Every time I take out the wheelie bins the night before our rubbish collection day, I think to myself 'how can a small family of four produce this much waste?' We recycle and we compost, we donate and we declutter...and still, I have bags full of trash at the end of each week.
If you have similiar thoughts, it's time to take action. In this post I will talk to you about what are some of the benefits of adopting a low waste lifestyle and how can we reduce our waste at home by taking small and simple steps that can make a big difference to our footprint, our health and our wallets.
The Problem with Waste
Most of us don't even know where this waste ends up. Is it going to end up in a landfill or an incinerator? Will the recycling facility accept all the different types of plastic bottles? Will it be exported to a country somewhere in the other side of the world and will it return back in some other form or shape? How much energy would that take?!
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that on average, each person in the UK produces 411kg of waste every year. Each year that figure creeps up. Annie Leonard, the creator of Story of Stuff and Executive Director at Greenpeace, sums it up perfectly:
"There is no such thing as 'away', when we throw something, it must go somewhere".
The 3 Types of Waste You Should Know
In our parent's and grandparent's generation, every thing was was used and reused three, four or five times. No one looked down at hand-me-downs, children made toys out of cardboard boxes and cartons of yogurt were used for storing food for 'leftover' nights. Back then waste didn't have negative connotations.
In today's world, we think of it a little differently. Waste is when a product has come to the end of it's life cycle...a waste.
Pretty much every household generates three types of waste:
General Waste (whatever that can not be recycled and is typically sent to a landfill)
Recylables (mixed glass, alumunium, paper/ cardboard as well as organic waste made, which is food and garden waste)
Electronic and / or hazardous waste (this includes waste like used up batteries, paints. old laptops or mobile phones - this waste has different procedures of storage, handling and disposal and you should check your own local regulations on how to manage it).
Why should we care about this?!
We live in a throwaway society and often don't think about where our waste ends up. Our NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) attitude has meant that we have literally thrown away our problems at someone else. This was bound to come to an end. Recently, some of the biggest importers of household waste like China, India and Malaysia have banned the import of plastic waste from countries such as UK, US, Canada and Australia. It's now unclear what the future of waste recyling will look like as these countries struggle to provide the infrastructure to handle and recycle their own waste.
One of the biggest reasons to reduce waste is to prevent it from contaminating our natural resources. Most landfills around the world are (quite literally) a 'dump', where massive quantities of waste and sludge are collected over time until the trash is burnt or buried even deeper into a hole. There is a good chance that this toxic concoction of waste can leak into the groundwater supply and contaminate the waterways that feed into our rivers and oceans.
5 Ways to Reduce Your Waste
Is it even possible to produce no waste at all? The Zero Waste Movement thinks that we can all aspire towards this goal, if we follow the 5R's (and only in this specific order):
Refuse: don't accept unecessary items you don't need
Reduce: minimise what you consume
Reuse: find alternative uses for different products
Recycle: only if you can't reuse it
Rot: compost what you can not recycle
Realistically speaking, I know that it's going to take me some time to get to that place in my journey where my family produces zero waste. In the meantime, I take the following steps which help me to cut down my overall consumption 2) helps me to recycle and compst and 3) reduce the amount of waste that we send to the landfill. These tips should help you get started:
1. Do A Waste Audit:
Find out how much waste your family produces in a typical day and identify the biggest source of your waste. I can only speak from personal experience, but for a family of four (2 adults and 2 children 5 and 3), this may include (and we are far far from perfect):
Paper Towels and wipes
Food waste (leftover cooked food)
Plastic Wrappers
Next, plan how you can swap these items for reusable or recyclable options. Can you use kitchen towels instead of paper, have you considered using cloth diapers for your little ones, or buying crisps and biscuits in bulk so that there are less wrappers to deal with. A little bit of research and planning can go a long way in buying household items that are not pre-packaged or come in packaging like glass and carboard that can be recycled or composted.
2. Buy Less Stuff
One of the most cost effective ways to reduce our waste is to simply cut down on our consumption. Whether it's buying less clothes, less snacks or household paraphernalia, the less you consume, the less you waste, and the more you save. Here is a list of items I don't buy anymore (and what I swap them with). I have not only reduced my overall waste but also saved a considerable amount of money:
New toys for the kids (I buy secondhand and look for bargains on Facebook Marketplace)
Children's books (I borrow from the library or download them on my Kindle)
Household cleaning products (I make my own using natural ingredients in reusable spray bottles).
Fast Fashion Clothing (I buy clothes that are timeless, made of high quality and will complement my capsule wardrobe).
Souvenirs and what I call 'household paraphernalia', such as frames, candles and cushions (instead I prefer to spend my money family trips and experiences).
3. Avoid Food Waste
Our kitchens are one of the major sources of waste in our homes. Most of our food comes in some sort of packaging, and there is waste especially generated at the time of preparing and cooking our meals and ultimately, we are left with food that is uneaten and thrown away.
According to the latest statistics on waste, 70% of household food that could have been consumed is wasted! That is worth more than £15 billion!!
Addressing our food waste problem should be one of the easiest and simplest of actions, here are some steps you can take to cut down how much food is wasted in your home:
Plan your meals - write down what you plan to eat each day / evening, make a shopping list of the ingredients you need and stick to it.
Avoid going food shopping on an empty stomach.
Shop online if you can - you end up buying only what you need.
Freeze your bread, thaw what you need or pop the slices in the toaster.
Blanch vegetables and fruits and freeze them in air tight containers.
Repurpose your leftovers - juice your vegetables, make a fruit smoothie, blend them into a soup or a stew. There are so many recipes online for creating new meals out of your leftovers.
4. Say No to Plastics
Single-use plastics make me extremely frustrated, because it's one of the easiest ways we can reduce our waste without compromising the quality of our lives or the health of our planet and the marine life. There is no excuse for either their production or their consumption. We use them for a couple of minutes but they stay on this Earth for a lifetime. What scares me the most is that we are eating the plastic that we throw away. Plastic does not biodegrade but breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces (knows as nurdles), which look a lot like food to some species of fish and seabirds and as a result enter into our food chain. According to a study by Plymouth University, plastic pellets were found in one third of the all fish caught by UK in 2016!
So how do we reduce our plastic consumption? Here are some extremely easy and simple ways you can say no to plastic:
Plan ahead and bring your own stainless steel water bottle, reusable shopping bag and set of bamboo utensils. You could have some of these items already lying around your home, so first use what you already have, and then consider buying these items.
Buy fruits and vegetables that are sold loose at the supermarket, sold at farmer's markets, or from a zero waste shop. If you live in the UK, you can also find the nearest one here.
Swap your bathroom essentials for plastic-free alternatives or buy them in bulk. Also consider making your own beauty products using natural ingredients from your kitchen.
5. Reuse before you recycle
Papermaking is one of the most polluting industries in any country as the process not only involves the pollution of natural resources from the chemicals released into the air and water, but the sourcing of paper from mostly virgin forests means that it also contributes heavily to the factors that lead to climate change.
Despite living in a digital world, our consumption of paper has increased by 400% in the last 40 years. We use 300 million tonnes of paper each year (which equates to 2.47 million trees each year!), out of which just 38% is recycled. Since the recovery and recycling of paper and carboard is an energy and water intensive process in itself, I believe that we should refuse, reduce and reuse paper before we send it for recycling.
Here are some ways we can mimise the consumption of paper:
Don't accept junk mail (you can place a sign on your door for this purpose), or promotional material at family events, concerts and work conferences.
Request electronic bills and receipts from your service providers.
Download books and magazines on your digital device or get a library card.
Look through your files and old notebooks to see if you can salvage any paper for your children's craft activities or for your to-do lists.
Print only when it's necessary, print on both sides and print in black & white.
I hope this article was insightful and gave you some food for thought. No one expects you or anyone else to go zero waste (personally I believe that is a myth) but If I can refuse single-use plastic, or if I can cut down the amount of paper I use, then I know that I have moved in the right direction. How about you? What change(s) have you made so far, was it easier than you thought it was going to be?
At House of Ethics, we try to minimise as much waste as possible. From working in collaboration with our manufacturers to the plastic-free packaging we use to deliver our cork bags and accessories, we keep a close eye on our supply chain to guage where we can reduce our waste footprint even further. Feel free to subsribe to our newsletter to learn more about our efforts as well as to receive educational content similiar to this in your inbox.
Comments