You're listening to life kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle.
Reporter Kavitha George has been thinking about trash a lot lately, why we produce it and how we could make less of it.
She sat down with her mom, Ashwethi, to talk about their relationship to trash and waste.
I guess trash pickup was not quite a thing when I was growing up, so I think we tried to keep our waste minimalist.
Ashwathi grew up in the sixties and seventies in India.
Before single use, plastic was really a thing.
Most of her family's trash was compostable.
She remembers her mother bringing their own containers to the market, which was essentially a bulk goods store.
They'd load up their aluminum tins with rice, lentils, and flour, fill up jugs with cooking oil, and then they'd do it all over again the next week with nothing to throw away in between.
To this day, Ashwethi hates waste.
And growing up, Kavitha remembers her going to great lengths to save household items from the trash can.
Do you think it was more about saving money than about, like, being environmentally friendly?
I think it was a bit of both.
I remember a friend of mine who came to visit.
She was like, why are you washing the Ziploc bags and reusing them?
They have to be thrown away.
But I.
Yes, I couldn't bear to do that because I thought it was wasteful.
Yeah, I still wash my Ziploc bags, and that's because you did.