Category: climate change

30 days no trash-#3

30 days no trash is a challenge/project I created to raise awareness about the trash crisis and to empower people. This post is about what it means to be zero waste and how you can easily reduce your waste.

To learn more about this project, check out this previous post: https://tigershakti.org/2023/06/21/30-days-no-trash-2/

If you want to learn about what the trash crisis is, click this link: https://tigershakti.org/2023/06/21/30-days-no-trash-2/

What does it mean to be zero waste?

Zero waste is a lifestyle in which a person produces as little or no waste as possible. There are multiple principles of zero waste including: Rethink, reduce, recycle, compost, reuse, recovery material, residual management, and refuse (“What Is Zero Waste? Learn about the Movement & Why It’s Important | Zero Waste”, 2023). We need to rethink how we get stuff, and find ways to exist without using single-use plastic. To become more sustainable, we need to first reduce our waste. We can also reuse our waste by recycling and composting. We don’t always need new things, and instead can fix up old things and make them useful again. We must be responsible with how we deal with our waste. The easiest way to create less waste is to refuse. If someone doesn’t create waste, they don’t have to deal with it.

How can I reduce my waste?

There are many things that a person can use to reduce their waste. There are soap bars instead of liquid soap in a disposable container, silicone baking mats instead of parchment paper or aluminum foil, silk or bamboo floss instead of plastic floss, and more (Kellogg, 2017). Some things someone can do to produce less waste include: buying things in bulk, reusing or donating old clothes, making homemade cleaning products, and going to a local farmers market (Weeden, 2022, Kellog, 2017). There are also stores that sell things in bulk without packaging so it is easier to create less waste. The way these stores work is that the customer brings their own container, fills it up with whatever thing they are buying, and then go pay. Stores like these often sell sustainable alternatives like biodegradable floss too. There are many different ways to live a zero waste lifestyle or just be more environmentally friendly. It is important that we all do what we can to save our planet. Recycling uses less energy than it takes to make new stuff, and it can lower the frequency of natural disasters that happen by preventing carbon emissions (“Why Should We Reduce Waste?”, 2022).

Thank you for reading this post! Check out my etsy shop at: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SolisandLunaCrafts

30 Days No Trash-#2

30 days no trash is a project/challenge I created and did to raise awareness of the trash crisis. To learn more about this project, check out this post:

https://tigershakti.org/2023/06/14/30-days-no-trash-challenge/

What is the trash crisis?

2 billion tons or 4.5 trillion pounds of trash are produced globally every year. This trash leaks greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, and is the third largest methane producer in the US (Clifford, 2021). The U.S. creates the most waste out of all the countries in the world, with the average American throwing away around 5 pounds a day. By 2050, it is estimated that there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans (HWH environmental, 2022). Almost every aspect of our lives creates waste. It takes 872 gallons of water to just produce 1 gallon of wine (Christie, 2018).

What can be done about it?

Evidently, we need to find a way to deal with this increasing amount of trash, and one of those solutions is recycling and composting. Recycling trash is actually cheaper than sending waste to a landfill, with a cost of $30 a ton to recycle trash and $50 a ton to send trash to a landfill. The average American throws away 1200 pounds of trash that is compostable every year (HWH environmental, 2022). Composting tackles two problems in our society – it provides a use for food waste, and it makes nutritious soil that can be used to grow organic, healthy food. Also, if farmers use compost to feed their plants instead of chemical fertilizers that degrade soil and pollute water, that is a win-win-win.

Composting can be done at home! You can collect your food scraps and either donate them to your local farmer, or you can create your own compost bin in your backyard!

Being environmentally responsible does not have to mean strictly creating zero waste for a month, it can mean doing small things everyday to make a difference.

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SolisandLunaCrafts

30 Days NO TRASH-#1

The 30 days no trash challenge is a project I created to raise awareness about the trash crisis. For this project, I generated zero trash for 30 days. This post will be the first of a series of my progress and account of this journey. The requirements for my project were that I could recycle, reuse, and compost my “waste” items. While this project might sound easy at first, it is fundamentally hard to do. In a society like ours, it is next to if not impossible to survive and live without having a negative impact on our planet. To get even the basic necessities we need to survive harms our environment. Thankfully, I only have to not throw anything away for 30 days (so easy, right?…). 

Stay tuned for part two of this zero waste series!

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SolisandLunaCrafts