The curious stares begin in the parking lot for Zach Noland and Meghan Sundermeier.Plenty of after-work shoppers head into Whole Foods at 91st Street and Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park with reusable sacks draped on their arms; its part of the health-food-store uniform. But nobody else needs a double-decker shopping cart to transport the containers they are taking into the store. One by one, Noland and Sundermeier place glass-lidded jars, cotton bags, canvas totes and a chrome compost pail (theres a collection barrel in the store) into the cart and rattle it across the asphalt.Inside the store, more inquisitive glances as Sundermeier holds a cotton sack up to catch a stream of lentils from the mouth of the bulk dispenser. From her purse, the waifish communications specialist for Kansas City Public Schools extracts a paper-wrapped twist tie she has saved from previous visits.Over in the meat area, Noland hands a glass jar across the counter as he orders turkey bacon. A female employee from the nearby cheese counter looks on and calls out, Thats cool. The meat clerk looks uncertain and reweighs the empty container, even though Noland already had it weighed at customer service and recorded the weight (1.2 pounds) on the lid with a marker. Into the jar goes the bacon and out of the register pops a paper label with a bar code and price.A look of mild defeat scudders across Nolands thin, sharp-featured face.I just produced this trash, he says. He wonders aloud if a cashier could type in the bar code as a number if he recorded it on his phone, to save printing the paper label in the future. A woman nearby replies, They probably could. They wouldnt love it. Noland nods and says, I try not to engender hostility.Its a lonely pursuit, trying to live a zero-waste lifestyle in Kansas City, but Noland and Sundermeier are content to go it alone and try to eliminate all waste (including recyclables) from their lives. At least until they can move to California, where they hope to find a greater bounty of like-minded souls and packaging-free commodities. They are not zealots; they still use toilet paper. But they feel bad about it and look forward to the day they can afford a bidet and toss the last empty cardboard roll in the recycling bin.• • • Sundermeier, who grew up in Omaha, has been serious about environmental causes since deciding to turn vegetarian at age 12. That was followed by commitments to eating organic food, studying Buddhism and avoiding plastics made with the chemical BPA. But the most life-changing endeavor so far has been pursuing a zero-waste lifestyle, which she committed to doing shortly after Noland, her boyfriend of five years, took it up in February 2010.Noland, who was born and raised in Joplin and works as a benefits analyst for the Social Security Administration, never thought about the environmental cost of trash until two years ago. He read about a Mill Valley, Calif., woman, Bea Johnson, who started the Zero Waste Home blog in an attempt to stem the mindless stream of trash that flows into most American homes. It was another year before he was ready to act, and he is less emotional about his choices than Sundermeier. You cant care too much, Noland said. Otherwise, your heart drops every time you see someone with a plastic bottle of water.Nolands friends have responded to his refusal to eat snacks or takeout food that comes in packaging mostly with eyeball rolls. Hes fine with that. What nags at him is one friend who hasnt changed his behavior but says he feels bad now when he creates trash. Inspiring guilt is not the goal.Inside Nolands neat-as-a-pin apartment in a two-story brick building in the Union Hill neighborhood, the living room has few knickknacks, but comfortable seating and tables. It feels cozy, largely thanks to rows of books that line one wall. Noland, an avid reader, let his magazine subscriptions expire and reads news online but makes no apologies for buying printed books.I read with a pencil in my hand. I make notes and refer back to them later, he says. He figures he is still reducing trash by buying used books and reselling ones he is finished with.The kitchen is another story. This is where the bulk of trash is produced in most households and where Nolands minimalist lifestyle is most evident. His pantry cupboard holds only cloth sacks and glass jars filled with dry goods and cereal. Not a can, plastic bag or package in sight.The bread comes from Fervere, a bakery on the citys West Side that gives Noland a discount for providing his own cloth sack.Inside the refrigerator, leftovers are stored in reusable glass containers instead of plastic bags or foil. There are a couple of bottles of local beer, an imperfect solution. Noland recycles the empty bottles at a RippleGlass container, but he points out that manufacturing glass for a single use, then smashing it and making something else out of it requires a lot more energy than refilling the same bottle over and over.But Noland hasnt found a brewery close enough to his home that will refill bottles. Free State Brewery in Lawrence and 75th Street Brewery in Waldo sell and refill large bottles called growlers, but for Noland there is a balancing act when it comes to how far to drive (and waste gas) in order to eliminate trash.In California, there are more places that refill beer bottles, Noland says, then adds, Sorry. I say In California a lot.The cats are another compromise, he explains, prying the top off an aluminum cat food can. He got Kevin, a black Egyptian Mau, and Darrell, a tan Abyssinian, before he embarked on the zero-waste lifestyle. He briefly considered purchasing raw meat and making their food, but the vet counseled him strongly against it. So he makes do with recycling the aluminum cans and the paper labels.Noland says he never liked candy or snack foods that much to begin with, so he doesnt feel he has made any sacrifices on the eating front. Sundermeier misses chips and salsa and orange juice. She knows she could make her own salsa in the summer, purchase chips from a restaurant that would put them in one of her cloth bags, and squeeze oranges and save the juice in a bottle herself. But there is only so much time in a day.Changing to a zero-waste lifestyle has completely changed the way Sundermeier eats. I had to learn how to cook. I never cooked before, she says. Now she cooks everything from scratch, including her work lunches, which she tries to prepare on the weekends and freeze if necessary.She prefers shopping at Bad Seed farmers market, open Friday afternoons year-round except March and April, and at the city market to avoid the stickers often found on supermarket produce. The sparse supply of fresh fruits and veggies in winter has prompted her to try previously unknown items including artichokes, yellow beets and kale.Taking the idea of waste a step farther, Sundermeier grinds her own flour. That doesnt eliminate any packaging, but it reduces nutritional waste because the nutritional value declines rapidly once foods are ground, she said.She is happy Shatto sells milk in glass bottles that can be returned, though the plastic caps have to go in the recycling bin.The next best thing to returning glass to be refilled is reusing it for something else, Noland says. When his Bulgarian-style yogurt in quart glass jars from Whole Foods are empty, he reuses the jars to hold dry goods or leftovers in the fridge.When eggs are available at the farmers market, Sundermeier takes her empty carton to be refilled.The bathroom is another place where trash and recyclables can really pile up. Noland has eliminated plastic containers from his personal hygiene routines by using Zum soap, made by a Kansas City firm and sold as slices off a large bar at Whole Foods, and shampoo that is sold in bar form, also at Whole Foods, that comes in a paper label that can be recycled. He uses baking soda for toothpaste and antiperspirant and is on Year 2 of a plastic razor with disposable blade cartridges. When that is too dull to work anymore, Noland hopes to score some of his grandfathers old-fashioned razor blades that fit in a safety razor. A box of the blades was one of the things his grandfather was able to recover after the tornado in May destroyed his house in Joplin.Sundermeier, who lives in an apartment in the Columbus Park neighborhood, has also switched to bar soaps and shampoo, but baking soda as toothpaste has made her teeth more sensitive she thinks, so she is back to a commercial tube until she can talk to her dentist about other alternatives. She has eliminated trash from feminine hygiene products by using a Diva cup made of silicone. For skin care, she has found a local seller at the Bad Seed farmers market that takes back empty jars of lotions and scrubs to clean and reuse. Her makeup inventory is minimal and mostly items her mother has given her.Both Sundermeier and Noland try to buy all clothing used, from secondhand stores and sometimes eBay. For eBay purchases, Sundermeier contacts the seller and asks that they use only used packing materials and no plastic.For shoes, which need to be new for support because Noland is a runner, the only perfect solution would be a place that makes shoes by hand. In the meantime, he does insist on shoes made in the United States to minimize the fuel wasted shipping them from China.For the rare item that needs dry-cleaning, the pair turns to Hangers, an eco-friendly company that uses carbon dioxide instead of petroleum-based chemicals for cleaning and transports clothes in cloth rather than plastic or paper bags. The company picks up and delivers inside some Hy-Vee stores.Youll find no cans or spray bottles of cleaners in Sundermeiers or Nolands apartments. The two use castile (vegetable-based) soap, vinegar and baking soda to clean almost everything. The downside: with no paper towels and no bleach to clean them, the cotton cleaning rags get soiled. You wouldnt want to use them as a napkin, but thats not what theyre for, Sundermeier said. They dont have to be spotless.• • • In the weeks leading up to their first zero-waste Christmas, Noland and Sundermeier thought hard about how to eliminate the trash without eliminating the excitement, especially for kids. Sundermeier was leaning toward experiences fun museum classes or helping with a Girl Scout badge as this story was being written. But she hadnt given up on finding creative reused items at flea markets, such as a chalkboard inside a picture frame.Rather than issuing any annoying rules in advance about presents loved ones might buy for her, Sundermeier decided to let the holidays unfold and make adjustments next year if necessary. She has already laid a foundation by politely but firmly refusing care packages of store-bought individually wrapped candies in plastic bags. The intent is so generous and kind, but at some point you have to do what you think is the right thing, she says.Because family and friends know about her quest, she doesnt think Christmas will be a problem. Except maybe for the grandmother who lives in Des Moines the one who commented, Youre getting a little weird, arent you? when she learned of Sundermeiers no-trash commitment.Sundermeier says when she encounters that kind of reaction she just laughs and moves on to another subject and doesnt try to explain. Its pointless when they are coming from that kind of perspective.Noland decided to give donations in relatives names to a company that mediates micro-loans to entrepreneurial projects in developing nations, even though he tried it before for birthdays, and family members were extremely unenthused. But the line between not offending and not compromising their values is often difficult to draw and to maintain.At the first interview for her current job, Sundermeier decided not to take her aluminum refillable water bottle so she wouldnt seem loaded down. When a plastic bottle was placed in front of her, she didnt want to appear to be ungracious, so she accepted it.That haunted me, she says. On the second interview I had my aluminum bottle with me.The workplace offers other food-related challenges. For instance, co-workers often order out and then offer her some of their food, saying there is more than enough for everyone. Usually, she declines.To accept creates demand, she says and also creates a perception that if something appears, Sundermeier will accept. I have given in on a slice of pizza, she admits, but not without remorse later.When Sundermeiers car was damaged in an accident a few days before an office holiday potluck, she was grateful that no one was injured but dejected that she wouldnt be able to pick up her contribution. She had planned to bring tamales from Pocos, a Mexican restaurant on Southwest Boulevard, where she had arranged to have the food put into her own glass containers to take to work. With her car in the shop, and Pocos not on the bus route from her home to work, she had to ask them to deliver the tamales instead.That was a big disappointment, she says. For Noland, the biggest waste reduction at work comes from not printing. I look at everything on my screen. I just refuse to hit print,  he says.Until recently, Noland was able to take a ceramic bowl from home and get his food scooped into it at his cafeteria at work, but after The Star asked to take a photo of Noland inside the cafeteria, cafeteria workers stopped allowing him to use his own bowl, citing health codes. Now he brings his lunch from home. Inconvenience is a huge part of not creating waste, Noland says. When its hot and youre at the gas station and you didnt bring your refillable container and you are thirsty, you have to confront that, he says. You have to be willing to examine what is really a need and what is just an impulse.When Noland and Sundermeier fly, they carry their empty aluminum refillable bottles through the security checkpoints and then hope there is a drinking fountain inside the gate area. They learned that water in airplane bathroom faucets is not necessarily approved for drinking.Even though Noland has no interest in evangelizing, he wishes there was a more level playing field when it comes to language. Why is what was considered reasonable behavior just 100 years ago now defined as the exception? Why do I have a no-waste lifestyle and other people just have a lifestyle? Why isnt it that I have a normal lifestyle and other people are wasteful? he says. • • • After checking out at Whole Foods and reloading their now-filled containers into the cart, Noland carries his pail of kitchen scraps over to the collection barrel just inside the front door. The pail is too large to fit through the small swinging flap at the top of the cabinet. With practiced ease, he swings the front door of the cabinet open, tips the barrel out, dumps the contents of his pail and closes the door.Just outside the exit, on the sidewalk, a woman thrusts a business card for a landscaping company at Noland and Sundermeier. They keep their hands at their sides and say firmly, No thank you.You have to refuse. That is the most important strategy. Its more important than the next two Rs: reuse and recycle, Sundermeier says. Refuse, refuse, refuse.

KansasCity.com

- Home
- News
- Sports
- Business
- Lifestyle
- Entertainment
- Opinion
- Star Sites
- Obits
- Place an Ad
- About Us
- Jobs
- Cars
- Homes
- Rentals
- Classifieds
- Local Shopping

In a wasteful world, one KC couple tries to live a ‘zero-trash’ lifestyle

By CINDY HOEDEL

The Kansas City Star

ALLISON LONG | Kansas City Star

Meghan Sundermeier and her boyfriend, Zach Noland add food scraps to a compost bin while cooking dinner.

More News

The curious stares begin in the parking lot for Zach Noland and Meghan Sundermeier.

Plenty of after-work shoppers head into Whole Foods at 91st Street and Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park with reusable sacks draped on their arms; it’s part of the health-food-store uniform. But nobody else needs a double-decker shopping cart to transport the containers they are taking into the store.

One by one, Noland and Sundermeier place glass-lidded jars, cotton bags, canvas totes and a chrome compost pail (there’s a collection barrel in the store) into the cart and rattle it across the asphalt.

Inside the store, more inquisitive glances as Sundermeier holds a cotton sack up to catch a stream of lentils from the mouth of the bulk dispenser. From her purse, the waifish communications specialist for Kansas City Public Schools extracts a paper-wrapped twist tie she has saved from previous visits.

Over in the meat area, Noland hands a glass jar across the counter as he orders turkey bacon. A female employee from the nearby cheese counter looks on and calls out, “That’s cool.”

The meat clerk looks uncertain and reweighs the empty container, even though Noland already had it weighed at customer service and recorded the weight (1.2 pounds) on the lid with a marker. Into the jar goes the bacon and out of the register pops a paper label with a bar code and price.

A look of mild defeat scudders across Noland’s thin, sharp-featured face.

“I just produced this trash,” he says. He wonders aloud if a cashier could type in the bar code as a number if he recorded it on his phone, to save printing the paper label in the future. A woman nearby replies, “They probably could. They wouldn’t love it.” Noland nods and says, “I try not to engender hostility.”

It’s a lonely pursuit, trying to live a zero-waste lifestyle in Kansas City, but Noland and Sundermeier are content to go it alone and try to eliminate all waste (including recyclables) from their lives. At least until they can move to California, where they hope to find a greater bounty of like-minded souls and packaging-free commodities.

They are not zealots; they still use toilet paper. But they feel bad about it and look forward to the day they can afford a bidet and toss the last empty cardboard roll in the recycling bin.

• • •

Sundermeier, who grew up in Omaha, has been serious about environmental causes since deciding to turn vegetarian at age 12. That was followed by commitments to eating organic food, studying Buddhism and avoiding plastics made with the chemical BPA.

But the most life-changing endeavor so far has been pursuing a zero-waste lifestyle, which she committed to doing shortly after Noland, her boyfriend of five years, took it up in February 2010.

Noland, who was born and raised in Joplin and works as a benefits analyst for the Social Security Administration, never thought about the environmental cost of trash until two years ago. He read about a Mill Valley, Calif., woman, Bea Johnson, who started the Zero Waste Home blog in an attempt to stem the mindless stream of trash that flows into most American homes. It was another year before he was ready to act, and he is less emotional about his choices than Sundermeier.

“You can’t care too much,” Noland said. Otherwise, “your heart drops every time you see someone with a plastic bottle of water.”

Noland’s friends have responded to his refusal to eat snacks or takeout food that comes in packaging mostly with eyeball rolls. He’s fine with that. What nags at him is one friend who hasn’t changed his behavior but says he feels bad now when he creates trash. “Inspiring guilt is not the goal.”

Inside Noland’s neat-as-a-pin apartment in a two-story brick building in the Union Hill neighborhood, the living room has few knickknacks, but comfortable seating and tables. It feels cozy, largely thanks to rows of books that line one wall. Noland, an avid reader, let his magazine subscriptions expire and reads news online but makes no apologies for buying printed books.

“I read with a pencil in my hand. I make notes and refer back to them later,” he says. He figures he is still reducing trash by buying used books and reselling ones he is finished with.

The kitchen is another story. This is where the bulk of trash is produced in most households and where Noland’s minimalist lifestyle is most evident. His pantry cupboard holds only cloth sacks and glass jars filled with dry goods and cereal. Not a can, plastic bag or package in sight.

The bread comes from Fervere, a bakery on the city’s West Side that gives Noland a discount for providing his own cloth sack.

Inside the refrigerator, leftovers are stored in reusable glass containers instead of plastic bags or foil. There are a couple of bottles of local beer, an imperfect solution. Noland recycles the empty bottles at a RippleGlass container, but he points out that manufacturing glass for a single use, then smashing it and making something else out of it requires a lot more energy than refilling the same bottle over and over.

But Noland hasn’t found a brewery close enough to his home that will refill bottles. Free State Brewery in Lawrence and 75th Street Brewery in Waldo sell and refill large bottles called growlers, but for Noland there is a balancing act when it comes to how far to drive (and waste gas) in order to eliminate trash.

“In California, there are more places that refill beer bottles,” Noland says, then adds, “Sorry. I say ‘In California …’ a lot.”

The cats are another compromise, he explains, prying the top off an aluminum cat food can. He got Kevin, a black Egyptian Mau, and Darrell, a tan Abyssinian, before he embarked on the zero-waste lifestyle. He briefly considered purchasing raw meat and making their food, but the vet counseled him strongly against it. So he makes do with recycling the aluminum cans and the paper labels.

Noland says he never liked candy or snack foods that much to begin with, so he doesn’t feel he has made any sacrifices on the eating front. Sundermeier misses chips and salsa and orange juice. She knows she could make her own salsa in the summer, purchase chips from a restaurant that would put them in one of her cloth bags, and squeeze oranges and save the juice in a bottle herself. But there is only so much time in a day.

Changing to a zero-waste lifestyle has completely changed the way Sundermeier eats. “I had to learn how to cook. I never cooked before,” she says. Now she cooks everything from scratch, including her work lunches, which she tries to prepare on the weekends and freeze if necessary.

She prefers shopping at Bad Seed farmers market, open Friday afternoons year-round except March and April, and at the city market to avoid the stickers often found on supermarket produce. The sparse supply of fresh fruits and veggies in winter has prompted her to try previously unknown items including artichokes, yellow beets and kale.

Taking the idea of waste a step farther, Sundermeier grinds her own flour. “That doesn’t eliminate any packaging, but it reduces nutritional waste because the nutritional value declines rapidly once foods are ground,” she said.

She is happy Shatto sells milk in glass bottles that can be returned, though the plastic caps have to go in the recycling bin.

The next best thing to returning glass to be refilled is reusing it for something else, Noland says. When his Bulgarian-style yogurt in quart glass jars from Whole Foods are empty, he reuses the jars to hold dry goods or leftovers in the fridge.

When eggs are available at the farmers market, Sundermeier takes her empty carton to be refilled.

The bathroom is another place where trash and recyclables can really pile up.

Noland has eliminated plastic containers from his personal hygiene routines by using Zum soap, made by a Kansas City firm and sold as slices off a large bar at Whole Foods, and shampoo that is sold in bar form, also at Whole Foods, that comes in a paper label that can be recycled.

He uses baking soda for toothpaste and antiperspirant and is on Year 2 of a plastic razor with disposable blade cartridges. When that is too dull to work anymore, Noland hopes to score some of his grandfather’s old-fashioned razor blades that fit in a safety razor. A box of the blades was one of the things his grandfather was able to recover after the tornado in May destroyed his house in Joplin.

Sundermeier, who lives in an apartment in the Columbus Park neighborhood, has also switched to bar soaps and shampoo, but baking soda as toothpaste has made her teeth more sensitive she thinks, so she is back to a commercial tube until she can talk to her dentist about other alternatives.

She has eliminated trash from feminine hygiene products by using a Diva cup made of silicone. For skin care, she has found a local seller at the Bad Seed farmers market that takes back empty jars of lotions and scrubs to clean and reuse. Her makeup inventory is minimal and mostly items her mother has given her.

Both Sundermeier and Noland try to buy all clothing used, from secondhand stores and sometimes eBay. For eBay purchases, Sundermeier contacts the seller and asks that they use only used packing materials and no plastic.

For shoes, which need to be new for support because Noland is a runner, the only perfect solution would be a place that makes shoes by hand. In the meantime, he does insist on shoes made in the United States to minimize the fuel wasted shipping them from China.

For the rare item that needs dry-cleaning, the pair turns to Hangers, an eco-friendly company that uses carbon dioxide instead of petroleum-based chemicals for cleaning and transports clothes in cloth rather than plastic or paper bags. The company picks up and delivers inside some Hy-Vee stores.

You’ll find no cans or spray bottles of cleaners in Sundermeier’s or Noland’s apartments. The two use castile (vegetable-based) soap, vinegar and baking soda to clean almost everything. The downside: with no paper towels and no bleach to clean them, the cotton cleaning rags get soiled. “You wouldn’t want to use them as a napkin, but that’s not what they’re for,” Sundermeier said. “They don’t have to be spotless.”

• • •

In the weeks leading up to their first zero-waste Christmas, Noland and Sundermeier thought hard about how to eliminate the trash without eliminating the excitement, especially for kids. Sundermeier was leaning toward experiences — fun museum classes or helping with a Girl Scout badge — as this story was being written. But she hadn’t given up on finding creative reused items at flea markets, such as a chalkboard inside a picture frame.

Rather than issuing any annoying rules in advance about presents loved ones might buy for her, Sundermeier decided to let the holidays unfold and make adjustments next year if necessary.

She has already laid a foundation by politely but firmly refusing “care packages” of store-bought individually wrapped candies in plastic bags. “The intent is so generous and kind, but at some point you have to do what you think is the right thing,” she says.

Because family and friends know about her quest, she doesn’t think Christmas will be a problem. Except maybe for the grandmother who lives in Des Moines — the one who commented, “You’re getting a little weird, aren’t you?” when she learned of Sundermeier’s no-trash commitment.

Sundermeier says when she encounters that kind of reaction she just laughs and moves on to another subject and doesn’t try to explain. “It’s pointless when they are coming from that kind of perspective.”

Noland decided to give donations in relatives’ names to a company that mediates micro-loans to entrepreneurial projects in developing nations, even though he tried it before for birthdays, and family members were “extremely unenthused.”

But the line between not offending and not compromising their values is often difficult to draw and to maintain.

At the first interview for her current job, Sundermeier decided not to take her aluminum refillable water bottle so she wouldn’t seem loaded down. When a plastic bottle was placed in front of her, she didn’t want to appear to be ungracious, so she accepted it.

“That haunted me,” she says. “On the second interview I had my aluminum bottle with me.”

The workplace offers other food-related challenges. For instance, co-workers often order out and then offer her some of their food, saying there is more than enough for everyone. Usually, she declines.

“To accept creates demand,” she says and also creates a perception that if something appears, Sundermeier will accept. “I have given in on a slice of pizza,” she admits, but not without remorse later.

When Sundermeier’s car was damaged in an accident a few days before an office holiday potluck, she was grateful that no one was injured but dejected that she wouldn’t be able to pick up her contribution. She had planned to bring tamales from Poco’s, a Mexican restaurant on Southwest Boulevard, where she had arranged to have the food put into her own glass containers to take to work. With her car in the shop, and Poco’s not on the bus route from her home to work, she had to ask them to deliver the tamales instead.

“That was a big disappointment,” she says.

For Noland, the biggest waste reduction at work comes from not printing. “I look at everything on my screen. I just refuse to hit ‘print,’ ” he says.

Until recently, Noland was able to take a ceramic bowl from home and get his food scooped into it at his cafeteria at work, but after The Star asked to take a photo of Noland inside the cafeteria, cafeteria workers stopped allowing him to use his own bowl, citing health codes. Now he brings his lunch from home.

Inconvenience is a huge part of not creating waste, Noland says. “When it’s hot and you’re at the gas station and you didn’t bring your refillable container and you are thirsty, you have to confront that,” he says. “You have to be willing to examine what is really a need and what is just an impulse.”

When Noland and Sundermeier fly, they carry their empty aluminum refillable bottles through the security checkpoints and then hope there is a drinking fountain inside the gate area. They learned that water in airplane bathroom faucets is not necessarily approved for drinking.

Even though Noland has no interest in evangelizing, he wishes there was a more level playing field when it comes to language. “Why is what was considered reasonable behavior just 100 years ago now defined as the exception? Why do I have a no-waste lifestyle and other people just have a lifestyle? Why isn’t it that I have a normal lifestyle and other people are wasteful?” he says.

• • •

After checking out at Whole Foods and reloading their now-filled containers into the cart, Noland carries his pail of kitchen scraps over to the collection barrel just inside the front door. The pail is too large to fit through the small swinging flap at the top of the cabinet. With practiced ease, he swings the front door of the cabinet open, tips the barrel out, dumps the contents of his pail and closes the door.

Just outside the exit, on the sidewalk, a woman thrusts a business card for a landscaping company at Noland and Sundermeier. They keep their hands at their sides and say firmly, “No thank you.”

“You have to refuse. That is the most important strategy. It’s more important than the next two “R’s”: reuse and recycle,” Sundermeier says. “Refuse, refuse, refuse.”