My way of reducing waste in everyday life.I never paid much attention to how much waste I produced. I always felt like I amdoing a good thing by putting a plastic bottle to a recycling bin or asking for a paper straw instead of a plastic one. Recently however I have discovered that there is so much plastic waste going to recycling that the recycling plants can’t keep up, so lots of these bottles still goes to landfill. A whole 1 million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute. Same goes for the recycling of paper straws, gift-wrapping paper or even chopsticks. Another thing that came as a shock to me was the amount of microplastics in the oceans coming from washing my clothes – 51 trillion pieces around the world which are being consumed by fish and other marine life.
Since I found out how bad the world is suffering with everyday waste, I decided to make some changes in my daily life. I started small – choosing loose fruit and veg and putting them in paper bags in a grocery store, using a reusable bottle, straw, coffee cups. I even found a zero-waste store in my area and started saving all my jars and ended up going there every week. They have an amazing collection of beans, rice, legumes, etc that I have never seen before in any supermarket which allowed me to experiment with my cooking. Turns out homemade hummus and homemade Nutella taste so much better!
Then I decided to take it a step further. I found plenty of online stores selling reusable household essentials which are also bio-degradable and natural. I invested in a milk bag and made my own oat milk which came up to a whole 25p per litre rather that store bought £1,50, I bought coconut sponges which actually clean dirty pans so much easier and last ages, bees wax food wraps that come in the most unique colours and patterns and make my lunch stand out, a bunch of fruit and veg bags that are way more durable than the paper ones offered in the store and a set of bamboo cutlery which are just as light as the plastic ones offered in cafeterias and perfect for travel. I also discovered plenty of personal hygiene and beauty swaps such as reusable makeup removing pads, natural oil-based deodorants, and lip balms in cardboard bottles rather than plastic ones and a refillable mascara. My absolute favourite, however, is a wash bag that catches the microfibres from clothes during washing preventing them from getting into the ocean and harming the marine life.
This is my story of how I became more environmentally conscious by reducing my everyday waste. There are plenty of things that still need to be done, but with small steps we can all contribute to keeping our planet a little cleaner.
