The Zero Waste Tour of Sebastopol

Kathleen McClarnon wants to show people how easy it is to live a zero-waste lifestyle in Sebastopol

Jeanine Borge (left), owner of Homebody Refill, a zero waste store on the downton plaza, and Kathleen McClarnon (right), who is launching a new Zero Waste Tour of Sebastopol.

Sebastopol’s Kathleen McClarnon and her family have been experimenting with living a zero-waste lifestyle for four years, and the word she uses to describe the experience is one that might surprise you: “Easy.”

Really?

In a world in which every object (and most food) comes cocooned in plastic or paper, how easy could it be to navigate life in such a way that you produce radically less waste?

McClarnon is convinced that it’s easier than you think, and she wants to prove it by creating a Zero Waste Tour of Sebastopol.

And let’s be clear, when McClarnon talks about zero-waste, she isn’t talking about just carrying a reusable water bottle and bringing your own coffee cup to Retrograde. She’s talking about producing so little trash that, when trash day rolls around, there’s no trash to take out to the curb. None. (That’s the goal, at least. She freely admits that this is nearly impossible. “Our goal is to live as close to that as possible,” she said. )

She realizes it’s an uphill battle given our current culture.

“Let's be honest. Plastic is created by Big Oil. That's the kind of money we're fighting. And so we need to get the word out there that this”—meaning our society’s hyper-waste lifestyle— “isn't going to work forever. And, I don’t know, I just love Sebastopol, and I want Sebastopol to be a leader in this.”

The journey to zero waste

McClarnon, who is the accounts manager for Copperfield’s, got interested in zero waste through a book called “Zero Waste Home” by San Rafael author Bea Johnson. But the roots of what her family calls her “Kath Crusade” run deeper.

“My father came from Hungary,” she said, and then imitated her dad’s accent: “‘No vaste! You do not vaste!’ So I'd always been brought up with that idea.”

The trick to shifting to zero waste, she said, is to start small. Choose one type of thing to stop buying – say, plastic – and once you’ve mastered that, move onto the next thing.  

“At the beginning, my husband and I decided, ‘Okay, let's start cutting back on plastic,’ and we just started trying things. So, for example, we tried bamboo toothbrushes instead of plastic toothbrushes. That was awful. So that went away. And then we started just getting some [cloth] bags, and we started checking out the bulk aisle, which blew us away. There are so many things available in bulk: M&Ms, cereal, rice, beans, all this stuff, and it was like ‘Oh, okay, that's easy.’”

Once they’d purged plastic from their shopping cart, they started cutting back on paper.

“In the beginning, we were just concentrating on plastic so we would buy French bread in paper sacks. But we've just slowly over the years tightened down little by little. And it's just gotten easier.”

They’ve also cut back on things packaged in glass. Yes, glass is recyclable, but McClarnon worries about the energy cost of glass recycling—and the whole concept of recycling, because of the permission it seems to give people to continue their wasteful habits. 

“I don't believe recycling is a good thing because recycling is like giving people an excuse to buy a plastic water bottle and drink it and feel OK about it because they think it's gonna be recycled. But, no, it's not.”

“We’ve tried to pull it down even further to, ‘Let's not even recycle. Any trash we bring into our house needs to be compostable,’” she said.

How she does it

One of the things that makes McClarnon’s Zero Waste efforts so easy is that she is always prepared. She carries a multi-compartment backpack everywhere she goes. In addition to a clean coffee mug and water bottle, it holds fine cotton bags for dry goods, cotton net bags for produce, bandanas for wrapping things in, as well as an array of containers.

“It’s frustrating to see something you want and not be able to get it just because you don’t have a container with you,” she said.

McClarnon and her husband also make a lot of things from scratch that would otherwise have packaging: bread, tortillas, mayonnaise, and cheese (the last with variable success). Their efforts to make yogurt haven’t worked out.

“I know that I’m fortunate; my job is flexible so I have the time to do that, and I enjoy doing it,” she said.

She says her three children are mostly on board with her zero waste efforts, though sometimes, when her two older children were teenagers, they would sneak things—like the waste extravaganza of a McDonald’s meal—into the garbage when they thought she wasn’t looking. She still has a ten-year-old at home, and the lure of the newest toy – often made of plastic – is hard for her to resist despite the family’s zero waste ethos.

“I don’t force it on my kids,” McClarnon said. “Though mostly, they play along.”

First stop on the tour: Homebody Refill – Sebastopol’s very own zero waste store

Zero waste aficionados are probably already familiar with this elegant little store on Sebastopol’s downtown plaza.

“It’s such an amazing resource,” McClarnon said, “and I want to make sure it stays here.”

Homebody Refill carries products to replace the things which in most modern homes are made of or packaged in plastic. It carries shampoo and deodorant in bars; toothpaste tablets; wooden hairbrushes and combs; beautiful metal and wood shaving equipment; and plastic wrap alternatives like silicone bowl covers and reusable silicone bags, as well as glass and metal lunch box alternatives.

At the counter, McClarnon whipped out an old empty plastic dishwashing liquid bottle, and Jeanine Borge, the owner of Homebody Refill, refilled it.

“I didn't do the thing where I threw everything away and replaced it with perfect white and pretty glass bottles,” McClarnon said. “My kitchen doesn't look like a fancy kitchen. I felt it was more important to reuse what we had, because when I first started doing it, I looked into my kitchen, and I thought, ‘Well, I can't throw all that plastic away!’ So instead of going and buying new stuff, I just refill the bottles I have.”

The refill menu at Homebody Refill includes shampoo, conditioner, face and body washes, lotions and scrubs and even sunscreen.

For those who, for aesthetic reasons, want to go with the sleek glass, metal and ceramic refillable bottles, Homebody Refill has handsome versions of those too.

What she gets here: shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste tablets, dishwashing liquid, laundry detergent, wool dryer balls (to reduce drying time).

Pacific Market

McClarnon likes Pacific Market because all of their staff has been trained on how to deal with people who bring in their own containers to the deli counter, meat counter and hot bar.

Stores used to refuse to let people bring their own containers from home because it was a violation of California’s health and safety code, but that is no longer the case. Over the last few years, those rules have been revoked as part of the state’s effort to reduce the amount of waste going into landfills.

Bringing your own container brings up the concept of a “tare” – the tare is the weight of the container, without the product. To insure that you’re not paying extra for the weight of the container you brought from home, the counter person has to weigh your container first by itself, then weigh it again with the product inside. They then subtract the weight of the container to get the real price.

In addition to meat, McClarnon said, “I get my cheese and lunch meats here at the deli counter. You can bring your own container and they'll slice it for you and put it in your container.”

She can also use her own containers at the hot bar, which she likes for its variety. With these, the tare is figured at the cash register up front.

McClarnon said dairy products are one of the trickiest things to buy when you’re going zero waste. Pacific Market is one of the few markets that has yogurt in glass containers, as well as Strauss Family Farms milk in returnable glass bottles.

Standing in front of the dairy case, she puzzled over the alternatives.

“Is it better to use glass or waxed paper containers for milk that you can tear up and put in your compost?” she said.

We ended the tour of Pacific Market in the bulk aisle. She uses cloth bags for bulk items, of course, instead of plastic bags.

“Did you know you can make cloth bags out of old pillow cases?” she said. “That’s one thing I want people to know. You don’t have to buy a bunch of stuff upfront to do this.”

What she gets here: meat, chicken, fish, deli products, coffee, bulk items, and sometimes dairy. She also uses their hot bar.

Community Market

McClarnon shops at Community Market primarily for its prodigious bulk section, which has a vast array of spices, bean and grain options and different kinds of oils, vinegars, and other liquids. 

What she gets here: Spices, cold cereals, oatmeal, flour, rice, sugar, corn meal, beans, olive oil, red wine vinegar, honey, peanut butter, chocolate chips, gummy candies. 

The Feed Store: The feed store has big plastic bins full of bulk dog and cat food. They also have pet treats and rawhide toys in bulk with no packaging. They offer paper bags, but McClarnon brings her own cloth bags, which she said she has to wash afterwards.

Many Rivers Books and Tea: Hidden away at the back of this lovely little spiritual bookstore is a large tea section, with a number of exotic varieties sold in bulk. McClarnon gets her teas here, putting them in jam jars she brings from home.

Random finds: Fresh-made tortilla chips from El Tarasco (next to Donuts and Water) and bulk soap from Sumbody.  Screaming Mimi’s is also happy to pack their ice cream into any container you bring from home.

Take a Zero Waste Tour of Sebastopol

McClarnon is still nailing down the details of her Zero Waste Tour. She plans to include a ride on the free #24 shuttle bus that winds around town.  She’s doing a dry run this weekend with her sister and some friends, and plans to start offering tours by mid-February. If you’d be interested in taking a Zero Waste Tour of Sebastopol, email her at goldvini@sbcglobal.net. Also, if you’ve got a great zero waste tip that you didn’t see mentioned here, she’d like to know about it.