Garbology Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash Chapter 2 Summary

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“Put-downs, Pickups and the Power of No” is the twelfth chapter of Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes. The chapter talks about living a lifestyle that is almost waste free and how you can easily start today within your own home. Most of the waste consumed from your home is from the packaging from goods that you buy, eliminating that can save money and give you less waste. The chapter starts out with a woman named Bea Johnson who lives in California with her husband and two sons. The Johnsons had recently moved into a new town in an apartment that was less than half the size of their old home. Bea then discovered how much less space and items were actually needed in her home compared to a lot of the junk she had in …show more content…

She has a small wardrobe which is enough for her since she used to have a large wardrobe and did not wear most of the clothes she had. She loved going to secondhand and thrift stores, saving money on her whole family’s wardrobe. There has been complications in trying to live waste free, like for example, when you constantly get junk mail, which gets recycled. Bea also gets DVDs from Netflix that comes with paper and plastic strips that are on the mailing envelops, so she sends the trash back to the company so they can dispose of it. For the kids’ lunches, sandwiches are wrapped in a cloth napkin that can become a place mat during eating and then a napkin. Everything is rolled up into a compact parcel so it uses no paper, bags, or …show more content…

Her blog interested lots of people and even inspired them to help make a difference in the environment. Many people critiqued Bea harshly, giving her negative comments about her lifestyle, calling her delusional or mentally ill. Bea commented back, saying they are not perfect and they like to use some stuff that requires packaging. She despises waste and how it has been a problem in our environment and believes that we can all help the environment by changing the things that we buy and the stuff in our home. She also thinks the American Dream used to be having a nice large house with a big SUV and lots of stuff, but instead she is actually living the real dream with her waste less lifestyle. Bea remains optimistic no matter what criticism she receives and believes that there are many advantages to a waste less lifestyle including a forty percent of savings on the household budget that her and her family can use.
The chapter continues with a man named Rob Gogan who also decided to make an impact on our environment. Rob is an associate manager of recycling and waste services at Harvard University and turned the waste at the university into an example of repurposing and reuse. At Harvard, it used to be when students would leave for summer break, the furniture would be left behind and thus would get thrown away. Rob decided

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