It is amazing how often humans continue to essentially create new problems that are easily solvable on their own. A culture of convenience and throw-away (not my problem) or "I don't have the time for x" is why we keep having mountains of waste. Anyone who is concerned with waste can make the conscious choices to eliminate or reduce that waste in a lot of areas of their life.
1. Buy real food and cook it
2. Grow food or contribute to local co-op or farms
3. Make stuff you use all the time
4. Bring your own containers/bags
Usually these are the only options for a lot of things. But there are other cases where just having consumers fed up with companies like in the case above you can shift market incentives with your choice. Lush is a good example of this for instance.
It's a combined effort, you have to not be lazy and actually care about the choices you are making with where you spend your money and companies will respond to the demand. Sometimes it takes more effort, or you can just not buy X and see if you can either make your own alternative or not need X at all.
There are tons and tons of homemade things you can do to eliminate waste by just making it yourself. I've found it generally comes to a few constant categories where I generally produce the most waste.
- Food + Beverages
- Hygenics
Sure there are the other areas where I produce trash, but those two categories are the ones where waste is produced every single day so the impact is a lot higher. The solution is relatively straightforward, make more things by hand or purchase goods closer to raw form (Lush seems to be a great example of one that can replace just about all of my hygenic material waste). And second, make more recipes by hand closer to the raw material ingredients and bring your own containers.
> Buy real food and cook it
> Bring your own containers/bags
I eat out once a fortnight for dinner and once a week for lunch, and cook the rest of the time. The vast majority of what I buy is fresh food (fruit, vegetables, some small amounts of dairy, meat and pulses). Everything I buy is packaged in single use plastics. My lunch today, the tomatoes came in a cardboard box that was wrapped in plastic, the cucumber was shrink wrapped, the pitta breads came individually wrapped. There are two supermarkets I can choose from and both of them suffer the same problem. All the meat comes in disposable trays with a film covering, and a plastic inlet. Technically the tray is recyclable if I remove the meat and the inside tray and wash it, but my recycling services won't accept it in case it's contaminated by food.
My plastic toothpaste container comes in a cardboard box. My biodegradable bin liners come with a plastic wrapper to protect them.
This isn't something that I can fix, I don't have the option to buy unpackaged goods, or to provide my own containers.
* Toothpaste can be made and or bought from places like Lush where the alternatives can be zero waste. It's a bit out of the ordinary but there are options that even I'm surprised by it.
* Just about all produce/fruit is available without plastic wrapping (except for berries I've found, which is quite annoying). I think the only non-plastic option here is to just try and grow the fruit yourself. Or otherwise take the plastic and grind it into pellets to use for something else. There's some neat stuff related to this. I've also seen this as an option for most local farmers:
* Meat is next to impossible for this, but I've found meat available raw in paper wrapping when you get it in some places. This is usually in a place like Whole Foods, but even then the meat comes in a plastic covering like you mention.
I totally see what you're saying, I think I'm just looking at areas where large quantities of everyday plastic waste is avoidable. For instance, when eating out it's not unheard to bring your own container for leftovers instead of having them give you a styrofoam container for the food. And of course I say all this also realizing that a lot of people might not have access to all this ^ :(
For toothpaste, I had a look on the lush website [0]. For me to switch to that, I would be spending 6 times what I currently am on toothpaste, and would also need to travel an extra 3 miles to get to my nearest lush store.
> Just about all produce/fruit is available without plastic wrapping
Maybe if you're shopping in farmers markets. I shop in high street supermarkets, and it _isn't_ available. I have a choice of buying a 1kg bag of onions, or not buying onions. I can buy a 3 pack of bell peppers, or not buy bell peppers. I can buy a 6 pack of Golden Delicious apples, or I can not buy apples. I do try and buy less packaging, but unfortunately the odds are stacked against me.
Meat is easy for me, I just head to the butcher that’s next to the shops. Not only is it cheaper and higher quality, but the only plastic used is the extremely thin bag they wrap the meat in, and they’re happy to use paper instead if you bring it!
There's only one butcher (amazingly) in the area that I live in, and it's only open 8:30 - 5:30 Monday through Friday, which doesn't work for anyone working full time.
I think this is something that depends on the country. As someone used to buy raw food (without any plastic) I get surprised every time I travel to some more "civilized" countries where plastic is every where!
Anwyay, even in the fruit & vegetable shop, most of people pick small plastic bags to put and weight the food. I am one of the few ones that puts everything on the same bag.
1. Buy real food and cook it 2. Grow food or contribute to local co-op or farms 3. Make stuff you use all the time 4. Bring your own containers/bags
Usually these are the only options for a lot of things. But there are other cases where just having consumers fed up with companies like in the case above you can shift market incentives with your choice. Lush is a good example of this for instance.
It's a combined effort, you have to not be lazy and actually care about the choices you are making with where you spend your money and companies will respond to the demand. Sometimes it takes more effort, or you can just not buy X and see if you can either make your own alternative or not need X at all.
There are tons and tons of homemade things you can do to eliminate waste by just making it yourself. I've found it generally comes to a few constant categories where I generally produce the most waste.
- Food + Beverages - Hygenics
Sure there are the other areas where I produce trash, but those two categories are the ones where waste is produced every single day so the impact is a lot higher. The solution is relatively straightforward, make more things by hand or purchase goods closer to raw form (Lush seems to be a great example of one that can replace just about all of my hygenic material waste). And second, make more recipes by hand closer to the raw material ingredients and bring your own containers.