glass”. So what they did was, they took an iconic recyclable object that is actually very cheap to produce and buy, inflated the cost by a huge amount, and then, made it non-recyclable, for profit.
Are-you-freaking-kidding-me?
And that’s a huge problem I find, with trying to find information and resources online about sustainable living and eco-friendly products, because a lot of them? Are actually hugely wasteful if not in actual material, then certainly in mentality.
I watched one notable youtuber vlog about how she got rid of everything in her kitchen and replaced it with more eco-friendly (and extremely expensive) options, because she just couldn’t stand the thought of those "toxic" things being in her kitchen … except … they weren’t doing her any harm, and they weren’t worn out. They weren’t falling apart. They were still very much safe and usable and might even have been donated to somewhere like goodwill for someone else to use … but she threw them out to replace them with shiny bamboo and kitschy ceramics, and now they’re heading toward a landfill, where they will not be used to their fullest extent, and where they will pollute the earth.
Surely by the zero waste ethos, it’s more sustainable to use the product until it has to be replaced, and then buy the eco-made alternative?
To give you an example, I’m in the process of replacing all my tupperware with glass, metal and ceramics because I’m allergic to plastics, but also because I’d like to invest in more sustainable planet friendly options for the future. But I’m also doing it once piece at a time. Partly because my husband can and does still use those things, but also because, well, I can’t afford to replace them all. I just plain can’t, it’s too expensive to go out and replace all my leftover food containers with stainless steel lunch boxes from Japan. I’d like to, and I wish I could, but if wishes were horses then I’d need a much bigger yard. (That’s how that saying goes, right?)
I guess the point of this lengthy ramble, is a complaint that the aesthetic of sustainability is actually more popular than actual ethical sustainable practices. Too many people are concerned with looking like they care, but don’t actually want to get into the nuance of things. And I get it, I do. It’s nice to feel like you’re doing something good. Who doesn’t want to feel like they’re taking responsibility for their time on this earth and being the best version of themselves?
But it has to require thought, and method, and looking beyond the narrow scope of your own four walls (metaphorical or otherwise) and what that one person on youtube said, while merely swapping one form of consumerism for another because it looks and feels ethical, but not actually exacting any kind of global change.
And that’s the difference between using a mason jar to drink out of, and the Mason Jar Aesthetic. Being aware of your impact on the earth and doing what you can within your limits and means (and respecting the means of others), vs wanting to be seen as such. And it’s an important distinction and one that requires self reflection and a great deal more thought than buying into an aesthetic.
Me switching out all my plastics and turning my backyard into a compost heap might make my home more eco-friendly, but real change cannot be effected without also putting pressure on large corporations (looking at you Nestle) to change their practices, and boycotting those stores in favor of expensive organic and “ethical” brands is not the solution to this. It merely creates a niche market where the rich and privileged are able to live in a very small self-contained bubble of moral “eco purity”, while actively punching down at those who cannot. Real change? Comes from getting involved in the community and lobbying against big corporations like Nestle turning round and extracting water from drought stricken states, and then selling it back for profit. It’s boots to the ground, and writing letters and emails, and doing more than just buying organic bamboo washcloths and telling yourself you saved the world one micro-bead of plastic at a time.
So do I think zero waste is a crock? Absolutely not, at the core it has some great points about how we use and consume products, which are things we should be thinking about in our day to day lives. But do I feel it places too much emphasis on the self rather than the global community? Absolutely. And at it’s core sustainability isn’t about the self. It’s about community, and the changes we can affect together in order to make the world a little better than how we found it.
Otherwise it’s just survivalism with a rose tinted aesthetic.
What do you guys think? Does anyone have anything to add? Let me know in the comments and see if we can get a discussion going. Also, if you’d like to see more of these types of posts, Patreon subscribers can expect to see them two weeks earlier than tumblr, and get a say in what we discuss, so if you’d like to see me talk about something, let me know 🙂
Nava 