Tech Shortcuts for Life

Hack Your Way to Zero Waste

Save money, reduce consumption, and support local businesses

Thomas Smith
Debugger
Published in
12 min readApr 27, 2021

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Save As/Medium; Source: Getty Images

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.

Part of the motivation was also economic. Our trash service at the time charged $88.53 per month for a 96-gallon waste bin but only $26.06 for a 20-gallon bin. That’s a difference of almost $750 per year. A family that switched from a 96-gallon bin to a 20-gallon one and invested the price difference would be about $10,300 richer in a decade (assuming a 7% return). That’s a lot of cash for a change that also benefits the Earth.

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.

When we first switched from a 96-gallon trash bin to a 20-gallon one, I remember seeing the fresh, slim plastic bin newly delivered at our curb and thinking, “Hey, that actually looks pretty big! This should be easy!” Then I opened the lid and discovered that about…

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