Of Trash and Treasure: Implications of Zero Waste for the Spiritual Life

While Earth's resources are finite, what is not limited is our desire to understand, to appreciate, and to celebrate the Earth. We do need endless progress, but not, however, in material development. Only an increase in aesthetic appreciation and spiritual experience can be without limit.¹

Introduction

Zero waste as a concept to describe industrial waste-free production has in the past decade been reimagined to describe how individuals and families in domestic settings might also practice a way of life that contributes nothing to landfills. This essay presents an introduction to the foundational work of Bea Johnson, a woman whose adaptation of her home and lifestyle to zero waste has influenced thousands of people worldwide through her blog, book, You-Tube videos, public lectures, and articles about her work. Though zero waste is primarily a response to the damaged natural world, its spirituality may be adduced from accounts of how its practice has transformed practitioners' lives. That many of these practitioners are women allows for the consideration of the gendered implications of this particular ecospiritual practice. Further, that the maintenance of practitioners' communities is accomplished virtually in online forums and blogs constitutes a new set of sources for examining contemporary spiritual lives. In conclusion, this reflection argues that a spirituality of zero waste that utilizes "resurrection" as its primary motif brings together environmental activism and Christian spiritual practice, and models how other such eco-friendly practices may also be seen as having a spiritual relevance and even a spiritual basis.

Talking the walk

Environmental ethicists and ecotheologians aim at shifting moralities and concomitant activities toward enhancing Earth-human relations by changed reasoning. Moving, for instance, language about human responsibility in regard to the environment from models of "dominion" to "stewardship" generates differing ethical activities of creation care. Such shifts in thinking are fundamental, though they sometimes leave corresponding activities up to the "thinker" to determine. Thus, David B. Lott in his compilation of Sallie McFague's work can comment that her work "presses the reader more to new thinking rather than new action."² Thinking anew of creation as the "body of God" is, indeed, important and McFague's work has encouraged Christian consumers to more thoughtful engagement with their environments. This more thoughtful engagement can effect a "walking the talk" that integrates theory and praxis, leaving praxis largely up to the thinker.

"Talking the walk" is just as, if not more, important. That zero waste practice operates as a significant opportunity for speaking about the overlap between two often divergent communities—of environmental activists and of people of faith—involves disclosing the importance of thinking (ethics) as derived from experience, not the other way around. In this way, one walks first, then talks about it. This will sound reasonable to anybody familiar with Thomas Berry's reflection in his book, The Great Work, in which he documents for himself the fundamentally transformative experience of observing a meadow filled with thick grass and white lilies. He writes, "A magic moment, this experience gave to my life something that seems to explain my thinking at a more profound level than almost any other experience I can remember."³ Moreover, Berry claims that the experience gave his life a moral compass: "Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; whatever opposes this meadow or negates it is not good."⁴ Berry's emphasis on this experience as a "magic moment" replete with opportunities to learn to cherish the earth and the particular places we inhabit has implications for those both walking and talking ecological spirituality: Experience comes first. The love that springs from cherishing familiar landscapes motivates behaviors, more than any argument.

The same is true in explaining why adoption of zero waste as an ecospiritual practice might occur. One need not theorize too much about why there are overflowing landfills, rampant pollution, and consumer appetites out of control today. One need only see the increasingly explicit imagery of overflowing landfills and polluted rivers and oceans that fill online sources as well as our own...