Meet the woman who digs through and documents Manhattan’s waste, to divert from landfill, raise consciousness, and create systemic change. Anna Sacks, aka the Trash Walker, creates viral TikTok and Instagram videos that shed light on the brand new merchandise that luxury brands deliberately destroy, as part of their continued efforts to fuel the relentless pace of a fashion system that is wasteful, unjust, and unsustainable.
Anna focuses on more than just fashion or brand waste, too - she rifles through city garbage to salvage good, quality stuff that ends up in the garbage. She has found canned food and fresh food, hundreds of dollars of fresh-pressed juice, toys, dishes, typewriters, clothing, candy, brand-new school supplies, and the list goes on. The amount of stuff that she finds is staggering - as is how perfectly usable it is.
This conversation explores not just our society’s waste problems - but also solutions, from legislation to personal action to being less polite in our dissent. It looks at how we are increasingly finding excessive waste as unacceptable, and are voicing our discontent, resisting this wasteful status quo, and searching for ways of living that prioritize sharing over ownership.
Read the transcript and show notes at reseed.ca.
