At the end of 2014, when I was looking for information on the famous 3 Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) of sustainability in order to write a project, I came across a video on YouTube by a French woman living in California called Bea Johnson, in which she proposed a waste hierarchy of 5 Rs (refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot).

In her videos, Bea shared several well-known practices, especially among environmentalists and permaculturists, groups that I was a member of at the time – such as carrying your own water bottle, carrying your own coffee container without having to use disposable cups, composting organic food in your backyard, carrying your own cutlery in your bag and refusing disposable ones, buying food in bulk, producing your own toothpaste, among others.

The practices that Bea shared were not new to the environmental movement, nor to the lives of people who were born before the consumer society (Bauman 2008; Gille 2007). But, for the first time, someone turned it into a set of practices applicable to everyday life, turning it into a global movement with all the characteristics of the social media era – shareable content that easily goes viral, followers and likes that legitimise the content, and connection between people from different parts of the world, gathered around ideas and thoughts to reduce the negative environmental impact on the planet. Bea declared from the outset that her practices were zero waste (ZW), with the aim of not generating waste that would end up in landfills and incinerators (Tran 2019; Johnson 2013).

In the format proposed by Bea, and subsequently by other prominent voices in the movement, I found a practical way of replicating what I was already doing in a diffuse way within other movements. I became one of the movement’s leading voices in the country. In 2017, a year before founding my own shop in Brazil, during a cross-country global tour, I met and connected with dozens of initiatives dedicated to ZW.

Between 2007, when the first ZW shop opened in London, and 2019, the Covid period, the ZW movement has spread, opening thousands of shops around the world (image 1), demonstrating its strength by transforming a digital movement into a material force in geographical space.

Today, most of the shops that opened during this period have gone bankrupt and many of the movement’s globally known representatives/influencers have publicly declared that they no longer live the ZW lifestyle (Muniz 2023; Lauren 2020). Others simply stopped posting content on social media, where they had a daily presence producing content, such as Bea Johnson and the founder of Berlin’s first zero waste shop, Milena Glimbovski. This shows that, especially after Covid, these initiatives were unable to maintain their activities after the movement’s most prosperous decade.

However, ZW wasn’t born in 2007, with the first shop founded in London. Nor was it born in 2015 in Brazil, when “nobody was talking about it”, as Cristal Muniz said in her video about the end of the project “A life without rubbish”, a prominent influencer of the movement in the country (Muniz 2023). And it didn’t start with “The priestess of zero-waste living” (Times 2010), Bea Johnson in 2008, when she shared her zero waste routine at her home in California.

The emergence of ZW is a heterogeneous process, derived from a broad historical context around the issue of consumption and waste in our society, which underwent an important mutation with the rise of the internet around the 2000s, which precisely enabled it to spread, making the movement more popular and replicable in various contexts, with various influencers, supporters, groups, communities, organisations and businesses all over the world.

Before this popular phase, ZW went through two other stages, one very much focused on recycling and diverting materials from landfills and incinerators, and a later stage concentrating on government plans and public policies. Below I’ll provide more details on the conditions that gave rise to ZW, as well as the three stages identified over its five decades of existence.

The emergency conditions of the ZW movement

The global production of solid urban waste has grown rapidly, especially since the Second World War, characterised by the satisfied society of the West versus the dissatisfied society of the East (Gille 2007; Zaman et al. 2011; Murphy 2013). This historical materiality of waste is expressed today in the accumulation of plastic in the oceans, the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the insufficiency of landfill layers, the problem of pollution from incinerators and other waste management processes, climate change, among other serious environmental problems today.

Between 1965 and 2015, waste production rose from 635 million tonnes to almost 2000 million tonnes (Chen et al. 2020; Conlon 2021). Production currently stands at 2.01 billion, with a disastrous growth estimate of approximately 70% more by 2050 (World Bank 2018), reaching 3.40 billion tonnes, indicating a dramatic increase in the aforementioned environmental problems.

This problematic generation of trash and waste resulting from mass consumption and, consequently, mass disposal (Bauman 2008), is central to the debates, ideas and struggles of ZW activists, who aim to transform the failing hegemonic consumption and disposal system towards more sustainable patterns. This challenge takes place through practices, ideas, management processes and business models that help their supporters to reduce negative environmental impacts by avoiding the generation of waste and disposal in everyday life (Zaman 2015; Tan 2019; Fry 2020), while challenging the rules of the game of the current system.

In general, ZW was formed on the edges of modern society’s disposal and consumption system, which, in the course of the industrial processes of mass production and consumption, the process of urbanisation and the concentration of people in cities, began to generate ever-increasing volumes of waste, requiring a management system that proved to be insufficient from a very early stage (Zaman 2011; Murray 2002; Gille 2007). Not only because of the growing volume, but also because of the increasing low quality and complexity resulting from the mixture of materials produced by modern industry (Mengozzi 2010; Romano 2021; Gille 2007).

Below I will outline the genealogy of the movement, dividing it into three distinct stages, which were defined on the basis of important milestones (see figure 3) identified during the research.

Phase 1 (1970-1995): Recycling as a focus

Although ZW is considered a recent social phenomenon by its contemporary digital adherents and some authors (Muniz 2023; Pietzsch 2017), its history begins before its transformation into a global movement driven by social networks, and its millions of daily shares of the sustainable lifestyle applied to everyday life (Tran 2019; Balwan et al. 2022).

Since its origins in 1970, the Zero Waste (ZW) movement can be divided into three distinct phases. The first phase covers the period from the emergence of the term until 1996, marked by the formulation of Canberra’s Zero Waste plan. This initial phase was characterised by a more elitist approach, involving mainly academics and small and medium-sized companies in the United States. The predominant focus was on the final stages of the production chain, with an emphasis on recycling and applying the principles of the 3 Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle).

In the United States, Paul Palmer, chemist and Ph.D. from Yale University, founder of Zero Waste Systems Inc., is often credited with coining the term “zero waste” (Sjölund, 2017; Phillips, 2011; Zaman, 2014). While working in chemical waste management in American industries and laboratories, Palmer developed methods to extend the useful life of waste in the production chain, promoting its reuse and diverting it from landfills (Zero Waste Institute n.d.).

Another name often mentioned as one of the founders of ZW is Dan Knapp. In 1981, he founded Urban Ore, a company that still operates today, with a focus on recovering materials that have gone to landfill, processing, separating or recovering them, and then selling them to the municipality’s own recycling industry in Berkeley (Urban Ore n.d.; EPA 2023).

The distinctive feature of this phase is that it was the embryonic historical moment of the movement. At least in the United States, zero waste practices were confined to companies like Palmer and Knapp, with some involvement from local public authorities through partnerships with municipalities, such as Urban Ore (Urban Ore, n.d.; EPA, n.d.). During this stage, initiatives were mainly focused on recycling and concentrated at the end of the production chain, with limited interventions in everyday life and no significant efforts at waste prevention, such as questioning consumption habits, for example.

Phase 2 (1996-2007): Government plans, laws and waste prevention

This phase is marked by the government plan of Canberra, Australia. In 1996, the Australian capital became the first city in the world to design a government programme (ACT 1996; Snow et al. 2001). The plan launched that year brought together a comprehensive vision of the actors needed to realise the ambitious vision of making Canberra a zero waste city by 2010 – “A waste management strategy for Canberra: no waste by 2010”.

It is the first time that a document has addressed the dimension of waste prevention, producing a more comprehensive view of the production problem, involving industry, government and local committees in its formulation (ACT, 1996, p. 9). The document discusses ideas for generating more efficiency in recycling, as the previous stage emphasises, but also debates and presents important questions about consumption and the complex materials used in production. The proposal also moves forward and addresses critical issues that still exist today, such as environmental racism and proposals for legislation focussing on making manufacturers accountable and reducing the complexity of materials.

Another innovative aspect of the plan is the proposal for a paradigm shift that recognises waste as a resource (Territory, 1996, p. 10). In addition, the plan presents a waste hierarchy in which waste prevention is emphasised as a priority step over disposal (Territory, 1996, p. 9).

Since Canberra, several other governments have launched “zero waste” plans with the aim of designing and implementing solutions that, in essence, aim to reduce the pressure on urban waste management, following the principles of ZW (Murphy, 2013; Zaman, 2011; Phillips et al., 2011).

In 2001, New Zealand also launched an important official document that set out a national vision based on ZW principles, using the Canberra plan as a model. The document, entitled “The end of Waste” (2001), highlights the global problems of mass waste production and outlines the country’s important role in paving the way for zero waste policies, setting the goal of eliminating waste as the main target (Snow et al p. 3, 2001).

Other localities followed the example of Canberra and New Zealand, developing similar public policy plans, such as Seattle, San Francisco, Toronto, North Carolina, Santa Cruz Country, the Philippines and Kamikatsu (Japan), among others (Shenyoputro, 2023; Tennant-Wood, 2003).

The objectives and initiatives of the ZW public plans have failed to fulfil their promises and deadlines. One by one, these plans were abandoned even before their programmes ended (Krausz, 2011; Murray, 2002; Shenyoputro, 2023). In practice, various actors contributed to a synergy of resistance, resulting in the failure of public policy plans, with a significant role of opposition from industries and the general population (Krausz, 2011).

It is important to emphasise that in this phase, ordinary people, i.e. urban populations, emerge as important actors, in contrast to their invisibility in the previous stage. The dimension of waste prevention, associated with excessive consumption, complex materials that make recycling difficult and the irresponsible role of companies that make such complex products available on the market, appear as fundamental issues that were hidden in the previous phase.

Phase 3 (2007-2019): the movement reaches people’s everyday lives

After the massive abandonment of municipal programmes aimed at eliminating the sending of waste to landfills and incinerators, and removing the pressure from municipal management systems, the internet would be the new technological basis for launching ZW into a new stage of development. The engagement of the “public” and everyday life that had been marginalised in the previous stages were “reprogrammed” in the early days of social media in the 2000s.

This stage is shaping up to be an impressive globalised, ultra-sharable phase, with the potential to reach every part of the world, and which, in the ways of our time, has turned into astonishing numbers. Starting with the followers of ZW, who have reduced their waste to one 500 gram jar per year and post their waste-free routines by sharing their practices in the digital environment.

Using the tool of the 5 Rs – (1) refuse what is not necessary, (2) reduce what cannot be refused, (3) reuse what cannot be reduced, (4) recycle what cannot be reused, and (5) compost (rot) what cannot be recycled – adepts and entrepreneurs could put ZW into practice and reduce their waste production as much as possible, both in their homes and in their businesses. The tool plus the internet and the movement’s supporters made this stage the most popular moment of the ZW movement (Tran 2019; Johnson 2013) when compared to the preceding ones.

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