The WaPo cast a spotlight on a liberal doomsday cult called the Zero Waste Movement, founded by someone named Bea Johnson, which fears that the planet will be destroyed if we throw out too much trash.

She advocates "living simply and taking a stance against needless waste," an effort organized around what she calls her "5Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot (and only in that order)."  Refuse things you don't need, reduce things you have, reuse everything, recycle what can't be used and put the rest in the compost bin. 

Johnson and her family of four fit an entire year's worth of trash into a pint jar.

Zero Waste enthusiasts say eliminating packaging does not require excessive time and effort.

Johnson makes her own makeup, lip balm, blush (from cocoa powder), mascara and shampoo.  Her efforts to replace toilet paper were not so smooth.  "Moss was fine at first but dried out quickly and was like wiping with a scouring pad," she laughs. 

Thole [a fellow enviro-nut] has posted about making butter, marshmallows, granola, cleaning supplies, dish sponges (out of orphaned socks), tortillas, goat cheese, kale chips, linguine, toothpaste, cotton rounds and washcloths (from her son's stained cotton pajama top), and produce bags (from old T-shirts). 

Are you following any of this?

1. Enviro-nuts claim that reducing your trash generation doesn't take much time.

2. All you have to do is make your own sponges.  And granola.  And goat cheese.  And  toothpaste.  And, and, and...

Obviously, following this lifestyle is extremely labor-intensive.

What's more, it's wholly unnecessary.  Just look at a satellite photo of the Earth.  Most of it is empty.  Really empty.  I'm not talking metro New York or Miami.  I'm talking America as a whole.  We could generate enough trash for thousands of years without running out of space.

This is what libs worry about.  Taken to this extreme, it's a mental illness.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.