By Tram On and James Jarvis
Inside a small storefront in Vienna, neatly labeled dispenser bins line the walls. Wooden shelves are laden with bulk containers of everything from hand soap to vinegar, reusable bags to pasta.
Customers bring their own containers to fill, paying by weight instead of buying products packaged in disposable plastic. In the four years since she opened Trace, owner Mala Persaud estimates customers have refilled more than 36,000 containers.
“We do it for the customers. We do it for the environment. I do it for future generations,” she says.
Persaud, a former journalist who now works as a communications consultant in addition to running the store, opened Trace in 2021 after growing increasingly frustrated with the volume of single-use packaging and plastic waste she saw piling up around her. She wasn’t convinced recycling alone was the solution.
After watching videos online of people attempting to live “zero-waste” — some fitting an entire year’s worth of trash into a mason jar — Persaud felt there had to be a more practical way to reduce waste without requiring such extreme lifestyle changes.
“And I thought, ‘there’s got to be a better way’… there’s got to be a path to less without being so, I guess, extreme,” she said.
Vienna seemed like a natural place to try. Persaud already lived in the town and believed many of her neighbors would be interested in ways to reduce household waste — aligning with a broader push underway in Fairfax County.
For years, county officials have been working to dramatically reduce the amount of trash residents generate. And while progress toward that goal has been steady, Persaud says changing everyday consumer habits — like the reliance on single-use packaging — may be the hardest part of reaching the county’s “zero waste” ambitions.
“I have seen year-over-year growth, but it’s not where I thought it would be by now,” Persaud said.
Recycling key to Fairfax County’s ‘Zero Waste’ plan
As part of a broader plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, Fairfax County has set an ambitious goal of achieving “zero waste” by 2030. That would include diverting at least 90% of waste from landfills and incinerators, and reducing overall waste generation by 25% from 2018 levels through recycling, composting and other waste-reduction programs.
As of 2023, the county government has reduced its own total solid waste by 38% compared with 2018, according to an update presented to the Board of Supervisors’ environmental committee in May 2025.
That figure, however, comes with two caveats: Waste levels dropped significantly during the pandemic as many county employees worked remotely, and officials reported a slight uptick in waste in 2023 as more workers returned to offices the previous year.
By reducing waste, officials say the county can also cut greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, composting organic materials such as food scraps and yard waste reduces the amount of methane released during decomposition in landfills.
Recycling and reusing materials can also reduce the energy needed to extract raw resources, manufacture new products, and transport them to consumers.
However, Persaud argues that recycling and composting are only part of the solution. What also needs to change, she says, are the everyday consumption habits that drive so much waste in the first place — particularly the reliance on single-use packaging.
“The number one problem is that we’re all believing that recycling is enough,” says Persaud. “And it is not.”
John Cook, a senior research fellow at the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change, says part of the challenge is that public messaging has long emphasized individual actions like recycling, while downplaying the role of industry and policy in reducing emissions.
“They are trying to … say that it is your job as an individual citizen to solve climate change,” Cook says. “It’s not our job to transition from burning fossil fuels to clean sources of energy, so that’s actually a form of misinformation.”
Still, individual behavior does matter, says Younsung Kim, professor of public policy and management in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University.
While industries such as agriculture and construction contribute the most to climate change, Kim argues that policies aimed at consumers have proven effective.
Programs such as bottle buy-backs or plastic bag taxes — Fairfax County implemented a 5-cent plastic bag tax in 2022 — can encourage consumers to reuse materials and cut down on disposable packaging.
“It gets people to think, ‘why am I paying extra? I should really carry reusable bags,’” Kim said.
Persaud said she would like to see people go a step further and focus on reducing waste, not just recycling it.
“The big thing that people really need to re-educate ourselves around is that reduce, reuse, recycle is a hierarchy with reduce on the top and recycling at the bottom,” said Persaud.
At Trace, Persaud tries to make that hierarchy practical for everyday shoppers. Instead of buying new products packaged in disposable plastic, customers can bring their own jars, bags or containers and refill them with household staples.
The goal, Persaud said, is to make cutting down on packaging waste feel less like a radical lifestyle shift and more like a small change people can build into their regular shopping routines.
“The liquid soaps come in five gallon buckets, and then when you’re empty, we rinse and clean them and send them back to the makers who refill them,” she said, explaining how systems like that help reduce packaging waste throughout the supply chain, not just in customers’ homes.
Individual and collective actions both needed
Still, Persaud acknowledges adopting a zero-waste lifestyle isn’t always easy. There are only a handful of stores like Trace in Northern Virginia, and many residents may not have convenient access to refill shops or other alternatives to single-use packaging.
Catie Torgersen, the sustainability program manager in Fairfax County’s Department of Public Works & Environmental Services, said that small changes can still make a difference.
“It’s great if you can just stop using single-use plastic altogether, but that’s really, really hard,” Torgersen said, suggesting starting with manageable steps, like using reusable snack bags for lunches, or forgoing straws or plastic bags when out dining or shopping.
“If you can just pick one thing and try to make it a habit, that makes it a lot easier,” Torgersen says.
But the critical step to making a difference is a partnership between systems — like industry and governments — and individuals.
“Regulation is a key strategy,” said Cook. “[It’s] not the only strategy, but a very important strategy to trying to reduce fossil fuel emissions…Sending the social signal that we care about [climate change] is important.”
Finding local groups and engaging in collective action, including protests or petitioning representatives or officials, can also have an impact, Cook says.
“Once we start building those…public conversations about climate change, that builds the social momentum, which then gives momentum to political action,” he said.
At the rate the climate crisis is intensifying, a broader structural approach is critical, says Maggie O’Donnell, a project manager for the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University.
While O’Donnell understands why the scale of climate change can be disheartening, she cautions against buying into the belief that a single effort is insubstantial.
“I think that often gets in the way of you being able to take more long-term, bigger impacts with your community,” O’Donnell says.
Persaud agrees that no single store or program will solve the problem alone. But she hopes places like Trace can help people rethink everyday habits.
“I guess the story is here to try to meet everybody where they are on this journey and provide a little bit of education as well,” she said.
This story was provided to FFXnow by Youthcast Media Group, a nonprofit that works with high school student journalists. Tram On, a sophomore at Annandale High School, is one of its journalism class partners. James Jarvis is a reporter for Inside Health Policy and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University’s journalism program who has covered the D.C. region for Inside NoVa, Local News Now and The 51st.
