Residents strive to live a green lifestyle

In this day and age, plastic seems to be inescapable — it’s in the environment, our food, clothing, personal hygiene products and, according to recent studies, even in our bloodstream.

Faced with this universal struggle, two South Whidbey residents have decided to embrace a lifestyle where they minimize their waste as much as possible, striving to meet a standard known as “zero waste.”

According to the Zero Waste International Alliance, “zero waste” is the conservation of resources by responsibly producing, consuming, reusing and recovering products, packaging and materials without burning or discharging them in the environment.

Derek Hoshiko, a climate activist from Clinton, has protested against oil trains and banks that finance fossil fuels, given testimony to stop coal export terminals and lobbied in the Legislature for clean energy.

The commitment to his cause follows him at home, where he does the majority of his family and housemates’ green chores. He keeps a wide variety of bins and bags where he carefully separates his household’s waste, trying to come up with ways to reuse what would otherwise end up in a landfill.

With no hesitation, he dug his hands in the containers, pulling out used cans, wrappers, lids and other items from their containers, all of which showed no trace of food or mold.

He gave a pensive look at what could have been an old laundry sheet or disposable wet towel, thinking of possible ways to reuse it. In his mental list of possibilities, the landfill always sits at the very bottom.

“If something is basically clean, then we can figure out what we’re going to do with it,” said Hoshiko, for whom cleaning trash is part of the routine.

While to some it might be common sense, many people don’t think twice before throwing their dirty containers in the recycle bin. But according to the Washington State Department of Ecology, items must be empty, clean and dry — a quick rinse and dry should suffice.

In fact, recycling facilities don’t clean recyclables, the agency says, and food residue can grow mold and attract bacteria, rats and insects, contaminating the whole bin and making the materials unrecyclable.

In 2006, Hoshiko began hosting zero waste events, where a dinner for 300 people would only produce less than a bag of trash, he said.

In 2023, RePurpose, the grassroots zero waste group he founded with Joan Green, started a reuse and recycling program taking items that are difficult to recycle in the county, according to a press release. In December, the organization partnered with Washington State University’s Waste Wise program to make a zero waste Nutcracker show at South Whidbey High School.

Green, who is an artist, finds joy in using her creative talents to make the best out of trash.

In her home in Langley, Green keeps a container with random and seemingly useless items, which her students at Green Art Labs, her arts education business, can use to create toys and decor.

Green lives in a cohousing community with 16 units, where neighbors grow food together, share tools and appliances and give new life to unwanted items, using old playground slides and transforming large tires into quirky outdoor tables.

Her home, which she said is less than 700 square feet, helps her stay on the zero waste path.

“The bigger space we have, the more we fill it up with stuff,” said Green, who, in the past, used shopping as a way to cope with stress.

Citing an article he read some time ago, Hoshiko said people spend a lot of time thinking about things they want to buy, but much less time — or none at all — thinking about what they are going to do once they are done with those things.

Green said she would like to see society transition to a circular economy, where materials and products are reused and regenerated.

“I wish we just stopped producing everything for three years,” she said. “We’d have enough stuff to last us for probably more than three years.”

In a highly consumerist economy where things are made to be consumed and discarded, Hoshiko believes people need to be educated on the importance of making responsible choices and coming together to lead change.

The issue does not only lie with the store-to-landfill pipeline. Behind the inviting appearance of an item at the store or on a website, there is often environmental degradation caused by the extraction of natural resources and the production and transportation of that very thing.

“It’s essentially a completely unsustainable situation we’ve gotten ourselves into,” Hoshiko said.

There are different ways one can live a more environmentally conscious life, which can be done one step at a time.

Whenever they can, Green and Hoshiko buy goods in bulk, using reusable containers, make their salad dressings or hummus at home, compost their food waste and use plastic-free laundry and dishwasher pods.

If one of his children’s toys breaks, Hoshiko will fix it — sometimes, all it needs is new batteries. If her clothes get ripped, Green will get them mended.

When she does need something, Green thrifts or searches through the “Buy Nothing Whidbey Island” group on Facebook, where users post anything they want to give away or share with others, which she said is also a way to build and strengthen a community. In some cases, she has adopted abandoned items, like her skillet and toaster, which she found in an alleyway.

To avoid making impulsive and wasteful purchases, Hoshiko asks himself whether he does actually need that thing, eventually opting to spend money on experiences with his family.

Green believes Island County should declare a climate emergency, which would help with allocating funds towards zero waste initiatives, while Langley, which already made this declaration in 2021, should pass a zero-waste ordinance that would ban single-use plastics.

Hoshiko believes one of the solutions towards a cleaner world would be to abolish landfills and to remove trash cans. Only then, he said, people would begin to make conscious decisions about the trash they produce and send to the landfill.

With billions of people living in a world that many experts say is on the brink of a climate catastrophe, one might feel discouraged to take the time to rinse, reuse and correctly dispose of their trash.

But, as Hoshiko and Green have learned first-hand, a single person can make a significant difference by raising awareness and setting an example for others. Only then can people group together to hold those in power accountable.

Derek Hoshiko stands by the two-bin compost in his backyard. Composting food waste at home can help reduce the greenhouse gases emitted from landfills and trash incinerators while producing healthy soil for the garden. (Photo by Luisa Loi)