--- title: How to Live Zero Waste description: Bea Johnson, who popularized the idea of living a zero waste life, gives TIME a tour of her Mill Valley, Calif., zero waste home. canonical: https://time.com/5218046/how-to-live-zero-waste/ author: TIME Video article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-03-27T22:25:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:58:01.771Z og:title: How to Live Zero Waste og:description: Bea Johnson gives TIME a tour of her Mill Valley, California, zero waste home og:url: https://time.com/5218046/how-to-live-zero-waste/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7850087afdb2ae0b/69892c664ee26201c43115b6/zero-waste-pic.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1280 og:image:height: 720 og:image:alt: zero waste pic og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How to Live Zero Waste twitter:description: Bea Johnson gives TIME a tour of her Mill Valley, California, zero waste home twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7850087afdb2ae0b/69892c664ee26201c43115b6/zero-waste-pic.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How to Live Zero Waste > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Worth Your Time: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Worth Your Time is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more. Worth Your Time is a curated guide to the culture worth knowing, from the biggest conversations of the moment to the books, shows, ideas and discoveries worth your attention. Culture editor Eliza Berman taps TIME's collective taste and perspective to surface what is worth watching, reading, talking about and sharing, and why. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [TIME Video](https://time.com/author/time-video/) ## TIME Video Mar 27, 2018 10:25 PM UTC  by [TIME Video](https://time.com/author/time-video/) ## TIME Video Mar 27, 2018 10:25 PM UTC Trash is our dirty habit. From the giant island of plastic in the Pacific to overflowing landfills, humans have left no part of the world untouched. And the U.S. is a top contributor to the global trash problem with the average American generating 4.4 pounds of garbage each day. Members of a growing anti-waste campaign say with a little work it does not have to be that way. The zero waste movement has inspired a legion of followers who brag that they can fit an entire year’s worth of garbage into a tiny jar — and insist you can too with a little work. It’s an idea that Bea Johnson, a native of France, has popularized in a book, speeches and on her website Zero Waste Home. Johnson says there are 5 ‘Rs’ to use as a guideline for achieving a zero waste home: “Refuse” what you do not need, “reduce,” “reuse” or “recycle” what you can’t refuse, and “rot,” or compost, organic products. Johnson, who lives in Mill Valley, Calif. with her husband and two sons, gave TIME a tour of her zero waste home along with advice for anyone interested in cutting back. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5218046/how-to-live-zero-waste/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5218046/how-to-live-zero-waste/"},"headline":"How to Live Zero Waste","datePublished":"2018-03-27T22:25:40.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:58:01.771Z","description":"Bea Johnson gives TIME a tour of her Mill Valley, California, zero waste home","url":"https://time.com/5218046/how-to-live-zero-waste/","keywords":["Living","Environment","onetime","Evergreen"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7850087afdb2ae0b/69892c664ee26201c43115b6/zero-waste-pic.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Video","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-video/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7850087afdb2ae0b/69892c664ee26201c43115b6/zero-waste-pic.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"zero waste pic","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5218046/how-to-live-zero-waste/","name":"How to Live Zero Waste"}}]}] ```