Going off the grid by living waste free
Lauren Singer, a New York native, has gone viral on Youtube for being nearly trash free for two years. Her only waste can fit into a 16-ounce mason jar. She has been able to live waste free while living in the most populous city in the United States, but how is this achievable for anyone else?
Singer has said in interviews, the easiest step towards eliminating waste is to see the trash you’re already producing. Going waste free may seem like a radical idea to most, but there are tiny changes that can drastically reduce waste. All it takes is conscious thinking and a little planning ahead.
In one grocery trip, people will buy their food cased in plastic, put their produce in plastic bags for checkout and load their groceries in plastic bags just for the ride home. Making the effort to bring reusable bags and/or buying local can eliminate all that plastic.
The month of November has even been labeled as “No Waste November.” For the last few years, posts have been shared all over social media with people’s efforts to eliminate their waste for thirty days. The hashtag, #NWN2017, is supposed to increase people’s awareness of their environmental impact with the waste they produce. The thirty-day challenge may develop new habits in individuals that take part. Month long challenges began with the idea that it took 21 days to develop a new habit. It actually takes about 66, but the month is a good start.
School campuses have even been making the effort to eliminate waste by instilling weigh the waste programs, which measure the amount of food leftover on people’s plates in dining halls. Florida Gulf Coast University has its’ own alumni running the program. A former student at the university, Jessica Phillips, 30, returned to FGCU to teach Colloquium, a class about sustainability and its influences. Her classes focus in on weigh the waste. Throughout the semester, her students will measure the amount of food wasted in the freshman dining hall called SoVi.
Students get hands on experience and view of the food that is wasted, scrapping the sometimes half-full plates into plastic bins. They do an initial weigh in over a 12-hour period. The amount of food wasted is hundreds of pounds. Throughout the semester, the students and faculty of FGCU will do their best to promote sustainability, hoping that it resonates with students by the next weigh-in. At the end of the semester, they do another weigh in that typically comes in less than the first. “We try to keep it consistent when we do the weigh-ins. We don’t weigh the waste on the day chicken bones are served,” said Phillips.
Students in her class are encouraged to develop new ideas that will help decrease the amount of waste. “I had a student who proposed a ‘Try me table,’ so students could see if they liked the food before piling it on their plate,” said Phillips.
“It’s good for businesses to be sustainable, because they end up saving money,” said Phillips who partnered up with FGCU’s dining food supplier, Chartwells. She merged weigh the waste with their Project Clean Plate, an effort to educate students and faculty about ways to reduce food waste and the harm it can have on the environment.
Throwing away food and items in general wastes raw materials and energy used in making the items. When people make an effort to reduce their waste, they decrease their environmental impact. People, who practice producing no waste in their everyday lives, can be referred to as “going off the grid” because they leave little to no environmental impact.
Decreasing the amount of goods bought in plastic and buying local can save money and limit waste. A search of the hashtag, #NWN2017, shows people making their own household products in attempt to avoid items packaged in plastic. Those homemade remedies go towards saving the environment and saving them money, as well as products free from any chemicals typically found in store. Lauren Singer makes her toothpaste out of coconut oil, baking soda and peppermint essential oil.
“About 40% of the food we get in the grocery store ends up being wasted,” said Phillips.
On average, a person produces about 4.6 pounds of waste in one day, which accumulates to the 230 million tons of trash produced by the United States as a whole. Only one quarter of that amount is recycled. Up to 70 percent of the landfilled waste could be recycled if people took the effort to do so. It would be ideal if humans could eliminate their waste all together, but putting in the effort to recycle makes a big difference.
Trash can be burned or buried, but these methods are not the solution for getting rid of waste. For one reason, there is way too much trash to be disposed of by burying. Secondly, many of the country’s landfills have been closed because either they were full or they were contaminating groundwater. Trash can be burned, but at a cost. The process not only generates a lot of energy, but it releases toxins into the air and creates ash that has to be disposed of in hazardous-waste landfills. This resorts back to not having enough places to put the trash.
Living a no waste lifestyle for 30 days could eliminate close to 138 pounds of trash. Even if everyone just decided to bring their own grocery bags and not use plastic straws, trash would decrease dramatically. Those plastics may seem small in size, but it would create a huge difference given how frequently they are used and thrown away. Asking for a drink in a reusable cup may seem weird, but it’s an easy change to reduce your waste and at the least, the trash won’t have to be taken out as much.
