Beyond the objective, Zero waste is above all a process, a state of mind, a mode of consumption based on the awareness of the quantity of waste we generate.
It is a new way of life based on 5 principles: Refuse / Reduce / Reuse / Recycle / Rot
and whose motto is: “The best waste is the waste you don’t produce!”
But what kind of awareness are we talking about?
I could make a whole speech full of numbers to convince you to join the cause. But since this is an “unpretentious” blog, I’ll just tell you why I joined the movement myself, what kind of awareness I had:
When you take time to sit down and think about how you live, it’s not hard to see that we are a consumer society, who buys (often without needing it) a lot of things and then once used (or even sometimes without having used them) throw in the trash. Have you ever wondered what happens to your rubbish once you’ve got rid of it?
Some will be burned in incineration plants (a polluting method), others will be buried (yes, buried in the ground!) in storage centers, others will be recycled (this is a vast topic that I will call “the illusion of recycling“) and unfortunately, the rest will go to countries that don’t have the means to treat our rubbish that will then end up in open dumps or in our oceans.
Some will say “so what?”. If this is your case, move on, I will not be able to convince you. But for all who have a part of their (ecological) consciousness awakened, you’ve come to the right place 🙂
Indeed, in our country, we don’t “see” the pollution and these mountains of rubbish that we accumulate… but don’t be naive, this waste hasn’t just “disappeared”, it’s there and it pollutes our Earth (in other words the water we drink, the air we breathe, the soil we cultivate…).
I think it is our duty (for our well-being and for future generations) to make an effort to reduce this pollution that humans generate. If we all – citizens, governments, industries – take part in it, we could do it! I’m not hiding the fact that there is little chance that industries will involve seriously about it, and the government is working on it but it’s taking so much time, so unfortunately the only real actors who can make a difference right now is us !
This is why, at our small scale, we have decided – with my husband Aurélien – to strive for Zero Waste! We don’t pretend to reduce our waste to zero, but just by trying with small gestures here and there, we are proud that we can say that we are contributing to it 🙂 And beyond this feeling of pride, I can tell you that we feel good, we feel better!
So why don’t you? 😉
Soahary