Ever since I started measuring our household waste, I made conscious decisions to reduce it. It was a personal and family KPI that I pursued with unusual fervour. It reminded me of the time I decided to liberate my phone from social media apps. For the first few days, I would glance at my phone at the most unexpected time and place only to realise I no longer have facebook or twitter on it. In the same vein, I skipped buying a take-away meal or coffee because I didn’t have a re-usable container with me. I bought a re-usable coffee mug, you’ll find one at Starbucks. I also bought a tiffin for take-aways. I was half-expecting people to raise eyebrows in restaurants but the staff usually didn’t complain.
By June, we had reduced plastic waste generated per person in the family to 298g per month from 579g in April. That’s a 49% decrease and honestly, I didn’t go out of my way to achieve it. A few simple changes in buying decisions helped us almost reduce our plastic waste by half. It gets tough from here on though. I wish there were more stores like Original Unverpackt in my area. Check it out if you’re in Berlin, it’s a zero-waste store. The grocery stores in my area are large chains that offer genius-grade bananas wrapped in plastic. I try to shop in smaller vegetable markets when possible where there’s no unnecessary packaging but it isn’t always practical.
In addition to reducing plastic, we also started bokashi fermenting our food scraps and wet waste. Just google that term and you’ll find plenty of resources and videos by bokashi enthusiasts. The process is surprisingly easy and the compost bin doesn’t smell at all when closed. If done right, the compost itself smells like fermenting wine or pickles which is not hard to work with. The only bio-waste we now produce is meat leftovers and bones. In two months, I had enough compost to fuel my terrace garden and my plants are growing so much better! To take this one step further, I’ll be giving away free plants to friends and colleagues powered by our household waste, in exchange for a promise to measure their household waste for one month. That’s all it takes, a serious look at how much waste you produce in a month…and how easy it is to bring about a change.
