Easy Ways to Reduce Your Waste, Pt. 1

Dec 02, 2019

"But man is a part of nature, and a war against nature is inevitably a war against himself."
–Rachel Carson

A Material World

The world we live in thrives on materialism. We buy cheap, unnecessary objects that mean next to nothing just because we get the urge to have it when we see it. I won't claim that I’m totally past that point and am living in immaterial bliss, but I am definitely much more conscious about the waste I create in my day-to-day life. In the past few years, I’ve begun to change certain things in my life and view the world in a new way. Join me on this journey as I share some of the ways we all can work to create a healthier planet not only for us, but for future generations.

Go Vegan!

This is the most obvious option, and if you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, here’s the low-down: animal agriculture is basically everything that is wrong with the world. (Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but only slight.) It kills about 60 billion land animals and 2.7 trillion sea animals every year. Let me repeat that:

Two
Point
Seven
T-rillion

To put that into perspective, one trillion seconds is equivalent to about 32,000 years, and 2.7 trillion seconds is 86,400 years.[1] As Emily from Bite Size Vegan points out, even a number that large is probably a conservative estimate.[2] What happens to the ocean when 2.7 trillion animals are being taken out every year? There's no way to recover quickly enough; the ecosystem of the majority of the planet will be in ruins, and what will happen to the rest of the world once the oceans are dead?

Farmed animals are fed massive amounts of cheap grains, much of which is grown by people in impoverished nations who have little-to-no rights. Did you know that approximately 82% of starving children live in these kinds of countries where plants are grown that are fed to animals eaten in Western countries? I definitely didn’t because I didn’t think of that kind of stuff before going vegan. In addition to these ethical issues, animal agriculture is the single largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world, totaling as much as 51% of all emissions worldwide, whereas every car, truck, bus, plane, train, boat, etc. in the world emits a measly 13% in comparison.[3]

The continuous cycle of breeding billions of animals every year is using up more and more land, responsible for 91% of Amazonian deforestation, eliminating populations of natural species and destroying the ecosystems. If you want to learn more, and you should because this is absolutely terrifying, please check out the documentary Cowspiracy.[3, 4] It’s really a fun and enlightening movie, unlike some documentaries; it’d be even better to gather some friends or family and have a nice movie night together. And if you don’t have time to watch a 90-minute film, the creators have every fact and source listed on their website to back up all their claims.[5]

What Do You Need?

This is great for people (like me) who have a problem with buying things spontaneously without thinking. Even though I do almost all of my non-food shopping from small businesses (on Etsy, for instance), that still creates waste. What I’m trying now is to put something in my cart or saved-for-later, leave it there for at least a week, go back to it after and ask myself, Do I really need this? The answer is always no, and often I actually forget about what I’ve put in my cart so I don’t return to look at it for several weeks. I do still allow myself to buy things that aren’t necessary but make me feel good or happy. I’m trying to be a more conscious shopper by really questioning myself before purchasing. As time goes on and I continue to shop more consciously, I hope to eliminate most of these unnecessary purchases.

Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists

Whenever I go on a website to check out their products, I’m always asked to sign up for their email list in exchange for a discount. I usually sign up just in case I want to buy something from them or if they have good sales in the future, but I almost never end up visiting the shop again. Not only do they fill up my inbox every day (and the holiday season is always a nightmare – I loathe Black Friday), but they serve as a constant temptation for things I don’t need. Even more so, I feel like they just clutter up my life with thoughts that I don’t have enough or that I need more stuff. I know they’re just trying to sell their products, which is fine – I understand that they’re running a business – but it stresses me out; so I’m unsubscribing from all these random email lists. It not only makes my life feel less cluttered, but it removes some of that desire to shop I get from receiving their emails.

Reuse Everything

You don’t have to spend a bunch of money to reduce your waste. That’s actually the antithesis of going zero-waste. Even if all you have are plastic grocery bags and empty peanut butter jars, you can continue to put those to use. Take those bags back to the store and keep using them instead of getting new ones every time. Most stores now sell sturdier bags for about a dollar or two, but that’s not essential if you have perfectly usable plastic bags in your possession already. If everything you buy is already packaged, then you don’t even really need bags to carry the groceries anyway. It’s handy but not necessary.

Most stores now are starting to offer bulk areas, whereas it used to just be "health food" stores like Whole Foods. At some stores, you can take your empty jars to the registers and ask the cashiers to weigh them for you; then, you fill them up with foods from the bulk bin, and the weight of the jar will be deducted when you check out so you’re only paying for what you bought. Even my local Publix offers bulk options now. However, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to repurpose old glass jars in stores like that, so you may have to use the plastic bags they offer. At that point, it’s up to you. If you can fit more quinoa, for instance, in a bag from the bulk section than you’d get prepackaged, you can do that and keep reusing those plastic bags each time you go back. However, if you can, do try to avoid plastic as much as possible, which leads me to my next point…

Buy Less Plastic

Plastic is the scourge of the earth. It is killing the planet, and we need to stop producing more. Let me share with you a little story. I love India; I’ve loved it ever since I went there in 2012, a few years before going vegan. My favorite part was all the cows. Cows are my favorite animal and have been for most of my life, and I thought I was in heaven to be surrounded by so many cows all the time. They actually roam the streets just like people. However, these cows aren’t cared for, and they’re usually left to fend for themselves. Unfortunately, in these urban settings, they can’t naturally graze as they would in the wild. So, what do they do? They eat trash, actual garbage thrown out on the streets. Most of this refuse is wrapped in or contaminated with plastic. In The Plastic Cow, they document removing 117 pounds (53 kilograms) of plastic from just a single cow’s stomach! Usually, this will eventually kill the cow because they can’t digest it properly. It’s horrendous.

Under the Sea

Perhaps an even greater atrocity (not that any atrocity can ever really be worse than another) is all the plastic littered in the ocean. Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It’s, quite literally, a giant heap of plastic, twice the size of Texas, the second-largest state in America, floating in the Pacific Ocean. The ocean in this area is basically completely dead, called an oceanic dead zone, with no life being able to live there.[6]

And when plastic is in water, it begins to break down faster than on land. And now we’re dealing with microplastics in the oceans. These are small, microscopic bits of plastic scattered all throughout the world. Somehow, plankton are confused with these tiny pieces and small fish accidentally eat them. The oceanic ecosystem is possibly most vital to the survival of our planet, and it’s being destroyed from the bottom up.

The fish that do survive ingesting the plastic are usually eaten by larger animals that are eaten by larger animals, so on and so forth.[7] Think about a blue whale that eats billions of plankton and all the plastic that bioaccumulates in their stomach. Now we have a massive – literally, as they’re the biggest creatures on the planet – problem. Long story short, just stop using plastic, people. It’s unfortunate that it’s everywhere in our society, but that all goes back to considering your actions and determining what it is that you need versus what you want.

Invest in Reusable Food and Drink Containers

I bought an enormous (40 oz) CamelBak insulated water bottle for only about $20 on Amazon – that’s a steal, especially compared to lots of other brands. (Hydroflask, I love you, but I’m not paying $50 for a water bottle.) Most people already have a reusable drink container of some sort, but if you don’t, you can always reuse a plastic bottle that you already have.

You probably already have some food storage containers at home, so you can pack up a meal in there and take it with you. Restaurants are often very accommodating if you ask them to put your food in the container you brought. I can't always finish my food at a restaurant, so having a container with me makes me feel so much better than using those Styrofoam or plastic take-out containers. If you use straws, you can find inexpensive metal, bamboo, or glass ones online. I’ve seen many restaurants selling paper straws now for only about a dollar each. But if you don’t use straws, then you don’t need to worry about that. (Don't go out buying a metal straw if you're not the kind of person that would otherwise use straws. That defeats the whole purpose of trying to create less waste.)

Recycle Everything You Can

Recycling can be tricky, and it’s actually incredibly ineffective. About 90% of the plastic that’s put in the recycle ends up going straight into a landfill due to the high cost of processing it or contamination.[8] Every city and company will have its own specifications on what you can and can’t recycle, but it’s better to be safe than sorry and simply try to not create the need to recycle in the first place.

**Stay tuned for Thursday's post to learn about more easy tips to reduce your waste!