The Things Thrown Away

“Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.” - Jacques Yves Cousteau

“Everything in excess is opposed to nature.” - Hippocrates

Overconsumption is kills. It's killing as we speak. It's killing the planet as we speak. We consume and consume like it’s the only thing we know how to do. We buy items to chase the latest trends, not paying attention to where they end up or what they actually do to our planet. But here's the truth: the cheap clothes you buy off of amazon that are only worn once before being tossed away without a second thought, the collectibles that you purchase that lose their popularity in a week, the items sold by manufacturers that are not meant to last - all end up in landfills. And they will stay in landfills, for the thousands of years to come. Their synthetic material will not decompose. Their chemicals leach into the soil and the water we drink. The landfills produce methane which is a greenhouse gas and contributes to climate change. If we keep on doing this to our planet, we will cease to exist. We are heading towards a dystopian situation, and we need to figure out how to stop this from happening. Quickly.

The solution is simple: Stop consuming. But that's impossible(right?) And also, how? We need food to eat and we need clothes to wear. It is inevitable that we will produce waste. How do we deal with it? How do we stop producing so much waste?

What is Waste?

Waste is defined as (🤓👆) the items or substances that we throw away after they serve their intended purpose. Generally, they're deemed worthless and of no use. Waste is produced practically everywhere-- in households, businesses, industries, construction sites, healthcare facilities, research institutions. It can be of many types:

·       Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)

·       Industrial Waste

·       Hazardous Waste

·       Construction and Demolition (C&D) Waste

·       Electronic Waste (E-waste)

·       Agricultural Waste

·       Radioactive Waste

·       Medical Waste

What are its Effects on Our Planet?

What if we do absolutely nothing? Our waste can have dire consequences on us and on our planet:

1. Pollution: Pollutants from landfills will most definitely drain away into the soil and contaminate groundwater; if we try to incinerate the trash, we'll only release harmful pollutants into the air; and hazardous waste, if not disposed of properly, can damage ecosystems and have harmful effects on human health.

2.        Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A landfill is one of the homelands for methane, a greenhouse gas. Plus, the production and transportation of the materials that eventually end up in these landfills also contribute to the emissions of these gases.

3.        Resource Depletion: When items that are fully capable of being reused and recycled are ignored and thrown away, it can lead to rarity of already rare resources. This causes the extraction and processing of these resources to consume more energy.

4.        Habitat Destruction and Health Problems: Harmful pollutants in waste destroy the habitats of animals and damage both human and animal health.

How do we Manage Waste?

Fear not: There are several ways we're attempting to manage the waste we produce. To minimize the impact they have on us and the environment , we need to prioritize certain strategies. These strategies, in the order which they should be prioritized is:-

1.      Reduce: The FIRST and most EFFECTIVE way is reducing the number of resources we consume. When it is impossible to stop producing waste completely, one can cut down the number of resources consumed. This involves not consuming fast fashion, goods that don't last, etc.

One thing to keep in mind is that we shouldn’t have an all or nothing mindset or let perfection be the enemy of progress. The point isn’t to stop consuming things for pleasure, the point is to consume mindfully, to not overconsume goods, and to not blindly follow trends that will go away in a couple of weeks. It is okay to consume things that we don’t necessarily need given that we get what we actually want, not what is being marketed to us through trends.

2.      Reuse: This involves reusing the products that we buy over and over again for as long as we can instead of purchasing the same thing multiple times.  For example, shopping bags can be reused instead of purchasing new bags every time one goes out to shop. This also greatly cuts down the waste produced.

3.      Recycling: This involves giving items that have served their original purpose a new purpose. For example, composting is a method of recycling in which organic material like vegetable peels, spoilt food etc. are buried with alternating layers of soil to decompose and form compost which is nutritious for plants. In the same way, many single use plastics can be given new lives and serve useful purposes in our homes. Another way to implement recycling at a large scale is through Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes. This holds manufacturers responsible for the end-of-life management, by methods like recycling, of their products when they are no longer in use.

4.      Recovery: This involves the recovery of energy in the form of heat, electricity or fuel from waste products through Waste-to-Energy (WtE). This is beneficial as it diverts waste away from landfills and also generates useful energy through products which would have otherwise been left unused. This can be done through:

Incineration: involves burning of waste to generate heat and electricity.

Gasification: technology that converts materials containing carbon into synthetic gas.

Pyrolysis: technology that involves using high heat to break down organic matter into a liquid called bio-oil, a solid called bio-char, and a gas called syngas.

Anaerobic Digestion: involves digestion done by microorganisms in the absence of oxygen which produces methane that can be used as fuel.

5.      Disposal: This involves methods like landfilling, incineration, and sewage treatment to deal with the waste that cannot be reused or recycled. Many of these methods can cause pollution if not done properly. To combat this, innovations are being made to improve the effectiveness of disposal and reduce its carbon footprint.

So, what can we do as individuals? Seeing the sheer number of issues and the huge scale of each and every one of them, it feels like it’s futile to even try to fix what is wrong and impossible to hope for a better future. But we need to remember that systemic change begins with small individual actions. One person cannot take on the challenge of fixing the problems of overconsumption and waste management alone. Infact, I wasn’t even able to cover the whole topic in this article. But we aren’t alone. Our strength lies in our numbers. If every person makes one small contribution every day, the impact will still be strong enough to make a real difference.

In conclusion, we must consume mindfully. We must recycle and reduce. We must raise awareness about these issues, encourage the development of sustainable technologies, and make changes to our lifestyles according to what is best for our planet. For the sake of ourselves and those who will come after us, we must fight for a better future. One issue at a time.

Edited by Anoushka Arbhi

Regards,

Pritha Paul,

Editorial and Research,

Maza Maharashtra Mission