Environmental Awareness Module - Planet / Sustainability

 

1. Welcome page.

Welcome to your fourth session of the Sustainability module!

 

It will take you 1 hour and a half to complete it, so be sure to be comfortable in your current space, to have a nice cup of tea with you (and maybe a snack if you need it!).

 

For this session you will need:

• A device with Internet access and sound output

• A notebook and a pen

 

Index of contents

• Where to start

• What does refuse, reduce and reuse look like in real life?

• Fix what is broken

• Recycle and its limitations

• Composting

 

After this session you will be able to:

• Understand how to start applying the 5 Rs in your daily life

• Recognize the habits you already have

• Share what you have learnt with other people

 

Ready? Let’s go!

 

2. Introduction to the session

 

During this session you will take a step further in putting into practice the zero waste philosophy you learned about in the previous session. With a simple method, you will be able to go through your house room by room, always starting with what you are most excited about.

3. What do you already know about making your home more sustainable?

 

With what you have learned about the zero waste movement, do you know where to start making it a reality in your home? Write down the aspects that make sense for you to start in a house like yours.

 

Repairing, recycling and composting can command some respect, so in this session you will learn more about these concepts and how to apply them. Go for it!

 

4. Learning content

 

Where to start

Now that you know what zero waste is, you may ask yourself “great, now what do I do with this?” The best thing to do is to start, without having all the answers, without having the living conditions you would like, without fooling yourself into thinking that, since you can't do it the perfect way, it's better to do nothing.

 

As we have seen, the first invitation is to refuse. I invite you to be aware of all the things you go home with at the end of the day that you don't need, of all the times you accept things you don't want out of shame, out of compromise, out of fear of offending the one who offers them to you. Saying “no, thank you” with no more explanation than a smile is usually enough.

 

The second step is to reduce. My recommendation is to start with the room in your house that you are most excited about freeing and, little by little, get rid of everything you don't need. 

 

It's understandable that you might be overwhelmed by tackling a whole room. We invite you to divide it into small sections and place everything on the bed so you can assess what you have:

• In the bathroom, you can start with the medicine cabinet, that little basket with samples, what you have in the shower or the rubber bands and hairpins.

• In the kitchen, start with the tupper’s drawer, the refrigerator door, the cup shelf or the cooking spatulas.

• In the bedroom, look at your shoes, bedside table, underwear drawer, sweaters, or notebooks.

• In the children's room, you can start with the tales, the attic of the closet, stuffed animals, pajamas or a type of toy that you have a lot of units, such as constructions.

 

The third step of this pyramid is 'reuse', a call to get rid of disposable products. Look at which ones are present in your daily life: fruit bags with a shelf life of minutes, silver foil and cling film, tampons or sanitary towels, cotton pads, make-up remover, coffee cups, razor blades, unnecessary vegetable wrappers, paper towels, paper napkins, diapers... 

 

You can go through them room by room and put them all together to ask yourself which ones you need an alternative and which ones you can do without. For example, to store food you can use tupperware or a plate covered with another one without the need for paper of any kind. If this solution does not convince you -try it first-, then look for washable waxed wrappers (there are vegan ones) or silicone bags. If you order coffee to go every morning, you can get a reusable cup with a lid and ask for it to be served directly in it. If you remove your make-up every night, you can replace the disposable pads with washable cotton pads. To buy fruit and vegetables, you can bring your own fine-mesh bags. To stop throwing away disposable blades, which are not recycled, you can get a stainless steel one and change the blades once they wear out. 

 

For period days, you can use a menstrual cup, cloth pads or menstrual panties to find the option that works best for you. For spills in the kitchen, use washable compostable wipes instead of pulling out the paper roll and swap the ongoing purchase of paper napkins for an eye-pleasing set of cloth napkins. What about diapers, that continual waste of money and plastic. If you are curious about this topic, you can start using cloth diapers, which is easier than you might think.

 

✍️ Which room would you be most excited to start with? Think about what you would like to have differently and how you could start making it a reality (asking for help to make time for it, involving more people in the house in the task…)

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Fix what is broken

Within this invitation to reuse is also the rationale for repairing what is broken. It sounds simple, yet manufacturers too often make it more expensive than buying something new. This is one of the demands of the European 'Right to repair' movement, which also calls for legislation to ensure durable, repairable designs with easy-to-replace components and to introduce a score system on repairability as part of the existing energy label.

 

The easiest things to fix are clothes and, if you're not particularly handy, you can take them to your local repair store.

 

Repairing something to save it from the trash is among the most countercultural and satisfying actions we can do today, second only to... not replacing what's broken. Perhaps that breakdown can be an invitation to let go of that object, or at least an opportunity to experience whether your life can be better without it. 

 

✍️ Check if you have things at home waiting to be repaired and find where you could take them to continue using them.

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The fourth step is to recycle. Separating waste at home is essential, but we must be aware that recycling is not the solution. If it were a simple process, the seas and oceans would not be receiving 12 million tons of waste every year. The massive production of plastics, the inefficiency in waste management and the inconsistency in data on recovery and recycling alert us to the fact that we must change this consumption model.

 

Just because something ends up in a recycling plant does not mean it will be recycled. For example, it is technically difficult and costly to recycle multilayer packaging with different types of materials such as potato French fry bags or tetra brik. 

 

If it is recycled, it does not mean that the result will be a material of the same quality as the original. Most of the plastics recovered in recycling processes result in a material of lower quality, so it cannot be used to manufacture the same packaging it came from. This process is called downcycling. 

 

Paper and cardboard, composed of cellulose fiber, can be recycled very well a limited number of times. This means that on each recycling “journey”, the length of the fibers is shortened and virgin material must be added. 

 

At the other extreme are glass containers, which can be recycled as many times as desired without losing their properties, as they are made of a single material. Even so, it should be borne in mind that there is no such thing as a 100% recyclable container because the adhesives used for the labels and the inks used make the process more expensive and can contaminate the recycled flakes.

 

What we can do

As consumers, it is up to us to ensure that less waste arrives in the recycling bin and that the waste that does arrive does so correctly. In other words, recycle less and recycle better. To recycle less, we should try to prioritize the principles of reject, reduce and reuse and thus generate less waste in our daily lives.  

 

✍️ Do you have any questions about how to separate certain products for proper recycling? We encourage you to look for information from your local council or neighbourhood to find out more about how to do it, whether there are collection points for special waste, etc.

 

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The last point, the top of the inverted pyramid, is composting. Organic waste is not harmless: for this type of waste to become compost, conditions of humidity and the presence of oxygen must be met that do not exist in landfills. Landfills release large amounts of methane, one of the main greenhouse gases. 

 

What can we do? If your municipality has a separate collection of organic waste, be sure to separate it correctly: food scraps, plant remains, cork stoppers, matches, wooden sticks could be composted in dedicated facilities. On the other hand, diapers, sanitary napkins, toilet paper, ashes, chewing gum, pet litter or cigarette butts are non-compostable waste that would go into the “residuals” bin. Be sure to dispose of organic waste in a compostable bag, thus avoiding the transfer of contaminants that reduce the quality of the compost and worsen the aesthetics of the resulting material (pieces of plastics mixed with bio-waste).

 

If where you live this differentiated collection does not take place, perhaps there are containers (the traditional ones, or underground) where you can deposit them. Look on the website of your local council, in community gardens or in local environmental associations.

 

5. To close: 

How to be at peace with a messy house, blog post