Every generation can remember what was trending and popular back in their day — think Pet Rocks and Cabbage Patch Kids — that gained massive popularity before eventually being regulated to the clearance rack. Today, trends grow even faster and bigger, thanks to social media.
“We are social beings, and we want to be part of something, but we also want to be part of something that feels special,” said Jiwon Yun, a Yale doctoral candidate who studies the impact of media on humans. He described trends as a response to the “contradictory forces” of wanting to be different from others, but also wanting to be included.
But some Long Islanders are pushing back, rejecting influencer-driven consumption in favor of buying less and reusing more. Enter the de-influencers. Instead of urging everyone to buy the newest, flashiest item, they are encouraging people to slow down and ask, “Do I really need this?”
Newsday talked to three Long Islanders who have turned the ethos of this movement into a business, a community organization and an online platform aimed at helping those around them live a more sustainable, less wasteful life.
Followed online and on TV
Amanda Lindner limited her trash to the point where several years’ worth of refuse could fit into a mason jar. Credit: Newsday/Howard Schnapp
Eight years ago, while living in New York City, Amanda Lindner, 37, of Mineola, needed to take on a social justice project as a part of her fellowship at Avodah, a Judaism-based community impact organization. Disheartened by the United States’ decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, she pondered how she could make a change at an individual level.
“I’m not going to, as one person, do any of these major things that [are] required to actually change the course … of climate change … but I can change myself,” she said in an interview.
During the Omer, the 49-day period that starts after Passover and ends on the holiday of Shavuot, and consists of a verbal counting of each day, Lindner decided she would tally up her garbage.
“And I started to keep my waste that I created during my life in a glass mason jar … and it was my goal over those … days to get down to zero waste,” she said.
Single-use items were replaced, with Lindner trading tissues, disposable water bottles and plastic to-go cutlery with a handkerchief, a refillable cup and reusable utensils. In her jar were items such as the barcode stickers on fruit, an old MetroCard and the plastic bristles from a bamboo toothbrush that she composted.
While she experienced setbacks during the period, she said she was still “learning a lot” and started sharing her journey online, connecting with others aspiring to zero-waste lifestyles.
“And that … challenge turned into five years of being zero waste,” she said.
Lindner started gaining media attention, appearing in newspapers and on television shows. During an appearance on the “Rachael Ray Show,” she performed a “trash audit” for a Long Island family to help them figure out where they were creating the most waste and then find environmentally friendly solutions.
“And I didn’t own a trash can for five years,” Lindner said.
Selling solutions
Melanie Gonzalez is the founder of Simple Good, a Port Jefferson boutique emphasizing minimal consumption. Credit: Kathy M Helgeson
For 17 years, Rocky Point resident Melanie Gonzalez, 50, was in the corporate world, working in product development for large companies. But there was one aspect of her job that deeply concerned her: What happens to the product at the end of its life?
“All the emphasis was always on the business case, how much profit it would bring in and how it would help to grow the company,” Gonzalez said. “But the company was never concerned with the waste that was generated.”
After having the opportunity to leave and start her own business, coupled with witnessing the amount of waste generated from her young son’s STEM toys, she started doing research into where waste goes, educating herself on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California filled mostly with tiny plastics.
“Having a business background, I thought, well, maybe I can help to bring more sustainable solutions, plastic-free solutions, reusable solutions to people via a store where I could engage and educate people on a larger scale,” Gonzalez said.
Everything Simple Good sells is meant to replace disposable items. Credit: Newsday/Kathy M. Helgeson
When her store, Simple Good, opened in Port Jefferson in 2019, everything sold there was meant to replace disposable items.
“And so we had a lot of those types of products — travel cutlery, water bottles, tote bags, bamboo toothbrushes — that would help to eliminate single-use plastic out of your daily life,” Gonzalez said.
Her store gained more exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many businesses were shut down and people worried about leaving their homes. Gonzalez found people were looking for reusable products, and were driven to order from her website.
Since the pandemic, her store has doubled in size, and while not every product is zero-waste, each item still focuses on helping to live more lightly on the planet, she said.
Greener pastures
Sonia Arora and Raju Rajan in their backyard meadow in Port Washington in June 2019. Credit: Corey Sipkin
Raju Rajan does not see himself as a de-influencer, but rather a “bee-influencer.”
Though he has always been a gardener, Rajan’s move to Port Washington from Philadelphia in 2012 was his first experience living in a suburban landscape.
“And it kind of never made sense to me to just pump water out of the ground, pour it all over my plants, put fertilizer, have guys come in weekly … and then start all over again next week,” Rajan, 59, said.
He compared the process to that of a “religious ritual,” and since he was not allowed to keep a cow or goat in his yard, he started to explore other options.
“I understood that people were very careful about the appearance of the front yard because it’s … a belief that somehow your yard needs to have that lawn and be manicured, otherwise property values would depreciate,” Rajan said, explaining he only originally experimented with his backyard.
In 2018, after deciding he wanted a meadowlike yard, he tilled and weeded his lawn, and used plant seed native to Long Island.
The results were “spectacular,” according to Rajan.
“Within months of my putting seeds in, it was just amazing,” he recalled, adding that the results won over his wife, Sonia Arora, who had been skeptical. (Not everyone is a fan of the movement, though, with some residents being issued summonses for failure to maintain their yards.)
In addition to bees, Rajan said, “We started seeing dragonflies, we started seeing goldfinches, we started seeing all kinds of butterflies.”
In the fall of 2018, after learning that some century-old native oak trees were scheduled to be cut down, Rajan, along with other concerned residents, stressed to local officials the importance the trees hold within the ecosystem, but they were met with an unsatisfactory solution of having non-native trees planted.
Rajan and fellow Port Washington residents David Jakim, Hildur Palsdottir and Annemarie Ansel created ReWild Long Island, with the nonprofit finding seven families in Port Washington willing to “rewild” their yards with native plants, with help from landscape ecologist Rusty Schmidt, according to the group’s website.
“Now we have grown to about six chapters across Long Island, we have literally hundreds of volunteers, we run a very successful youth program,” Rajan said.
“We have created over 60 native plant gardens across Long Island in schools and churches and historic societies … so it’s really becoming [from] a lone experiment in the backyard to something that has now grown into actually an active movement across Long Island,” he said.
Advice for beginners
Bees are common in the backyard meadow of Raju Rajan and Sonia Arora. Credit: Corey Sipkin
In 2018, Americans generated 4.9 pounds of waste per person per day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Many might like to reduce that number, but not everyone has access to municipal composting and recycling, nor are zero-waste shops available in every town, Lindner acknowledged.
“I do think there are barriers economically and just access-wise to doing it here on Long Island, but, with that said, I don’t think that changing your habits is about perfection,” she said.
Whether these lifestyle changes and trends seem simple or overwhelming, Lindner, Gonzalez and Rajan encourage people to start small.
Lindner, who acknowledged she is no longer completely waste-free, said starting small can amount to “saying no to the latest trend or buying something secondhand.”
She suggested resisting the instant gratification of buying something trending on social media by saving the item in a wishlist for two weeks, and then reexamining whether to buy it.
“Chances are you’ve probably already forgotten about that thing that you thought you wanted two weeks ago, and then you can just take it out of your cart and feel good that you’re saving money,” she said.
Gonzalez acknowledged that a lot of toys become landfill fodder, but she also stressed making sure to “protect your sanity.”
“I have customers come in and say ‘Well I really want to do this; I really want to live this way, but my husband won’t do it, my boyfriend won’t do it, my kids won’t do it,’ and so you have to do what you can do,” she said.
Rajan stressed the importance of not demanding people do a complete overhaul of their lifestyle, but instead focus on smaller aspects that can be changed for the better.
“I think the most important thing we can do is really talk about what we can do in terms of the environment and ecosystems in a variety of different languages, meaning some people may be willing to compost, some people may be willing to give up a little bit of that lawn … some people may do it because they want to lower their water bill,” he said.
No matter the reason a person may want to make these changes, taking action is what matters, Rajan said.
“Invite people in to start where they are, and just make that first step,” he said.