Fourteen days in two jars

Hi, I’m Giorgia! I decided to start a challenge against the waste for the next two weeks, trying to reduce the production of undifferentiated waste, using only two jars as a bin.

The challenge takes part of a university course focused on the life in 2035 and on the changes we will be forced to take. The waste problem is increasingly discussed and for this reason I want to try to change something in my own little that can be help the future world. I consider myself as a person quite careful to divide the different materials and to try to throw away them in the special basket, but sometimes, even just because of laziness, it happens that I throw away something in the residual waste. I choose this challenge in order to force me to throw all in the right bin, even when I have to make some extra effort. I decided to concentrate on residual waste because it is the bin that I fill less carefully, but I will try to reduce all my wastes.

I thought to start the challenge paying attention simply to buying the products, especially as regards their packaging (e.g., I will prefer packaging composed just by one material or even products without packaging), to understand if with just few actions it’s possible to reduce waste, especially those that cannot be recycled.

I live in Milan with a friend and, when Friday I went home with two jars, I looked at her and I said “Why don’t we make this challenge together?”. In this way it started a friendly competition between us for who will do it better, encouraging each other. We’ll see who wins!

The challenge started on Friday night and, against all my expectations, in the right moment I got the jar, I had to fill it.With what? With the receipt of the jars, obviously! I discovered recently that the receipts, although they are made of paper, in reality they cannot be recycled because they are made of thermal paper. So in few days, by making simple purchases, my jar is filled with just receipts.

It is disheartening to think that while paying attention to the choice of products, there are unavoidable waste, which does not depend on our choices. Even looking around in the supermarket, I noticed an infinite number of products that do not encourage the consumer to recycle. By putting myself in the shoes of those who are less attentive or less interested, or simply thinking of some of my attitudes, I think that often the producers should help the consumers (for example, it would be enough to eliminate the bags of milk with the plastic cap, or the packs that combine plastic and paper or the use of laminated paper).

In these two days I begin to be more aware of what I throw away and more and more often I find myself wondering where I have to throw away the waste, hoping to find the answer on the internet.

So where possible I will try to minimise waste, perhaps thinking of some solution that allows us to reuse them.