The joy of taking out the trash | Aparna Nancherla

Transcriber: TED Translators Admin Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs

You might not know this just from looking at me,

but you might guess it from smelling me.

One of my favorite things to do is take out the trash.

It's the laziest way to technically pare down your possessions,

because the one thing you can never do enough of

in a small New York City apartment like mine

is get rid of stuff.

The stuff that our modern consumerist carbon-powered culture

makes us buy endlessly and often for no reason.

Getting rid of people never hurts either.

Roommates, family members,

that old lady who's been in your living room for weeks.

Who is she anyway?

No squatters allowed.

I don't care if you're a ghost.

Also, not to brag,

but I've been micro-decluttering since before Marie Kondo got big.

In fact, I've cut out her step

of picking things up and figuring out whether they spark joy in me

because I already know what sparks joy in me,

throwing out trash.

What kind of trash?

Well, I'll give you a clue.

It starts with H and it ends with air.

That's right, it's a lot of hair.

Don't try and picture how much; you'll feel sick.

And if you don't feel sick, you haven't pictured enough.

I shed like an Instagram influencer sheep dog

who's decided fur is the only thing holding her career back.

We're all trying to reduce our carbon footprints and consumption.

So by throwing out trash,

I also naturally mean recycling and composting.

I try to do both.

In fact, I once carried a takeout container across half the city

just to put it in the right bin.

Where's my inspiring biopic?

But then I learned recycling frequently isn't working.

Even if we all separate out glass, cans and cardboard,

a lot of stuff doesn't neatly fit into those categories.

Paper envelopes lined with bubble wrap can't be recycled.

Pizza boxes with grease stains can't be recycled.

That memory from seventh grade when I ...

Ah, who am I kidding?

All of seventh grade can't be recycled.

There's even a term for it: aspirational recycling.

At first, I thought that's if you went to spin class last week,

so it should count for this week too.

China used to import a lot of the US's recyclables,

but they stopped accepting foreign garbage in 2018

as part of a pollution ban.

Whatever happened to one country's trash is another country's treasure?

Now, a lot of US recycling goes straight to landfills.

The EPA says that only 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled.

Not that this is about me,

but this balloons my anxiety the size of the giant Pacific garbage patch

way out in the ocean

where we'll all eventually go for our next destination wedding.

So, if you're American,

hound your political representatives to work on this recycling issue,

and try to create less waste overall by reusing materials.

Here's stuff I've been reusing in my life:

plastic bags, salsa jars and old fights with my boyfriend.

Now, the next time I have to throw out the trash,

I can confidently ask:

Hey, can I reuse this loose ball of hair again?

And you know what? I probably can.

In fact, I'm going to give it to that old ghost lady as a going away present.

Thank you.