Zero Waste Trash Talk

Would you sneak a plastic bag monster costume into your State's Legislature and wear it to meet with lawmakers?  This is just one of the interesting things we found out in this inspirational interview with Sadie and Zach, the organizers behind Zero Waste Chattanooga.  We discuss their Zero Waste journey and how they educate their community about environmental issues.  Sadie has a great take on "Remedy Messaging" as it relates to re...

With world wide Covid-19 deaths in the millions, political upheaval, social unrest and a tumultuous economy, continuing the conversation about sustainability sometimes feels like some kind of privileged guilty pleasure. Michael and Maris discuss the struggles of the past year and the importance of talking about sustainability in order to engage listeners and unify our environmental efforts to slow down the impending climate catastr...

Do you feel like you're the only one recycling, composting your food scraps and getting dirty looks from cashiers for bringing your own bags?  Finding and supporting your local environmental organizations can be a great way to stay connected and leverage your environmental actions. ZWTT is active locally with Tennessee Environmental Council. Join us as we chat with CEO Jeff Barrie about the 50 year history of TEC and what their pla...

How do you "pull a Maris"?  Is there a waiter in East Nashville with a zero waste chopstick injury from Jess?  How does Michael offset air conditioning for furry Akitas?  Life is full of trade offs for what's good for us, the environment and our pocketbooks.  Zero Waste isn't just trying to fit all of your trash into a mason jar.  It's about conserving and reusing resources. The Trash Talk hosts share some of the things they do on ...

Hey Ladies! Did you know that tampons and pads that we have been told to use our whole lives are actually toxic to our bodies? Maybe this isn’t news to you, but really these foreign objects we’re putting into our bodies are NOT good for us! and they are just going to be thrown AWAY - which we all know by now that there is no away. For this episode we invited fellow Zero Waste Nashville group member Larissa Maestro to explore the op...

Karen McIntyre from Nashville's Westmead Elementary is much more than a librarian.  She's helped start a compost program, a school garden, recycling drives and a way for students to donate uneaten food from the lunchroom.  She shares her successes and the lessons learned along the way to making her school an example for the entire Nashville school system.  Karen is proof that one persons dedication can affect systemic change.  Find...

There are a lot of items that sit in our closets, attics or basements that only get used a couple of times a year.  Do you know how many resources it took to produce, ship and sell all that stuff so that it can just sit around unused? Ruckify is a new peer-to-peer rental marketplace that makes it super easy to put unused items back into circulation AND make money in the process! THEY ALSO...

In this episode, Michael talks about his experience with his new bidet and about how the process works down to the nitty gritty detail.  We also hear from a couple of listeners who gave us audio testimonials about why they love their bidets.

Save some fricken trees by using a bidet and/or toilet paper made from recycled or sustainable materials.  The average American uses 184 trees worth of toilet paper in their lifetime.  That's a...

Gleaning is an ancient practice mentioned in the Old Testament and codified into law in some countries.  Normally, over 1/3 of the food produced in the world is wasted but during the pandemic shutdown this was exacerbated as crops were being plowed under and milk dumped down drains as distribution channels shifted from institutions and restaurants to grocery stores.

Jeannie Hunter from The Society of St. Andrew tells us how their p...

Who wouldn't want a grocery store where they are part owners and can vote on the items being sold, where they come from and how they are packaged. Learn what a grocery co-op is and how to start one in our conversation with Ellery Richardson from Nashville Food Co-op.  

This is the first episode in a series about food waste and production.  The concept of Zero Waste is to be circular and regenerative instead of linear and destructiv...

If plastic recycling is broken, why do we do it?  It makes no sense financially or by any measure of success when it's a 90% failure rate.  Even if it worked better, plastic can't be recycled more than 2-3 times before it falls apart so all we are doing is delaying the inevitable.  

We invited Alex Truelove, Director of U.S. PIRG’s Zero Waste program, to discuss his recent article "The insanity of plastic recycling" where he points...

In this episode, Maris and Michael have a conversation with Clay Ezell from The Compost Company, an industrial composting facility, about how industrial composting differs from backyard composting and why Nashville is one of the few cities in the country who have a service like this that accepts food scraps and compostable plastics.  

We discuss why burying organic waste in a landfill is not composting and bounce around ideas for l...

Jenn Harrman, the Nashville Public Works Waste Reduction Program Manager, answers our questions about what's recyclable in Nashville and where does it go?  Like many cities, Nashville has had to adapt to a changing markets for recyclables.  The rules for what plastics can be recycled have changed twice in the last year, causing some confusion.  Listen to this episode to get to the nitty gritty of how things work at our Materials Re...

We touch base with Zero Waste Trash Talk family member Jess Johnson to discuss her experiences with donations as a home organizer.  In addition to asking what each organization is accepting before just dumping items on them, she finds out what they do with the items they can't use.  

Then we have a chat with the amazing Leah Sherry from Turnip Green Creative Reuse.  Her organization's goal is to divert usable materials from the lan...

In Episode 3 we talk about watching the new documentary The Story of Plastic on Amazon Prime and we interview our friend John Hawkins, a Nashville waste diversion specialist and musician, to get his take on the problems with recycling.  

We discuss if we should stop recycling since it's broken and I think Michael might've even encouraged armed insurrection "John Wick Style".  Did we mention that this isn't your normal Zero Waste Po...

Nashville's first zero waste, package free refill store owner, Megan Gill, talks to us about her zero waste journey.  She moved back to the States from Costa Rica where she taught women who had been sex traffic victims how to become beauticians.  Seeing how different consumerism is here in America, it made her want to start an ethical and sustainable zero waste store in Tennessee.  We discuss how the recent tornado affected her bus...

In this first episode we talk about sustainability in Nashville and what we are doing to strengthen our community.  It's a hyper local conversation with ideas that can be applied to communities all across the globe.  We cover city composting options; new plastic recycling regulations and the problems with the triangle numbering system; how to dine out sustainably, and what you can do as individuals to limit your environmental footp...