Dr Mandy de Wilde: ‘Good’ ethical living: on gender normativities in the zero waste movement
Societies are currently transitioning to sustainable ways of consuming. More specifically, the zero waste transition looks beyond the current take-make-dispose extractive industrial model and aims to redefine products and services to design waste out. Having started as a zero waste movement around the millennium, and becoming institutionalised by means of circular economy-programs, zero waste living is now transforming into a popular consumer lifestyle in accordance with the exponential growth of zero waste blogs in the past five years. On the basis of a discourse analysis of today's most influential zero waste blogs I show which technologies (i.e. unpaper towels, beewax wraps, low-flow appliances) and practices (i.e. cooking, cleaning, household organising) are predominantly imagined in these blogs. Doing so, I demonstrate that a particular notion the 'good' zero waste life is portrayed which intersects with gender normativities - in terms of time-intensity, the type of manual labour and direct engagement it asks from sustainable consumers. The reproduction of hegemonic gender normativities through this sustainable consumer lifestyle is troubling. I argue that transitioning to sustainable ways of living and consuming must simultaneously progress a gender politics organised around issues of fairness and equality.