Tech Shortcuts for Life
Hack Your Way to Zero Waste
Save money, reduce consumption, and support local businesses
Tech Shortcuts for Life is a weekly column from Thomas Smith on Debugger exploring the apps, automation, gadgets, and other tech tricks that can make your life more efficient.
In 2019, my family and I challenged ourselves to reduce the amount of trash we threw away with the goal of getting as close to zero waste as possible. Despite being a family of three at the time — and cooking about 30 meals per week for family and members of our community — we leveraged tech and used simple shortcuts and hacks to reduce our landfill waste from 96 gallons per week to less than 20 by the end of our nine-month experiment. That’s the equivalent of less than two kitchen garbage bags per week of waste sent to the landfill.
Part of the motivation for our experiment was environmental. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American generates 2.45 pounds of landfill waste per day, or 2,682 pounds per year for a family of three. By weight, that’s a Honda Civic’s worth of trash each year. Between five and 13 metric tons of plastic waste worldwide ends up in the oceans, too, where it can harm wildlife and disrupt ecosystems.
