By Amelia Glynn

Photo at right: After saving his trash for a year, Berkeley caterer Ari Derfel can’t look at packaging the same way again. Image by Andy Isaacson

We all know people — friends, co-workers, neighbors — who have embarked on some reductionist experiment or another. From the members of San Francisco’s Compact Collective, to the devout followers of Rev. Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping, to your ex who pledged to forego petroleum products or plastic grocery bags for a month, these determined downsizers were motivated by the dawning realization that, on a rapidly warming planet, there is no “away” to throw things to.

We talked with three eco-mavericks who, in stumbling toward a better way of living, unexpectedly found themselves at the forefront of a growing cultural movement — one that at its most extreme is anti-consumerist and at its most mild, pro-recycling. A caterer-turned-overnight-media-hero, an ex-lawyer photographer and a modern-day muckraker each willingly dirtied their hands and made trash (or more accurately, the examination of our society’s consumptive behavior) a permanent part of their lives. And without preachy prose, judging looks or finger wagging, their somewhat extreme tactics have managed to get many of us more mild-mannered types talking and thinking about our own cycle of consumption.

The Trashman Cometh

Contrary to what was reported in the media blitz of late 2007, Ari Defel’s trash does not reside in his living room. The truth is, he had all 365-day’s worth neatly organized in his kitchen closet until the reporters came knocking on his door — a whole bunch of them — asking to see his bounty. Derfel, a caterer by trade and an environmentalist and yogi by philosophy, decided to save his trash for a full year. He mentioned it to a few friends who mentioned it to a few more, and then — KABOOM — the press, the talk show circuit and what at times felt like the entire Internet were looking at him.

The original idea — “If I had to live with my trash, would it change the way I live?” — was hatched at a dinner party with friends who planned to tough out the experiment together. After the first week, the others bailed, but Derfel stuck with it as a kind of daily meditation. From December 4, 2006 to December 4, 2007, Derfel composted his organic matter and meticulously saved, rinsed and sorted his trash to see what it would amount to — and how it made him feel. This included all his garbage from vacations and eating out. “Some people ask me, well, what about toilet paper?” he says, pausing for effect. “I may be weird, but I’m not crazy.”

During the experiment, Derfel says he began to physically “feel” every purchase. His hand would fall on a bottle of juice, and the whole story of how it got there would come to life: the glass container manufactured somewhere faraway, shipped somewhere else faraway for bottling, then trucked to the store for him to buy and drink in less than five minutes, only to toss in the recycling bin to be schlepped back to a plant in China. “It’s the 50,000-mile juice when I could have just bought Asian pears at the local farmer’s market and juiced them at home,” he says.

After being outed by the press, everyone started looking to Derfel for answers, but he’s careful to set them straight: “I’m not a trash epidemiologist,” he says. It’s not uncommon for people to exclaim how incredible it is (it being his pile of trash), but he just laughs. “Painting the Sistine Chapel is incredible. I just saved my garbage for a year.”

Why does Derfel think his experiment ignited the curiosity of so many? “Because I’m not the dirty old man with a bunch of cats,” he answers dryly. “Granted, I live in Berkeley, so I must be a freak, but I’m not ugly, or stupid.” And it’s true… with dark wavy hair and glasses that lend him a bookish air, the 35-year-old is articulate and mediagenic. He also believes in magic — or in this case, the magic of good press. “This social experiment has been an interesting and creative way to get my voice out there,” he says.

Now Derfel’s working on drawing the connection between “guy-who-saves-trash-for-a-year” and the concept of mindful living. Recently, he enlisted local Bay Area artists Michael Christian and Suzy Cornfield to help create art with the saved trash, and this year he hopes to recruit between 10 and 100 people from around the world to join him in what he calls a kind of Buddhist Olympics (where the person who makes the least amount of trash wins).

“Consciousness is not a fad,” he says. “More people are wanting to feel connected to the planet.” Stay connected to Derfel and his ongoing trash project at saveyourtrash.com.

Double-Oh-Seven at the Dump

Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan’s large-scale color portraits of American consumption began as a singular quest for aesthetic beauty. In early 2003, while chasing the cosmic color theory, a complex color palate that occurs in nature by chance (often amidst the ugly and mundane), he shot a photo of a pile of trash in one of Seattle’s garbage dumps. “It fit perfectly into my color theory and was one of the coolest I had done,” says Jordan, who hung the 50-inch wide print on the wall of his studio. This image was to become the first of a series called “Intolerable Beauty,” exploring the unexpected moments of grace in Seattle’s foulest haunts.