What is a zero-waste lifestyle?
What is a zero-waste lifestyle? – Introduction
“The less you waste, the more you save the planet.”
A zero-waste lifestyle is a way of living that aims to minimise the amount of waste you produce, ideally sending nothing to landfills or incinerators. Instead, it focuses on reusing, recycling, and composting while making mindful choices about consumption to reduce overall environmental impact.
The key principles of a zero-waste lifestyle follow the 6 Rs framework:
- Refusing: Avoiding single-use items and unnecessary packaging, which involves saying no to disposable items like plastic bags, straws, and excessive packaging.
- Reducing: Minimising the consumption of goods and making thoughtful choices to purchase products with less packaging. This also involves cutting down on unnecessary purchases.
- Reusing: Choosing products that are durable and that you can reuse. This includes opting for reusable containers, bags, and water bottles over disposable ones.
- Recycling: Ensuring that products and packaging are appropriately recycled. However, the emphasis is on reducing and reusing before resorting to recycling.
- Rot (composting): Composting organic waste to divert it from landfills and create nutrient-rich soil for gardening.
- Rethinking: Evaluating lifestyle choices and finding creative ways to minimise waste in all aspects of life, including food, clothing, and household items.
Adopting a zero-waste lifestyle involves a mindset shift and a commitment to making sustainable choices in daily life. Many individuals and communities worldwide embrace this lifestyle to contribute to environmental conservation and promote a more sustainable future.
Reasons to reduce waste.
We are all aware of global warming and the dangers it poses to humanity. While ultimately, we need to change how we mass produce goods for profit, in the meantime, we can all do our bit to reduce waste and CO2 emissions. In 2021, humans produced 4.68 metric tons per day.
We see that before the Industrial Revolution, emissions were very low. Growth in emissions was still relatively slow until the mid-20th century. In 1950, the world emitted six billion tonnes of CO2. By 1990, this had almost quadrupled, reaching more than twenty billion tonnes. Emissions have continued to grow rapidly; we now emit over thirty-five billion tonnes each year. Emissions growth has slowed over the last few years, but they have yet to reach their peak.
Here are a few key facts that illustrate why reducing waste may be worthwhile.
According to the Guardian Newspaper in an article from September 2024, the UK generated 191.2 million tonnes of total waste in 2020, with England accounting for 85% (162.8 million tonnes) of the UK total.
In a blog post entitled “How To Reduce Waste: 21 Ideas For Zero Waste Living,” Meaghan Weeden states that globally, the UN projected municipal solid waste generation would grow from 2.1 billion tonnes in 2023 to 3.8 billion tonnes per year by 2050.
“There is no such thing as ‘away.’ When we throw anything away, it must go somewhere.” (Annie Leonard)
Five Easy Ways to Reduce Waste
In their 2024 Global Waste Management Outlook report, they stated, “Uncontrolled waste knows no national borders. It is carried by waterways across and between countries, while emissions from the burning and open dumping of waste are deposited in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and in the atmosphere. Pollution from waste is associated with a range of adverse health and environmental effects, many of which will last for generations.”
Below, I will give you five easy ways to reduce waste in everyday life.
Plastic Water Bottles and other plastics
According to the Website Recycle Now, an average of 35.8 million plastic bottles are used daily in the UK.
It is estimated that an average of 35.8 million plastic bottles are used EVERY DAY in the UK, but only 19.8 million are recycled each day.
Instead of buying water bottles and contributing to unnecessary plastic waste, invest in a good refillable bottle, a water filter, and a SodaStream. You will save a ton of money, too.
In addition to bottled water, you should avoid other foods wrapped in plastic. When going to the supermarket, choose loose vegetables and fruit, and you can put them in your own container. I bought a couple of cotton sacks for just this reason.
Disposable Coffee Cups
In a study undertaken by Dr Preetam Basu at the University of Kent, she cited the following:
‘The annual consumption of disposable coffee cups in Kent, utilising the UK-wide average per person consumption and Kent population data is 68,634,000. It is estimated that only 0.25% (one in four hundred) of disposable coffee cups are actually recycled in the UK. This suggests that only 171,585 disposable cups make it into recycling each year with the rest – over 68 million – ending up in landfill.’
Instead of using disposable coffee cups, why not invest in a reusable one? I have two: one that collapses, so you can always carry it around with you and a large one made out of recycled plastic.
Tea bags.
According to a recent study, depending on sex and age, people consume between 39,000 and 52,000 particles of microplastic (MP) annually.
Tea bags, which 95% of UK tea drinkers use to make tea, contain a lot of plastic. They can take hundreds of years to decompose in nature and may fragment into particles ranging from one µm to 5 mm. Instead of the conventional paper tea bags, many tea makers now use plastic ones. This is concerning since water for tea is regularly heated to ninety-five°C or more while making tea, and even ‘food grade’ plastics can break down or release harmful materials when heated over 40°C.
According to a recent study, each cup of tea produced by one plastic tea bag steeped at brewing temperature included roughly 11.6 billion MPs and 3.1 billion nanoplastics (NPs). Around 96% of the tea sold in the UK market is packaged in tea bags, according to Jha et al.
In addition to plastic in tea bags, tea tastes much better when brewed with loose leaves. So why not ditch the tea bag and invest in a good teapot?
Fast Fashion
According to the Britannica website, fast fashion is the rapid production of cheap, low-quality clothing that encourages consumers to continually buy new clothing to be on top of the latest trends.
Fast fashion, a term describing the rapid production of inexpensive, low-quality clothing that often mimics popular styles of fashion labels, big-name brands, and independent designers. By endlessly offering new trends at cheap prices, fast fashion brands such as Shein, Zara, and H&M encourage consumers to continually buy more clothing. Consequently, previous purchases, perhaps worn a handful of times, are soon discarded. The rise of the fast fashion industry in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has had enormous consequences, from its myriad environmental impacts to its exploitation of garment workers.
Fast fashion as a phenomenon is relatively new, originating in the 1990s and accelerating with the expansion of the internet and online shopping. Check out the Ocean Generation website for more facts and figures on Fast Fashion.
Fast fashion produces endless clutter and overfilled wardrobes in your house, destroying workers and the planet. We only need to look back on the Rana Plaza incident of 2013. In Bangladesh, the Rana Plaza clothing manufacturing complex collapsed, killing over one thousand garment workers.
Good On You explains that fashion wasn’t always as destructive as it is now, and people used to shop less.
Fashion wasn’t always as destructive of an industry. Clothes shopping used to be an occasional event—something that happened a few times a year when the seasons changed or when we outgrew what we had.
According to statistics, 65.5. of Brits shop every week.
As a minimalist, I have stopped investing in fast fashion or having an extensive wardrobe. Instead, I invest in timeless quality clothing, such as Organic Basics, that will last me for years.
Plastic Bags
According to UK government statistics, the UK used 564 million plastic bags in 2020. The Centre for Biological Diversity gives us some startling statistics on the environmental impact of plastic bags, and that alone should make you stop using them, if not the price tag of 10p per bag.
- It only takes about 14 plastic bags for the equivalent of the gas required to drive one mile.5
- In 2015, about 730,000 tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were generated (including PS, PP, HDPE, PVC & LDPE) in the United States, but more than 87% of those items are never recycled, winding up in landfills and the ocean.
- About 34% of dead leatherback sea turtles have ingested plastics.
Instead of plastic bags, I invested £5 in a reusable foldable rucksack for shopping and took my trusty messenger bag.
Conclusion
While going full zero-waste might be hard to achieve, we can all easily take small steps in the right direction.
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