--- 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: 2026-10-12T09:04:21.785Z 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. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Each week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published weekly. #### 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. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=220e9cf2-81fa-44ba-8292-4c7cb2152ff4&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How to Live Zero Waste [Watch (HLS stream): How to Live Zero Waste](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/8mpOqofH.m3u8) (4:06)  _Published 2018-03-27. Bea Johnson, author of Zero Waste Home, explains her 5 step process to living waste free_ 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. ## Transcript We have my sons retainer, the foam from my older sons headphones, the stickers from my husbands contact lenses, the stickers from fruit and veggies. Since 2008, my family of four produces one jar of trash per year. The zero waste lifestyle aims at eliminating or reducing as much trash as possible from your household, but what it does is that it translates into a simple life that is based on experiences instead of What got me started is out of wanting simply a better future for my children. A lot of people think that this lifestyle is gonna take more time, that it's gonna cost more or that you have to be a hippie living in the boondocks. We have been able to prove that it is possible to live this lifestyle no matter where you live. [ MUSIC ] I propose in methodology of Five R's. these Five R's are to Refuse to what you do not need, to Reduce what you do actually need, to Reuse what you consume. To recycle only what you cannot refuse, reduce or reuse. And finally, it's rot, which is composting the rest. [ MUSIC ] So these are all Refrigerator also for example, we buy milk in a returnable container. We also have chocolate milk. So once it's done we take it back to the store and The manufacturer uses it again then for again to buy meat, fish and cheese. We simply bring containers with us to the grocery store and the staff just place it straight into the jar. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] If you go to the grocery store, with totes, reusable cloth bags and jars, then all of a sudden you're able to completely eliminate packaging from coming into your home, and that's something you wont have to throw away. If you also implement a composting system in your home, Then you'll be able tt eliminate a huge amount of waste also. This used to be a trash can, which we've turned into a composite keeper. So we only empty it once a week, and that's it. [ MUSIC ] On my cheeks I use chocolate powder, it's actually cacao powder. And all I do is grab my one big brush. And I grab the excess in a cap, and then I just apply. It cost me $ 0. 72 to fill this single jar. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] I think people see our lifestyle or our home and are like boy, I mean this is, I have so much work to do and they kind of get overwhelmed by having the picture of how they lived and having that picture of how we live and they're like how do I get there. But it's obviously, it wasn't overnight for us. [ MUSIC ] I've tried baking soda on my hair to wash it and it destroyed my hair. I've tried moss in lieu of toilet paper. I mean we've tried a lot of different things. So little by little we let go of all these extras and we found a balance, a system that we could see ourselves doing in the long run. And that's when zero waste became sustainable. That's when it became a lifestyle for us and something that we could see ourselves doing for life. 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