Before i get into the nitty gritty of what “Less Waste Wednesdays” Is all about, I want to explaing to you where I’m at.
I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately. It doesn’t have anything to do with the running around i’m doing for my family, nor does it have anything to do with my efforts at turning my small business into a profitable exercise. It’s all to do with the fact, that the more i look around, the more i see how poorly we as a species are treating the Earth, our home… The only home we have.
Worse still, we seem to be almost completely oblivious to the absolutely awful state we are leaving it in for the next generation.
This has spurred me to do my best to educate my children, and do all that we can to reduce waste from our household.
I’d like to premise this by saying we are not by any means a zero-waste household, we have a LONG way to go before we are there. But you know what? I’m INSPIRED, and I’m EXCITED that actions wetake now will make a better world for my kids.
Having children is terrible for the environment, my husband and I decided to use disposable nappies for our two boys, and i’m horrified when i think of how much non biodegradable waste we produced from this action alone. Plenty of the toys our kids have received are plastic, often thin forms of it that degrade in the sun and break apart into smaller pieces. Food snacks for kids are often packaged in multiple layers of plastic packaging as well.
In our desire to make things more ‘convenient’ right now, we’ve created an ecological disaster that is on a global scale. So many of these items will not break down for 100’s in some cases 1000’s of years. The plastic rubbish toys my boys are delighted by for five minutes and which are completely forgotten moments later, will stay in our natural enviroment for many many many generations, as trash.
We are implementing changes at home, in the hope that i can teach my boys that we need to find better ways to package our food, transport products and create items that are used in our homes or everyday life.
So moving forward, Wednesdays will be about “LESS WASTE” and I’ll share with you some of the changes we are making as a family to try and reduce our collective footprint at home, or anywhere else for that matter. I’ll also share some of the current statistics of what the ‘convenient’ age has done to our planet.
You can see a couple fo the posts i’ve already written on this subject, including introducing Bamboo Toothbrushes here and understanding the difference between degradable or compostable plastic bags here.
Looking for more inspiration? I’ve started following Least.Waste on instagram. They share the ugly truth, but also positive changes that are coming to light (I’m an optimist if nothing else, so this really resonates with me.) Check them out for more inspo.