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Abstract
Plastic waste is increasingly becoming a problem of global concern. In response to these concerns, individuals such as Bea Johnson and Lauren Singer have elected to begin living zero-waste lives. I use Johnson’s and Singer’s TEDx Talks as a jumping off point to examine how popular zero-waste discourse interacts with data collected through SenseMaker, a qualitative data analysis tool. Findings suggest that participants who felt empowered in the narratives they shared also felt that responsibility comes from individual action, while participants who felt restricted in their narratives tend to believe this was due to a lack of accessible alternatives. I use social science theory to argue that mainstream zero-waste narratives tend to ignore how zero-waste living is dependent on financial resources, thereby placing blame on under-resourced individuals for not being able to gain gratification and personal empowerment from the same systems that zero-wasters deliberately seek to undermine through daily actions.