Your first Toothbrush is still lying somewhere.
Being conscious of our consumption, I have realized that everything we use in our routine life is packaged in plastic or made of plastic. The toothbrush, the toothpaste, the milk, even worse are the tetra-packed ones, the packet of Good Day, Parle G, Oreo, Bourbon, whichever you prefer, the daily veggies that come home, the cosmetics that end up in the trash every quarter, used sanitary pads piling up every month, our happy Amazon/Flipkart deliveries, and whatnot.
If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production. -Pete Seeger.
In our effort to reduce the contribution our lifestyle makes to the trash pile, we have been closely examining what ends up in our dry waste trash. From emptying the bin every alternate day, we have now the need to empty it only once a fortnight. Our trash contains majorly the oil containers, packets of milk, biscuit, mixtures, basically all the snack packs(luckily we don’t have Zomato operating here), the packages of the grains and pulses we buy from the Pahadi shop here…mostly that. And of course, my bag of used pads once a month. I really need to switch to the Menstrual Cup.
We have for less than a month now, been getting our milk delivered straight to a lota at home from the local Milkman. We have pledged to return or rather refill out packets of grains and pulses from the Pahadi store.
The whole obsessing over the problem of plastic began when one day we were stormed with the number of shopping bags at home. 200 in number they were. Doing the math, of more than 1000 families in Gopeshwar, the city has 2,00,000 bags. Gopeshwar definitely needs no more bags to only end up down the mountain slope and washed by the monsoons into the river streams, spreading all over the Himalayas. Outnumbering the humans! We returned all these bags to one of the stores, and ever since, we have made it a rule to carry the bag just like we carry the mask.
Such small efforts by just two people have reduced 100 bags a month. Just wondering how much waste can be reduced by collective efforts.
And now when I look for the solution to the plastic waste problem, I see these baby steps that will take us there.
