Shampoo, Takeout, No Plastic Containers
The Ann Arbor businesses in pursuit of zero waste
—By Erin Evans
Samuel McMullen, co-founder of Live Zero Waste, keeps a basket of trash under his desk. It contains mostly junk mail and receipts. When he buys a Cliff bar as a snack at an airport, he adds the wrapper to the basket. Aside from the time last year when a friend mistakenly threw away McMullen’s previous IKEA bag of trash, he has been saving every piece of his trash for nearly seven years.
This is part of McMullen’s commitment to a zero waste lifestyle which he and his sister, Lydia, embarked on following a trip to China to present research on air pollution and renewable energy. Lydia’s boss presented on the topic the siblings had planned to use, forcing them to choose another two days before their own presentation to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). They chose zero waste living and decided to live zero waste for a year, encouraging their audience to join them for a day, week, or month. Two months in, they were committed for life. To go back, McMullen said, would be “hard to justify. Especially once you get over the initial humps, it’s not that hard to maintain.”
Zero waste comes to Ann Arbor
While the idea of zero waste living has existed at least since the 1970s, it has become increasingly popular in recent years as a way to combat single-use plastic, a material wreaking havoc on the environment. An article from National Geographic on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of mostly microplastics twice the size of Texas, describes the issue of discarded plastics that “do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.”
In response to concerns over trash’s environmental impact, the number of stores with goals of being zero or near zero waste has increased to over 400 worldwide and the lifestyle has become somewhat of a trend—Instagram posts with the hashtag #zerowaste rose from 350,000 in December of 2017 to over two million in March of 2019. In Ann Arbor, the movement has inspired the creation of businesses dedicated to limiting waste.
“Ann Arbor was probably the most no-brainer [location to choose for this type of company], because it’s Ann Arbor,” said Emma Hess, owner of the Bring Your Own Container company (BYOC) in downtown Ann Arbor. “I went to U of M, and I felt like the consciousness of the community was already there.” Despite the city’s reputation as progressive and aware of sustainability issues, Hess described the “barriers” limiting access to sustainability, even there.
Overcoming barriers
“There are so many barriers to entry to sustainability, and the main three are time, energy, and money,” said Hess. Taking in containers to refill requires more time and interaction than is comfortable or convenient for many people. She and McMullen both hope for increased access to composting in the city. While this service is available to some, and some campus buildings like dining halls allow composting, it is more difficult for off-campus residents and businesses to find composting options. When students ask Hess about composting, she suggests they put their food scraps in a paper bag and take it to a dining hall—the compost bins there are “free for you to use, it’s just annoying that you have to travel with [your compost].”
Reusing containers to limit waste is a tactic Ann Arbor businesses have used for years, notably Zingerman’s Deli, which started offering reusable takeout containers for their A2ZERO sandwich, and Calder Dairy, which sells products in returnable glass jugs.
Inspired by these businesses and a friend’s TED talk that provoked them to realize the importance of their own consumption to environmentalism, McMullen and Lydia started Live Zero Waste, which helps support people in living lower-waste lives. They provide general information worldwide (after their presentation in China, people joined the movement from 35 countries) but work in London, Ann Arbor, and Ypsilanti to offer specific business recommendations on beginning a zero waste lifestyle. They have also started the Zero Waste Takeout Program in Ann Arbor, partnering with several local restaurants to offer returnable, reusable containers to customers free of charge.
Hess, meanwhile, started BYOC after graduating from the University of Michigan in 2020 with a sociology degree. She had learned about the social side of environmental justice while at the University, but after graduation she became interested in the ways day-to-day habits make an impact. She noticed the rise of refill stores in other parts of the country and a lack of any in or near Ann Arbor. BYOC offers package-free and refillable products like soap, shampoo, and laundry detergent.
As much as possible, Hess sources products locally within closed-loop systems, meaning that the brands she buys from in bulk accept their containers back to be reused. Currently, BYOC is 52% closed loop, and Hess hopes to increase this number to 75% in the next year.
This is more difficult than it might seem. Typical drugstore brands tend not to sell in large enough quantities or aren’t interested in partnering with a company like BYOC. As Hess put it, “They make their money because they package in plastic.” Bulk shampoo and bodywash are hard to find, especially those for specific hair types, and the process of choosing brands to work with is complicated by Hess’s mission to source inclusively from women or POC-owned brands with ethical and environmental labor practices of their own.
Awareness and limitations
After visiting BYOC for the first time, U-M junior Claire Hall was “more aware of…how many opportunities there are of things that you could do that reduce waste.” Her family has always used large, refill containers of dish soap to fill a smaller bottle, and she could see herself “taking out the extra step” and using the store in the future to refill a container she already had.
“[BYOC]” usually ha[s] everything I could possibly need, and often have options to choose from as well,” said Maya Levy, a U-M student who buys conditioner, soap, and sunscreen from the company. Levy sees being closer to zero waste as “one of the small things we can do as individuals,” although she admitted that access is still an issue, saying that “the store is definitely more expensive than just walking into Walgreens and buying some name brand product.”
In the last year, McMullen has noticed increased awareness of zero waste living. Businesses and individuals are interested. While he recognizes that it seems intimidating at first, he encourages anyone to “try it. Try it for a day or a week. Or don’t try it and keep your trash…to get a real idea of how much trash you make.” Personally, McMullen found that much of going zero waste was easier than expected and that the difficult parts become “often very fun” challenges. Hess suggests that people simply try to make the changes toward zero waste that they can, while acknowledging that they can’t do everything. Any swaps for lower-waste products are helpful for a more sustainable future.
Awareness of the issue is something McMullen especially hopes to improve. Another aspect of Live Zero Waste is the Trash Talk Tour, which shows Ann Arbor residents what happens to their recycling. McMullen said that recycling, which his sister calls “fancy trash,” can hardly be considered an environmental “savior.” Much of it is downcycled—the quality of most recycled materials decreases significantly after a single cycle—and requires significant energy to reprocess.
“We’re never going to be able to solve the…imbalance between what we’re extracting and what we’re dumping…by dumping 10% less,” McMullen said. “It’s strategically unsound.” While he agrees it is important to clarify recycling rules, he wants the conversation to shift to “how do we get out of the linear economy?” instead of “how do we marginally improve the linear economy?”
An uncertain but necessary future
Both McMullen and Hess hope to partner with larger companies or the Ann Arbor community to increase awareness of zero waste initiatives and actions, as well as expanding the resources each of their own businesses provide. City-wide, consistent access to composting is another goal for both. While it is “a baseline system to have in place,” and not difficult to do, McMullen said, the limited access to composting is a “huge barrier to doing zero waste at a city scale.”
Hess agreed that composting is “not widely accessible, and it just needs to be implemented.” On the other hand, she continued, “If there’s anywhere it’s going to be implemented, it’s going to be Ann Arbor.” This would be a place to start before this step toward limiting waste could expand to a larger scale.
While similar businesses exist around the country, McMullen said that, at least in terms of the takeout program, no one has figured out a perfect way to do it that works on a larger scale. For him, this makes the future of the project all the more exciting. He hopes they can figure out how to make the program work on a small scale first, particularly solving the problem of how to trust individuals to return the reusable food containers, before expanding to a larger scale with the help of national partners.
Hess recently opened a second branch of BYOC in Plymouth, MI, which allows greater access for people who can’t so easily come to Ann Arbor. While she knows that BYOC is more of a micro-level resource for people interested in being zero waste, she sees a value to such small businesses. The refill companies she sees popping up around the country are all different, not part of the same franchise. They are therefore more locally focused and based around the goals and ethics of each particular owner. By staying at a smaller scale, Hess supports the local economy. She is excited to see more of these shops and an increased awareness of them, but worries too because “you don’t want it to be a trend. Sustainability isn’t trendy.”
If people can see the true impact of trash on the environment, though, McMullen hopes this can impact them and their choices. This is part of the goal of the Trash Talk Tour.
“The critical step,” he said, “is tying environmental destruction to the production of new things.”
Feature photo by Jasmine Sessler on Unsplash.