The Ultimate Guide to Kickstart Your Low-Waste Journey Today 🗺️
Greetings all,
Today’s newsletter is all about consumer waste. We lay out the landscape of businesses building the low-waste future and provide an actionable blueprint to become a low-waste consumer effortlessly.
Thanks for reading!
Zero-Waste is Hard, Low-Waste is Easy
If you’ve searched the term “zero-waste” on the internet, you’ve probably come across videos of people showcasing years worth of waste in a single jar like this ⬇️
A personal waste footprint this small reflects an insane amount of effort, energy, and planning. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing nor something we shouldn’t strive for. In fact, I think in the not-so-distance future this will be possible for the average consumer. But the reality is that most people aren’t motivated enough to meticulously avoid trash. Single-use waste is too deeply embedded in our society for the average person to avoid it entirely.
Enter low-waste. Lowering the amount of waste you produce is actually pretty easy. There is a new class of startups and small businesses that do all the hard work for you. It’s amazing to see the pace at which the space is evolving, but consumer adoption seems a bit slow, even in my own climate-positive circles. The Cool Down has gone ahead and laid out a short write up to help you address the low-hanging sources of waste in your life. Unless you have a weird predilection for trash, this guide should be a pretty easy read.
Low-Waste Companies You Can Shop at Today
🥬 Food & Grocery
Grocery Delivery: The most significant sources of waste in the grocery supply chain are from food and packaging. Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market are two delivery services that focus primarily on reducing food waste. Zero provides a similar offering to them with more emphasis on reducing packaging waste. Zero also boasts a wide range of non-food offerings like homewares and personal products. The Wally Shop is another zero-waste grocery delivery service that provides bulk foods from Trader Joe’s.
Imperfect Foods delivers to most of the West South Central region, Midwest, Northeast, and all along the West Coast
Misfits Market delivers to the Eastern half of the country
Zero currently serves the Bay Area and is rapidly expanding its footprint
The Wally Shop delivers nationwide
Food Delivery: If you’ve ever ordered delivery, you probably noticed it creates a ton of unnecessary waste. DeliverZero, Dispatch Goods, and Muuse are all trying to change that by building low-waste infrastructure for food delivery and takeaway.
DeliverZero is operating in NYC
Dispatch Goods operates in San Francisco
Muuse has an expansive footprint in Asia and has temporarily paused operations in SF
🏠 Household Products
Cleaning Products: Blueland and Cleancult provide refillable, package-lite cleaning products with non-toxic ingredients. Veles is another brand that sells a “resource negative” product made from food waste that also comes in a refillable container.
Furniture: If you live in NYC, you’ve probably seen a million Feather ads on the subway and thought it’s another DTC furniture company. You wouldn’t be wrong if that’s your assumption, but what’s especially cool about Feather is that it provides rental furniture and gives new life to pieces that would otherwise find their way to a landfill.
💄 Personal & Beauty
Bathroom & Tissue Products: We wrote extensively about this in a previous issue, but bamboo tissue products and bidets are the move. Tushy and Cloud Paper are two options that are worth your time.
Oral Care: We’ve tried a whole bunch of toothpaste tablets at The Cool Down, and by far, our favorite is Bite. Stop buying plastic toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, and opt into a Bite subscription.
Hair Care: Rebundle is taking the toxins and waste out of the synthetic hair game. The company has recycled 63 pounds of hair to date and is preparing to launch its first-generation, non-toxic braid hair product soon. Keep Rebundle on your radar if you frequently wear braid hair and abhor an itchy scalp.
🛒 Horizontal Consumer Goods
Package Free is the Amazon of environmentally-friendly ecommerce. It’s a must-use product for a broad spectrum of consumer goods, including bar soap, candles, kitchen supplies, shaving equipment, and more.
Loop is a company run by recycling giant Terracycle that partners with Walgreens and Kroger to deliver package-free consumer staples, including groceries, personal care, and beauty products. Loop is available nationwide.
👚 Fashion
Marketplaces: Depop, ThredUp, and Thrilling are all various flavors of consignment marketplaces. If your local vintage shop is closed due to COVID, these companies are your best bet. The best part about these marketplaces is the ability to source truly one-of-a-kind fashion pieces.
Brands: Several established and emerging brands root their products in anti-waste and environmental justice. Eileen Fisher and Reformation are two well-known brands that have significant sustainability focuses. For Days is a newer brand that sells a variety of wardrobe basics and offers a swap program that enables customers to return clothes anytime for any reason. There’s also a burgeoning class of independent brands practicing various forms of sustainability, including upcycling and rebranding. This includes andagain, Clandestina, Frankie, Hecha, nube, and Official Rebrand.
🧊 Miscellaneous Consumer Goods
Alcohol: Brooklyn-based Air Company produces its flagship vodka product using carbon captured directly from the air. That means you can get drunk off a product with a negative carbon footprint.
Diamonds: Similar to Air, Aether is creating diamonds from direct air captured carbon. Its product, which is expected to launch this month, will be the first carbon-negative diamond.
Electronics: BackMarket is a refurbished electronics marketplace. Tech waste is one of those categories we still don’t have a great answer to, but buying refurbished as much as possible is best practice for the time being. You can all sell your old tech products on the platform if they are in good enough shape.
Sporting Goods: SidelineSwap is a second-hand sporting goods marketplace. Low-key a solid place to buy a vintage jersey from an unsuspecting seller too 👀
We all have that one friend who loves to shop and probably could use a nudge in the eco-friendly direction. It would help if you considered sharing this newsletter with them. The planet will thank you, and one day so will your friend 😊
Thanks for reading 🙏 If you have any feedback or want me to research a particular topic, please leave a comment below or send me a note. Also, if you’re not a subscriber yet, you know what to do 👇
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