{"id":66243,"date":"2021-10-01T08:01:03","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T07:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eco123.info\/en\/?p=66243"},"modified":"2021-10-08T22:05:21","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T21:05:21","slug":"no-107-zero-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eco123.info\/en\/short-stories-en\/no-107-zero-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"N\u00ba 107 – Zero Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday 2nd October 2021.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Climate change. Climate neutral in ten steps? But of course. All we have to do is prepare for it. Every one of us. Whether we\u2019ve learned this or not. Me for instance, my whole long life I\u2019ve grown up with the concept of carrying my trash out to the bin once a week, for the binmen to come and collect it every Thursday. At some stage the concept of waste separation won the day: glass with glass, plastics with plastics, paper with paper, and so on. So I\u2019d place the packaging material into the dedicated waste container, sorry, recycling container. Rubbish or recycling: out of sight, out of mind.<\/p>\n

No. I\u2019ve often asked myself where exactly this rubbish or packaging material is being driven to. And then, one day I went and took a closer look. A bulldozer was shoving the entire waste from my village backwards and forwards around this dump, compacting it on a landfill site as big as five Benfica football stadiums. I noticed that metal made for the best recycling, as a magnet was fishing it all out of the sheer endless mass. Plastics was the most difficult material.<\/p>\n

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Living for Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

The issue of waste carried on preoccupying me and wouldn\u2019t leave me alone. So, I was thinking to myself, our waste from last week is supposed to remain there till kingdom come? A Tetra Pak milk carton which won\u2019t decompose for several hundred years is lying buried there for some future generation to deal with in the year of the Lord 2222, or earlier, or even later? And this is becoming ever more and is never ending: a one-way street, an endless one-way street?<\/p>\n

Those not producing garbage are freeing themselves from these notions about the idiocies we are doing on and to our planet. They find deeper meaning in life. In that moment I realised that something felt wrong here, and wanted to see what it would be like to not produce any waste. I got friendly with this idea, and lo and behold, it was fascinating actually.<\/p>\n

Which is why I\u2019d recommend that we prepare for the time when we won\u2019t be producing waste anymore. We\u2019ll all feel a bit better. No trash? Yes, let\u2019s prepare to be be responsible for zero waste. I\u2019ve not managed it quite (yet), but will keep trying, at least for as long until I\u2019ve achieved this and am able to recycle everything in my household. For a very important step towards climate neutrality is not only to define an end point to the burning of fossil fuels, but also to not create any more waste. This is about starting to turn around our perspective in thinking about things …<\/p>\n

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We have to internalise the idea of recycling, of reducing and repairing and apply it to all parts of our lives. When politicians claim that to become climate neutral we don\u2019t have to renounce anything, it\u2019s one of the many small and large untruths because they don\u2019t know any better. Politicians have to renounce their frequent flying, their big Volvos V80: this now applies in particular to the new mayors following the elections. I\u2019ve gone way beyond that. I don\u2019t miss the petrol-engine car. Let\u2019s go back to the start: let\u2019s tackle waste. So I\u2019ll change my shopping behaviour up to the point where I\u2019ve truly found a new direction and am sure of what I\u2019m doing. The goal is to go shopping in such a way that there is no more packaging involved. The goal is Zero Waste. <\/strong>Of course it\u2019s not quite as simple as I am describing it here. The times they are a\u2019changing, those wanting to be part of it will have to keep practising. The most honest solution for the whole thing would be if your mayor (town councillor) were to provide an incentive for recycling: a bonus for instance. Because then I won\u2019t take my bag out to the bin, no, I\u2019ll sell my glass bottle and my washed empty metal tin. This is already happening in places such as Italy and Germany. The best example is provided by the deposit return scheme and the used paper, which you can already swap for money. Where is that?<\/em> All will be revealed if you send me your own trash story, to editor@eco123.info.<\/p>\n