Making ZERO waste? // The possibilities of zero waste

“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly,

we need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”

Zero waste became a huge movement in the past year or so. There are a lot of influencers on social media who promote this lifestyle and encourage people to create less waste. The term “zero” can be frightening. Especially for someone who has just heard about it.

Even though we don’t necessary see it, the amount of waste we create is a huge problem in our society! Waste never disappears, it has to go somewhere. We need to keep in mind that our waste still exists somewhere even though we don’t see it. Often times countries from the western world export waste to third world countries who don’t have an infrastructure for dealing with waste. So this waste what we exported enters our oceans causing huge pollution! But I leave that topic for another blog post.

Zero waste is a term which was created for businesses to describe their effort to eliminate waste. Throughout the years zero waste became a movement and a lifestyle all around the world. One can find many resources online from articles to YouTube videos where people encourage you to minimise your waste by making conscious choices and swaps every day.

The quote at the beginning of this blog post describes the movement perfectly. It is no about creating absolutely nothing which goes to landfill. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about not buying your favoutite chocolate every once in a while. It is about doing what you can each and every day. Some people live in a zero waste friendly city with a lot of bulk options and farmer’s market but some people don’t. And honestly those zero waste “essentials” can be so expensive!

We need millions of people around the globe doing zero waste imperfectly. Making small changes everyday, which at the end will mount up into a huge change!