In Switzerland you pay for every bag of trash you produce. And guess what, this helps to reduce the amount of trash produced. Imagine if everyone in the U.S. had to pay for every bag of trash. I think we would have some radical changes overnight. For starters, companies would start to produce less packaging. My dream is for us all to go radical and adopt the Unverpackt ( German grocery store) model, where everything is sold in bulk, and you bring your own reusable bags and food containers.

I have another idea that I would love to make popular. For this to work I would need an engineer to develop the technology. Here is the idea – in every home there would be a small compacting machine that would be able to gather different kinds of materials, for example, glass, plastic, paper, aluminum and crush/melt it down to a small cube that would then be collected weekly by the waste collection service. These cubes would then be delivered to appropriate recycling factories for reuse. If you are an engineer who would like to create this technology, contact me.

And lastly, don’t forget to turn your organic waste into compost. This has been getting easier to do with products like the FoodCycler.

I think the combination of composting organic waste, easy efficient recycling, paying for each bag of trash, reducing or eliminating packaging, using reusable grocery bags, and reducing the usage of certain kinds of materials such as paper and plastic could create a huge impact on environmental health. If you have any other ideas to share, I would love to hear them. Thank you.

All the best, Zoe

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