Waste in Zero-Waste Households: The Power of Materials and Norms in Everyday Consumption

Abstract

This research examines the challenges of everyday waste minimization of ‘zero waste’ practitioners in Chinese cities. Drawing on 45 in-depth interviews and virtual ethnography of a zero-waste community, this article details the processes during which different types of waste were ‘inevitably’ produced in everyday practices, such as those related to shopping and gifting, food provisioning and eating, binning and composting. Using theories of social practice, this article turns away from focusing on individual awareness, behavior, and choice, and instead seeks to explain how practices that people come to perform can be reproduced and reinforced despite individuals’ commitments to change. The findings illuminate how waste generation is subject to culturally and collectively constructed norms and rules, key social relations of love and care, and is embedded in the material arrangements that make up everyday life. The research sheds light on the importance of paying attention to both the more routinized and reflexive aspects of everyday life, and the power of diverse actors in affecting and shaping daily activities of consumption and waste.