Zero fucks for zero waste

I started my week with a talk in ADB about Universal Health Care and Climate Change care of Atty. Joyce Melcar Tan. It was basically a crash course on climate change and why we, as members of the health sector, should be alarmed. She ended by saying that all is not lost. We have ways to mitigate the effects of this phenomenon, but we must each do our part to be less wasteful, and more mindful in our consumption.

I wouldn't call myself naive per se but I can't claim to be an expert on climate change either. I never really thought that much about it until I heard her speak about what we're doing to the planet by not doing anything about climate change.

After her session, my friends and I got to talking about sustainable living and how to reduce our carbon footprint as a way to contribute to fighting off the bad effects of climate change. I remarked that it's quite ironic how despite all these technological advancements, people are reverting back to a simple "zero waste" lifestyle. In a world where everything comes in a plastic bag, why would people choose to go back to basics and live plastic-free? And why only now?

My friend replied, saying that it wasn't really relevant then because people were more concerned with development and making life easier, that talks about the collateral damage were left to be dealt with another day. It's definitely easier to forget about it under the pretense that the end justifies the means - it's all for the betterment of the human race, after all.

In a way, I kind of agree. It felt to me like people never considered climate change to be a possible side effect of all this developement before, or more likely, people didn't mind. We constantly seek to better the way we live our lives, and we use the tools that are available to us to do so. Yet, somehow, we miss the fact that the pace of human development has grown faster and faster, and the environment just couldn't keep up.

Bothered by this thought, I started researching online about Zero Waste living. I came across a video of a woman named Bea Johnson, who lives a zero waste lifestyle with her husband and two kids. She talks about how she started, and the stuggles that came with it, as well as her motivations for keeping at it for as long as she has. She gave tips on how to keep a zero waste home from grocery shopping, to cleaning, to personal hygiene items and make-up.

Zero Waste Lunch Kit (trashisfortossers.com)

Nearing the end of the video, she said something that really resonated with me:

When you have things that you don't need, you are holding them from other people; you are keeping them from being useful to other people. 

I found that statement so powerful precicely because it is so sincere, and so simple. We are given so much, and we choose to be wasteful even when 1/4 of our population don't even have a dollar a day to feed their families. And this isn't speaking from a position of prilivege. We as a society are just not conscious consumers.

We spend so much of our lives ammassing junk thinking we need to have it "just in case," or "so we have options" but we never really end up using them, or they go bad before we get the chance to, or we completely forget that we have them at all. We buy what we think we need without really thinking about what we actually need. All of the items we buy come in some sort of packaging, and Filipinos are notorious for buying in small quantities, or tingi as we call it, which adds to the amount of waste we already produce. There aren't really any places here where people can buy items package-free or in bulk. Even our public markets use a lot of plastic. We use so many single-use items like straws, paper plates, and plastic cups. We fill our landfills with unsegregated trash, and recycling facilities are limited. All of this waste ends up in places like sewers, rivers, and oceans where animals can easily mistake them for food. We are literally eating trash.

(Medasset.org)

It's crazy to think that producing waste has become an indispensable part of living. We are deliberately killing the only thing keeping us alive. But, just like what Atty. Joyce said, all is not lost. We can still do something to change our fates by doing our part. This is our chance to give a shit. Here are 6R's to help us live more sustainably:

Re-think (your purchases)

Refuse (what you don't need)

Reduce (what you do need)

Reycle 

Reuse

Rot (compost)