Lifestyle

Need to get rid of your junk and your consumer guilt? There's a subscription for that

Published

2 years ago

January 15, 2024

Need to get rid of your junk and your consumer guilt? There's a subscription for that

Since her usual hazardous waste disposal site closed last year, Dashiel St. Damien has accumulated 20 pounds of batteries and a bag full of lightbulbs.

St. Damien, 46, a designer who lives in Mount Washington, knows these items shouldn’t go into her usual curbside bins, but has struggled to find a new, convenient place to drop them off. So the months ticked by, and the bulbs kept piling up.

This week, for a small fee, her mess will finally be cleared. St. Damien has scheduled her first pickup with Ridwell, a subscription service that picks up and disposes of hard-to-recycle trash. For $18 a month, a driver will come to her home biweekly and collect her batteries, light bulbs, plastic mailers and even clothes.

Paying for the service on top of her usual trash collection, she said, is worth it for the positive environmental impact — plus her own feelings of relief. “It’s such an easy thing to do,” St. Damien said. “There are so many big problems that I feel so helpless about, but this is just one small thing.”

Ridwell is part of a new class of businesses, catering to environmentally-conscious consumers, that position themselves as middlemen that can help keep waste out of landfills, and — as a positive side effect — make consumers feel better about the junk they generate.

Ridwell is expanding its services across L.A. as the country is emerging from its peak holiday waste season, where shipping boxes and their foam innards are filling trash bins and unwanted holiday gifts clutter homes.

Ridwell specializes in collecting and safely disposing of hard-to-recycle items including batteries, light bulbs and plastic film.

(Ridwell)

A Ridwell subscription starts at $14 a month for biweekly pickups, and the company promises that goods get “sustainably reused or recycled.” Tricky trash finds its way to specialized plants for safe disposal, while items with the potential to be reused are donated to organizations that need them. There are more expensive tiers for those with more waste and complicated materials to recycle; the plan that recycles foam costs $24 a month.

“People are starting to ask more questions, like, ‘Where did the stuff come from to produce my stuff?’” said Ryan Metzger, Ridwell’s CEO.

Metzger had the idea for Ridwell in 2018 after he initiated a modest “recycling carpool” with neighbors in Seattle. Faced with the challenge of finding disposal options for batteries, Metzger took the initiative to gather batteries from neighbors and call around to find a facility that could safely get rid of them. That first pickup quickly expanded to include trips to recycle light bulbs, electronics, plastic bags and Halloween candy. Word spread beyond the neighborhood.

“It’s often up to consumers to drive change in a positive way,” Metzger said.

Ridwell now has more than 90,000 members and offers its services in the Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta, Austin, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Portland and Los Angeles metro areas. The company is expanding into a dozen more Los Angeles neighborhoods this week, including West Hollywood, Studio City and Central L.A.

The company finds community partners for goods that have the potential to be reused, like toys, clothes and pet supplies. In Los Angeles, these partners include Wags & Walks, Out of the Closet and Baby2Baby, among others. “Our model is to seek out partners that have specific needs,” Metzger said.

Hard-to-break-down plastics — think Amazon mailers, chip bags and pet food bags — usually have to travel farther to special plants .

There is growing consumer awareness that not every plastic with the chasing arrows symbol on it is created equal. Many plastics put into citywide recycling bins go to landfills. St. Damien said subscribing to a service like Ridwell can help curb the common practice of what she calls “wishcycling,” or tossing something into the recycling that might not actually be recyclable. (“I fret about these things terribly,” she said.)

Linda Sanoff, 69, who lives in Hancock Park, has noticed her fair share of wishcyling in her neighborhood. “The city doesn’t take Styrofoam and I know people are putting Styrofoam in their blue bins and it doesn’t get recycled.”

January is a big month for trash. Waste haulers for the city of Los Angeles collected 2.04 tons of cardboard in December 2022; in January 2023 that number soared to 16.42 tons, according to data from the city’s sanitation department. In the weeks after Christmas, Ridwell sees a spike in its collection of batteries, holiday lights and many types of plastics.

Eco-conscious consumers know that the ideal way to deal with waste is to generate less of it to begin with, but most have a hard time reaching a true net-zero lifestyle. Some subscribers said Ridwell is helping them close that gap.

“I think we just owe it to our children’s future to just keep as much out of the landfills as possible,” said Bonnie Zucker, 52, who lives in Pacific Palisades. “In some ways, it’s unfortunate that companies like Ridwell have to exist, because we do have so much waste.”

Zucker prioritizes making eco-conscious choices in her everyday life. Outside of her day job as a psychologist, she volunteers with Resilient Palisades, a local environmental group. Most of her Ridwell pickups so far have consisted of multilayer plastics from packaging, plastic film and empty bags of the Pirate’s Booty her teenage son likes to snack on.

She has been impressed with the range of items that Ridwell will rehome. “They’ll do old eyeglasses and give them to, say, veterans organizations, or old pet supplies to give to animal shelters,” she said.

Although California is a national leader in its efforts to reduce plastic trash, experts agree there is more to be done. The state banned single-use plastic grocery bags in 2014 and will go further with a broader phase-out of plastics starting next year. But in 2021, Californians still generated 76.7 million tons of trash, 46 million of which ended up in a landfill, according to estimates from CalRecycle.

Similar waste disposal businesses are cropping up nationwide in response to consumers’ growing awareness, and guilt, about their own consumption habits and the shortcomings of our current systems. Rabbit Recycling, which works in the Philadelphia metro area, operates similarly to Ridwell and also offers one-time pickups.

TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based company, uses an a-la-carte business model. The company sends its customers boxes they can fill with certain types of waste for a fee. These boxes can either be left at a company drop-off point or shipped back to TerraCycle to dispose of.

Perhaps the best selling point of all is the convenience of a door-to-door service. “I mean, the city, thank goodness, has a recycling program, but it doesn’t take so much stuff that Ridwell does,” said Sanoff. “And now I don’t have to drive to UCLA to recycle batteries.”

Lifestyle

‘Hamnet’ star Jessie Buckley looks for the ‘shadowy bits’ of her characters

Published

2 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

‘Hamnet’ star Jessie Buckley looks for the ‘shadowy bits’ of her characters

Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.

Kate Green/Getty Images

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Kate Green/Getty Images

Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.

Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.

Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes in Hamnet.

But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”

The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.

Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.

Lewis Pullman and Danielle Brooks announced the 2026 Oscar nominees early Thursday morning in Beverly Hills, Calif. The 98th Academy Awards ceremony will be held on March 15.

“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”

Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.

Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features

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Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features

Interview highlights

On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies

I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …

The Real 'Hamnet' Died Centuries Ago, But This Novel Is Timeless

The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.

On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up

I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.

On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance

I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.

On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant

I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.

Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.

I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.

On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works

I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.

Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

Lifestyle

‘Evil Dead’ Star Bruce Campbell Reveals He Has Cancer

Published

3 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

‘Evil Dead’ Star Bruce Campbell Reveals He Has Cancer

Bruce Campbell
I’m Battling Cancer

Published
March 2, 2026
6:15 PM PST

Bruce Campbell has revealed he has cancer, but says it’s a type that’s treatable, though not curable.

“The Evil Dead” actor shared the news Monday in a message to fans, writing, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that — I’m having one of those.” He continued, “It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock — it was to me too.”

bruce campbell cancer announcement

Campbell said he wouldn’t go into further detail about his diagnosis, but explained his work schedule will be changing. “Appearances and cons and work in general need to take back seat to treatment,” he wrote, adding he plans to focus on getting “as well as I possibly can over the summer.”

As a result, Campbell says he has to cancel several convention appearances this summer, noting, “Treatment needs and professional obligations don’t always go hand-in-hand.”

bruce campbell evil dead everett 2

He says his plan is to tour this fall in support of his new film, “Ernie & Emma,” which he stars in and directs.

Ending on a determined note, Campbell told fans, “I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch … and I expect to be around a while.”

Lifestyle

‘Scream 7’ takes a weak stab at continuing the franchise : Pop Culture Happy Hour

Published

14 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

‘Scream 7’ takes a weak stab at continuing the franchise : Pop Culture Happy Hour

Neve Campbell in Scream 7.

Paramount Pictures

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Paramount Pictures

The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.

Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture