Change Begins At Home: 4 Simple Ways To Reduce Waste

India is turning into one big garbage dump. The problem is assuming gigantic proportions and the numbers are staggering. Here’s a 5 step guide on how you can reduce the waste

Believe it or now, currently, most of the urban cities in India are turning into huge garbage dumps. India generates around 62 million tonnes of garbage annually out of which 45 million tonnes of garbage remain untreated that is a whopping 75%. Just the metros alone, like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata generate about 10 million tonnes of garbage every day. There is no extra space in the landfills of these cities to accommodate fresh garbage. These alarming statistics alone should be enough for everyone to understand that we have a serious garbage problem to deal with. As a conscious citizen, we should start taking action to reduce our waste generation and do our bit for nature.

The question to address is, “How do I reduce the garbage I generate?” While it may seem impractical, if not impossible, here’s a 5 step guide on how you can reduce the waste generated at home and put it to some use.

1. Ditch Plastics As much as you can. 

What you can ditch easily: Next time you go for a tea break, ask your tea vendor to serve your tea in a paper cup or instead take your own cup with you. The plastic cups available at these small shops are extremely harmful as these are made of cheap chemicals.

Ditch plastic straws, instead sip your drink. Say no to plastic pens and yes to vintage ink pens. Coming to plastic bags, did you know the production of the plastic bag is very energy intensive? To produce around nine plastic bags, energy used is equal to driving a car for one kilometre. Worse, the usage of plastic bags contributes to global climate change.

2. Start Segregating Your Waste

When you start segregating your waste, you are reducing the waste that gets transferred to landfills and indirectly cause water, air and land pollution. Segregation of waste makes a different process like composting, recycling and incineration easy. These processes are further used to treat different kinds of waste.

What to do: First, simply get yourself some colour coated bins. Differentiate the bins into following Start segregating your waste into two categories – Bio-Degradable and Non-Bio-Degradable. Dry and wet to make it simple.  Bio-Degradable waste will include all the organic waste, for example, kitchen waste, vegetables, fruits, flowers, leaves from the garden. Whereas Non-Bio-Degradable waste will include Recyclable Waste like plastics, paper, glass, metal; Toxic Waste will include things like old medicines, paints, chemicals, bulbs, spray cans, fertilizer and pesticide containers, batteries; Solid Waste would consist of baby diapers and sanitary napkins.

3.  Go Paperless In Your Kitchen/Home 

I know sounds stupid right? but believe it paper is a top contributor to waste. The production and use of paper have an enormous number of adverse effects on the environment. Discarded paper is one of the major components in many landfill sites and accounts for about 35 percent of the waste in these sites. Paper napkins have also limited shelf life and eventually end up in trash cans which further choke the landfills. The main aim is to bring down your household consumption of non-bio-degradable items. So, for the sake of the environment, start using old clothes like rags for cleaning around the house, instead of paper towels. You can easily swap paper napkins with hand towels in your kitchen too.

4. Reuse - Upcycle

Re-purposing your household trash in any manner is a good way to reduce the already loaded garbage dump. Did you know, there are approximately 100 million plastic bottles that are used and discarded every single day? What can you do? Instead of just throwing them after their use, start reusing them all over again. Make yourself a DIY plastic showpiece, or simply use it as a storage box for your accessories. You will be surprised at how many opportunities for reuse there really are, once you actually start looking for options.

P.s - I am raising funds for a project CareforClimate Click on the link to Read more and Contribute  https://www.impactguru.com/fundraiser/help-niraj-raviya

Thanks for reading.