Why choose a zero waste lifestyle?
Plastic pollution has reached crisis proportions and a radical change in the way FMCG companies package their products is urgently required. Change in consumer behaviour can help make this happen.
Plastics, when they first came into being, were used only sparingly but after the 1950s, their use has increased exponentially. It is what has made the modern day consumer economy possible. So much is the dependency now on plastics that literally nothing comes without it.
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But what is the problem with using plastics?
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A lot of people do not know that plastics are a 'fossil fuel' product. Their manufacturing process (referred to as the 'petrochem industries') is severely polluting. The areas (Dahej, Gujarat; Ennore, Tamil Nadu) where petrochem industries have been set up are critically polluted (it means that air, water and soil are showing hazardous levels of pollution).
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What happens after plastics have been manufactured? Do they continue to be Hazardous?
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Since plastics are made using a lot of harmful chemicals, using plastics in our day to day lives (especially for storing food items) exposes us to all of these harmful chemicals which leech into our food and water. Not only the chemicals, plastics break down into smaller pieces (microplastics) and these microplastics then enter our food chains and water supplies and ultimately end up in our bodies (microplastics have been found in human breast milk, placenta, tissues).
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So how does one dispose off plastics?
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Plastics do not biodegrade. Once manufactured, they cannot be burnt (burning plastics is like burning fossil fuels,it is extremely polluting), buried, recycled (plastics are not endlessly recyclable (like glass) or reused (they cannot be endlessly reused either). Which means that they end up in our natural environments and will stay there for thousands of years.
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So what can we do?
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One individual cannot solve this crisis but if we act together we can bring about massive systemic changes. Change in consumer behaviour can compel industries to stem their use of plastics. Simply by refusing to buy products that come in plastic; a massive reduction in plastic use and thereby plastic production can be brought about.
What Are The Alternative Solutions?
Circular Economy
The current global economic models are linear - it is a process of continuously extracting natural resources from the earth, using them to manufacture goods and throwing them into a landfill when we’re done. Doing so creates a whole host of insurmountable issues - widespread destruction of the environment, hazardous levels of pollution of our air, water and soil, global warming and a massive waste (hazardous industrial waste, nuclear waste, municipal waste, electronic waste, plastic waste) crisis.
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In a circular economy, on the other hand, rather than throwing away materials that are already scarce, we reuse them and keep them within the economic cycle. That way, when we’re finished using them, they can be dismantled and used over and over again. Unlike the linear economy, a circular economy aims to limit the harm done to our environment and is operated with the understanding that resources are limited and thus our daily use items must be designed so that they may be resued. A circular economic model can provide several solutions to our present day crises while creating jobs and providing employment opportunities to millions of people.