What is Waste?

Currently, we are producing much more waste than ever before: A study by the World Bank has shown that ten years ago there were 2.9 billion urban residents who generated about 0.64 kg of municipal solid waste per person per day (0.68 billion tons per year). This report estimates that today these amounts have increased to about 3 billion urban residents generating 1.2 kg per person per day (1.3 billion tons per year). By 2025 this will likely increase to 4.3 billion urban residents generating about 1.42 kg (3.1 pounds) per capita per day of municipal solid waste (2.2 billion tons per year). Just imagine those numbers: 1.42 kg (3.1 pounds) of solid waste per person per day! The prediction is if we don't change our consumption or recycling habits, solid waste production will exceed 11 million tons per day by the end of this century. Since the process of urbanization will continue now and in the near future, an increasing amount of waste will be produced that cannot be easily discarded. As the cities grow into megacities (most drastically in East Asia), new ways of dealing with the rising masses of garbage will have to be developed that will allow people to live in cities, without being stuck in their own waste.

In the U.S. alone, every individual produces on average of 4.38 pounds of waste per day, of which only one third is recycled or composted. The average American also discards 70 pounds of textiles per year, which means about 1.3 pounds per week! This doesn't only include clothes (whether used, outgrown or unused), but also any other kinds of fabrics like bed sheets, tablecloths, curtains, etc. Unfortunately, most of these textiles (85%) do not get recycled properly, but end up in the regular trash and then serve as part of landfills. How can we explain this huge amount of waste? What causes this attitude of purchasing and subsequent discarding? And what does it say about us as humans that we randomly buy and throw away things without much consideration for the effects on the global economy or our planet? Considering that many of us struggle financially, it is even more astounding that the amount of garbage we produce keeps rising steadily.

Clever advertisements make us believe that it raises our social standing, if we get all those outfits, gadgets, games, or devices that are currently trending and give us more satisfaction with life and more confidence in ourselves. We often cannot ignore those never-ending, spectacular sales that give us much more than we actually need for a great price. So we may end up with four beach chairs instead of two, two umbrellas instead of one, 20 new plates instead of ten, etc., etc. Consumerism is so deeply ingrained in our culture, that it is almost inconceivable to abandon it. Shopping has become a type of social outing that is also used for bonding. While buying and shopping is part of every day life and most people don't think twice about a purchase, peer pressure and brand consciousness also plays its part. Refraining from buying anything on a shopping trip, may spoil the mood for everyone involved or look odd. In addition, shopping serves not only the material satisfaction of owning a certain good, but it also fulfills a deeper emotional void.

A recent study maintained that more than half of Americans say they have shopped and spent money in order to improve their mood, but not because they actually needed what they purchased. Emotional buying and thoughtless shopping lead to people accumulating a lot of things that in the end, will not use. For many, the act of buying itself has become a hobby. It is casually called "retail therapy" and refers to an emotional need to buy when we are depressed, anxious, sad, angry, in a bad mood or simply bored. Research suggests that retail therapy actually works, meaning that many people really experience positive emotional effects through shopping. The TV reality show with the same name depicts people having this obsession of constantly buying things (mostly clothes) and how it affects them and their lives. Many of them keep the purchased goods piled high in their wardrobes and/or stacked in numerous garbage bags, since they cannot fit them anywhere else. They don't even get to make use of them, because they obsessively buy new ones which makes the other (still new ones) obsolete. As a result of this uncontrollable drive, some individuals completely indebt themselves, deplete their funds, and have to declare bankruptcy. So in the end, even if retail therapy may work by improving their mood temporarily, it does not seem like a sound solution to a set of much deeper problems that such individuals face. In the end, this drive seems more closely related to social issues like forms of alienation from family, friends, and psychological issues related to self-confidence and self-acceptance.

One major side-effect of this mindless shopping is that people's homes get cluttered with all the stuff that is not being used. Entire basements and garages contain the results of this trend. Some better organized individuals manage to maintain a clutter-free home by getting rid of stuff regularly by donating or gifting it to less fortunate, while they still keep purchasing more and more things that they again don't really need. It is an infinite cycle of buying and discarding, which doesn't make sense, especially considering its drastic negative economic and environmental impact.

The trend of overbuying doesn't stop with imperishable good, but unfortunately also includes food items. Just like clothes and all other kinds of things, an enormous amount of food is wasted in the Western world every day. A study of 2013 showed that almost 50% of all food production ends up as waste every year. The reason is not only the tendency of people to purchase more than they need, inadequate storage facilities or too strict guidelines for food sales, but also Western consumer's demand for cosmetically perfect-looking food. The lack of appeal to consumers was responsible for more than 30% of all crops produced in the UK in 2013 to not even get harvested! The amount of food thrown away in the world per year ends up being worth around 1 trillion USD per year. This trend means that every 1 in 4 calories produced will be disposed of, instead of consumed. It also means that every year, consumers in industrialized countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons). In the U.S. alone 30-40% of all food is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds per person per month. Even for American school children studies have shown that about 1/3 of their packed lunch is not consumed, but discarded before it is even touched every day. 

One of the answers to these versions of mindless consumerism is freeganism. Freegans not only reject the economic system that produced this types of consumption, but rather than contributing to further waste production, they curtail garbage and pollution, reducing the over-all volume of the humongous waste stream. Freegans usually include groups of conscious residents of big cities who are very concerned about the social and ecological effects of our consumption economy. Amongst each other, they share valuable insights into the garbage disposal system on the local levels with their peers: e.g. information about who throws away the best (still good) sushi, most delicious bread, best vegetables, etc. But they also disagree with the individualism that our way of life has created and want to revive some aspects of communal living. Freegans generally regard their so-called "food dives" as social events in which they collect still good and healthy foods from garbage disposals and afterwards prepare meals from the salvaged items for the entire group. The joint meal that follows is equally a celebration of their all-inclusive community as it is a celebration of saving perfectly good food or other still useful manufactured items from being wasted. These items may include beverages, books, toiletries, magazines, comic books, newspapers, videos, kitchenware, appliances, music (CDs, cassettes, records, etc.), carpets, musical instruments, clothing, rollerblades, scooters, furniture, vitamins, electronics, animal care products, games, toys, bicycles, artwork, and many more things that are still okay to use and will not cause any health threats. Although digging through garbage is most likely not appealing to everyone, saving perfectly good items from being discarded every day seems like a very reasonable and rational thing to do. In the bigger picture of the planet's destruction through mindless garbage production and ecological threats, this way of life seems to make perfect sense. While freegans are usually politically awakened individuals who actively seek an alternate life-style, this way of optimizing discarded surplus does only reach a small portion of needy groups who cannot afford to feed themselves and their families at market prices. In order to make these foods available to a much bigger portion of disadvantaged individuals, a better organized system of food donations must be created that would help meet two ends: less wasted food and fewer families in need.

Another, different way of not to get caught up in the spiral of consumption and production of waste is to become self-sufficient. A few months ago, I noticed a blog by an impressive young woman who refuses to produce any waste at all. As a student of environmental studies in NYC, she realized one day at lunch that a broad range of individuals produced a lot of unnecessary waste, even though they packed their own meals. As reaction to the thousands of snack bags and plastic forks, aluminium wrap that she saw being used, she decided to go garbage free. She refused to produce any garbage at all by cooking at home, buying in bulk, bringing her own containers to the stores, and by manufacturing all the toiletries that she needs every day herself (creams, make-up, tooth paste, shampoo, etc.). Since all her organic waste gets composted, her clothes are bought and sold at second hand-stores, and she rides her bicycle to get around, and she manages to live a "zero-waste" kind of life. By becoming self-sufficient or autarkic, she can completely avoid the economy that engages in the endless cycle of consuming and discarding goods. Heads-off to this young lady, who can lives on zero waste! 

As this year's Earth Day that just passed a few days ago, all the media information made us aware of the ecological state of affairs of our planet. It has become clear that if we do not change our consumption habits drastically in the near future, our planet is in real trouble. It is frightening to think about the enormous amounts of foods and manufactured goods that are being wasted in the Western world every day. We have to do everything we can to possibly to save our planet, which includes little things like bringing your own bags to the grocery store, recycling your paper, bottles, batteries, plastic, abstaining from buying water in plastic bottles, and reducing our waste as much as possible. But it also includes more drastic measures like breaking our cycles of buying things that we do not need, and addressing the underlying social causes for such behavior patterns. It includes teaching our children to develop a more responsible attitude towards ourselves as humans and our planet. In addition, we much also seed for national and global measures to help better distribute the surplus to the people in need. Ideally these solutions will be also linked to the need for foods and manufactured goods in other parts of the world.