ZERO-WASTE
August 14, 2020ZERO WASTE
ZERO WASTE is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages the redesign of the resources life cycle so that all products are reused. The goal is for no trash to be sent to landfills, incinerators, or the ocean. Currently, only 9% of plastic is actually recycled. In a zero-waste system, the material will be used until the optimum level of consumption. these are the first few sentences in Wikipedia when you search for "What is zero waste?" and the overall accepted definition of zero waste is defined as follows:
"The conservation of all resources employing responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health."
In simple it encourages to make waste management more effective, that how every individual can support waste management just like recycling. The five principles (5R's) of the zero-waste system are,
REFUSE: What you do not need e.g., Refuse a straw at a restaurant or a plastic bag at a store.
REDUCE: What you do need. e.g., Don't buy things you really don't need.
REUSE: Repurpose worn-out items, shop for used goods, purchase reusable products like steel water bottles, and simply donate unused items that are in good condition.
RECYCLE: What you cannot refuse, reduce, or reuse. it still takes some energy and resources to recycle, but it's better than being sent to a landfill or allowing it to become litter.
ROT(compost): the rest. Up to 80% of waste by weight is organic. But this rarely decomposes in landfills.
Even though it is a very important step every one of us needs to support, most of us are being unaware of this concept. Even I heard of his concept very recently but ever since I decided to do my best to support this system. And this is something even very important to think about in this current scenario, Whereas waste management becomes the worst nightmare to handle for every government. Because of this Covid-19 situation in most of the places the recycling centers have been kept closed, which increases the quantity of waste every single day.
To make this happen we need to understand what is really happening in the environment. By reading all those things that may look like lots to take in but Zero waste is a journey that is not possible to happen overnight still, we can do support this idea by doing very simple changes in our day-to-day life which doesn't require much effort too all we need is awareness and a bit of commitment.
IMPORTANCE OF A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT:
In general, I am a person who cares about nature because of the way I was brought up. At least I always make sure that I am not doing something harmful to the environment, When I joined college our building was newly built, just like any other engineering college it was in the middle of nowhere. Obviously, there were trees before.
So in the beginning, days, whenever we switch on the fan in our classrooms small sparrows, get to stuck in and died, it was too hard to see them die in front of our eyes. Out of no choice we used to keep the fans off as max as we can, that is the least we were able to do at that time. Those were the time's cell phone towers were started to be seen everywhere, so I have read a couple of articles about the impact of towers on small birds like sparrows, I felt really bad, guilt, and helpless to be a part of that disaster.
At that time I didn't have a cell phone we used to get a call from parents to the hostel landline phone. Now the case is totally different no one can survive without cell phones including myself. But at the time, whenever I got to see someone using a cell phone it reminds me of that article for a long time. So when my parents decided to get one I insisted they have only one for our family, and I got my own mobile after a year or two. After that, I become more conscious of the environment as much as possible just to justify what I am causing to the environment. This is just my story.
Maintaining a healthy ecosystem is vital for every living creatures. It's everyone's responsibility to protect our nature. Simple changes in every individual can impact on a bigger level in our environment. That is how the world we are living in has changed. I get to know that someone caused only one kilogram of waste for a whole year, that is impressive right. Because of increasing pollution in the environment, thousands of people are dying every single day which is more than the number of deaths caused by Covid-19.
Lots and lots of information and survey results are available on the internet about the impact of pollution and stuff so I don't want to go into those details now. All I am trying to do here is to spread some awareness around me as much as possible about the environment. So I gonna share a few things actually that I am doing to support the principle of Zero-waste. It may include lots of processes and efforts to make this happen 100%. Still, we can do a lot without any effort or money for this wonderful concept.
SIMPLE IDEAS TO SUPPORT ZERO-WASTE AT HOME:
Changes Start at Home so as a family if we decide something, it's gonna create some great changes around the world. These ideas are not just good for the environment, but it is good for your wallet too😉. What I am telling here is just some ideas, so you can always do what suits you and your family. And I recommend doing your research for more guidance and ideas because there is no one correct way to do something right. So here goes my list,
1. THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO BUY SOMETHING for you or your family. Never ever buy something just because you can afford it. Because the less you bring home is easy to handle and good for your wallet too. At our home, I and my husband used to discuss in detail before buying anything like are we really need this or is it possible to postpone for some time.
2. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR DUST BIN. It tells you a lot like what goes most to the trash and what you can do to avoid that. The place we are living in now is an apartment which has a system of wallet trash so we have to put our trash in a plastic bag and have to put it outside and they will collect it further this is the routine. So before we used to keep our trash almost every single day, but after getting to know about the zero-waste concept we reduced our trash to one bag per week. We not just reduced the trash but also saved some money starts with the trash bag.
3. PLAN YOUR MEAL AND MAKE A SHOPPING LIST so that you can reduce shopping trips. we used to plan ahead our meals its really helpful in many different ways and saves lots of time in the kitchen. For this, I need to thank my husband because he always insists on making plans for our meal before ahead it will help him to prepare his mind. Basically, we are foodies so, every meal is important to us. This practice helped us a lot in this lockdown situation. Making plans is really useful guys.
4. HAVE A SMALL GARDEN this is my personal favorite. Having your own garden have tons of benefits like it can become your happy place, seeing your plants growing is a beautiful feel just like seeing your kids growing, and also you can reduce your kitchen scraps going to the trash. To use kitchen scraps in the garden you have lots of options like composting. It also helps me to save some water like I save all the water I used to wash vegetables, fruits, rice, and dhal for my plants.
5. TRY TO GET GROCERY IN BULK at least things which you buy frequently. To reduce the packing material going to trash. It really a big deal guys when you decided to reduce your waste every single thing is matters guys.
6. TRY TO REDUCE THE USE OF AC, instead use the fans as much as possible. In my home, except for bedtime, we won't switch on AC instead our patio doors will be open almost all the time nowadays it becomes a rule, even my kids started to follow them.
7. Keep your tap in medium flow while you are doing dishes.
8. Keep taps closed while brushing and limit the quantity of water you are using in the bath. We have seen the impact of this on our water bill, trust guys it's worth it.
9. Don't wash clothes that are not really dirty. This helps to save water as well as electricity.
10. DONATE UNUSED or UNWANTED STUFF that is in good condition and purchase second-hand items as much as possible. This is something really important I guess. I know this is not easy to change our habits overnight, but nothing is impossible. The place where I am living has thrift stores which will get a donations of all sorts from used dresses to toys from people at the same time we can also purchase second-hand items from them both the donations and the purchase money were used for charity purposes. This is something really useful and simple to implement the concept of Reuse.
11. ASK FOR HELP. Especially for rarely used items if you know any of your friends has it then don't hesitate to ask for it because there is nothing wrong with it and there is no point in purchasing one which is not going to be useful to anyone right.
12. REUSE EVERYTHING around you before throwing it into the trash. My place is always messy and I am not bothered about that because I am a big believer in the saying "Anything could be a tool for a good craftsman" it is really true. That is how most of the time I do my crafts. Not just that we can do a lot of reuse in our house, for example, we are not going to settle down in the USA so at the beginning when arranging our kitchen I used all those big plastic bottles we got for some other stuff as grocery containers, I thought instead of putting this plastic bottles in the trash and again getting some other pretty plastic containers makes no sense.
13. REUSE YOUR OLD CLOTH as a kitchen towel instead of getting a new kitchen towel from stores. And we can also use them as rugs if got some time there are lot of creative ways to make them look pretty, even me made a dishcloth out of old cloth by using some basic crochet stitches. In the current scenario, I am making face masks for my family out of our old clothes.
14. NEVER EVER BUY PLASTIC PRODUCTS, just like everyone knows plastic is bad for health, which is a major cause for cancer as well as it is really bad for the environment as well. There are many ways to replace them like wood, silver, even silicon products are an option that is much better than plastic products. For example, steel water bottles, glass containers for the kitchen, even bamboo toothbrushes are available in the market. Bamboo toothbrushes are my personal favorite.
15. AVOID USE OF PAPER TOWELS as much as possible which are not good for our environment as well as our wallet. At my home I and husband were using paper towels for everything like wiping our hands after every handwash, to clean the kitchen, and for every other cleaning purpose, then we suddenly realized we are using them too much so, I replaced them with some soft old cloth separately for every use. Now we are using paper towels only to strain deep-fried items and we only consumed half of our paper towel roll in the last 4 months.
Other than these ideas we can do more simple things to support the Zero-waste principle like,
16. In my garden, I replaced plastic pots with empty rice sacks. This is one of the items I keep collecting for a long time without an idea of how to use it properly finally, I got my answer. Thanks to this lockdown situation which forced me to think of some substitute for plastic pots
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17. Be cautious and thoughtful about what we are doing. Because where there's a will, there's a way.
17. Be cautious and thoughtful about what we are doing. Because where there's a will, there's a way.
18. Then use reusable bags for groceries and other shopping purposes.
19. Avoid processed foods and to go's first it's not healthy, second, it comes with lots of packaging which is not good for the environment. So, try to prepare your food at home as possible. Now, no one can say I don't know how to cook I guess because hundreds of videos are available on youtube and other networks. If you start doing it, then you will realize it's not that hard.
20. Always carry your reusable water bottles with you and use tissues at any other place unnecessarily.
21. At shops, if you can avoid physical bills then go ahead, better ask for yourself even when though don't give you the option.
22. Don't buy dresses unnecessarily except on special occasions it's not good for your pocket nor your environment, fabric industries, and every other industry cause lots of damage to the environment.
23. We can use used paper and cardboard boxes in the garden while planting. Even hair, nail, and lint are decomposable. I prepared my rice bag pots by layering stones, then paper and cardboard cuttings, then waste plant scraps, and finally soil. It works fantastic for me.
These are the very basic changes as a family we have made in our lifestyle so far. I hope it's useful for you guys. I know it can be overwhelming to take all at once but no need to rush, be easy on yourself be patient slowly it will become your new routine. My intention to write this post is to make some awareness around us so, if you thought this is good then, please spread this with your friends and family because I personally value every single change in the environment. And finally, never forget always " Stay Positive and Keep Smiling😊".
ZERO WASTE GARDEN
6 comments
Great insight on thz much needed topic Saran. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
ReplyDeleteThank u raji😍
DeleteUr ideas are very useful saran......Good start
ReplyDeleteThank u shabi😍
DeleteGreat idea..will try to follow😍
ReplyDeleteThen I guess this post served its purpose... Thank u
Delete