On Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin and various other social media platforms it is next to impossible to avoid articles and posts about how we are ruining our environment. Fast fashion, single-use plastic and now even eating red meat are all adding to the ever-growing noise about the effects of consumerism on the environment. Some individuals are quick to jump on the business opportunities this chaos of information and misinformation has caused. You need not look too far for proof of this! Check out all the Instagram pages selling eco products, propagating zero waste lifestyles and guilting individuals into living their lives a certain way.
Eco anxiety! Yes, this is a condition that is spreading rapidly and being fuelled by mediums such as Instagram, Facebook and to a lesser extent Linkedin. The truth is that we are living in times where everyone has the capability to voice their opinion via the internet and various social networking sites. In this environment of constant information overload, it is hard to decipher true information from misinformation, marketing from sales, and propaganda from real concern.
What is being said & by whom: It is imperative that we stop reading just the headlines and basing our decisions on it, due to it being shared by someone in authority, a celebrity or someone we look up too. Take for example the massive campaign to stop the use of single-use plastic undertaken by various NGO’s and corporates, shifting the onus onto the consumer to either stop buying these products completely or to ensure that the consumer plays their part in helping them recycle. On the face of it there seems nothing wrong with this, and in fact many might even say that it’s a step towards securing our future! But dive in deep and you will find that many of these NGO’s informing us about recycling and the adverse effects of consumerism are being funded by the same organisations who are responsible for manufacturing or distributing these products in the market at a mass scale.
As for companies and their feel-good campaigns such as where they clean a neighbourhood, donate money to an environmental cause and pledge that they will do away with manufacturing, packaging and distribution of single use plastic, it is just a farce in most cases to change customer perception and shift responsibility onto the consumer. Most of you must be thinking, how the hell do I make time to research and find out the truth about every piece of information being put out there? You are correct it’s not possible, but what is possible is for us to stop regurgitating information that we have little knowledge about. As more and more people start sharing and spreading the same information across social platforms, it starts to alter mindsets and over a period of time it embeds itself in our automatic thinking system. For example, when you hear the word plastic what is the first thing that came to your mind? Pollution, recycling, waste, ocean etc! The international best-selling author Daniel Kahneman in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow” explains this concept called “Priming” beautifully!
Priming: Extract from the book (Page 52: Thinking Fast & Slow: Daniel Kahneman)
“What is the first word that comes to your mind when you hear the word DAY? The researchers tallied the frequency of responses such as “night” “day”, “sunny” or “long” In the 1980 psychologist discovered that exposure to a word causes immediate and measurable changes in the ease with which many related words can be evoked. If you have recently seen or heard the word Eat, you are temporarily more likely to complete the word fragment SO_P as soup than SOAP. The opposite would happen of course if you had just seen WASH. We call this a priming effect and say that the idea of EAT primes the idea of SOUP, and that WASH primes SOAP.”
I could keep quoting from the book, but I would prefer that you read it instead as it is sure to make you question your deep beliefs and profoundly change the way you think. The question that we need to ask ourselves is why are companies not changing the way they manufacture products? Why is production not being looked at from a point of making it circular? And why is the narrative being shifted onto the consumer? There are no simple answers, from economic reasons such legacy investments made in infrastructure which will cost millions if not billions of dollars to change, to convenience, both in terms of pricing and packaging, from the consumers perspective to policy and willingness of governments to take tough decisions.
In all of this, we the consumer, have tremendous power to make change happen by voting with our wallet and voicing our opinion (based on facts and proper understanding of the subject matter) to compel companies to change the way they manufacturer and design products. Yes, our rapid pace of consumption is to partly blame for the environmental mess that we find ourselves in, but I per se cannot stop living, stop eating meat because the UN decided that doing so is gravely harming the planet, or stop buying products because they are packaged in plastic, or feel guilty every time I buy bottled water! We globally have enough financial resources to rectify and make farming more effective and productive. We have the ability to reduce the use of water, chemical fertilisers and to feed our farm bred animals’ diets that reduce enteric fermentation (natural digestive process that occurs in animals) that accounts for 40% of the agriculture production emissions. The real question is why are we as consumers not asking the tough questions and why are we not putting in the effort to validate what is being said by doing a simple google search on the topic?
I get numerous mails every day from teens, young adults & grownups, voicing their concern about how the environment is being destroyed, some even concerned about the fact that the world is about to end! Eco anxiety is becoming a massive global challenge caused by dooms day scenarios propagated across mediums. Being environmentally conscious and making informed decisions is not easy, it requires a complete change in lifestyle in some cases and cannot be done with the flick of a switch. Have you ever tried losing weight, giving up smoking, or promising yourself that you will read more, workout more often etc. How easy or difficult has that journey been? Choosing to make more informed and conscious decisions when it comes to individual impact on the environment is no different. But we must start somewhere, small baby steps, things that easy to do but hard to remember or driven by emotional impulse. Here are some examples:
1. Easy to carry a reusable shopping bag with you, cloth or plastic, but hard to remember it along. You can change this habit by putting a big notice on the door reminding you to do so if you are forgetful. Same goes with water bottles and coffee mugs.
2. Want to buy something new, that feel that you need, play the waiting game. If after two weeks you still feel real need for that new piece of clothing, shoe or whatever, then go ahead and buy it, but do ask yourself, do I really need this? Is it an emotional impulse to satisfy some insecurity that you may have?
3. Your closet says a lot about who you are! Are the clothes just thrown in there, is it stuffed with things that you don’t wear any more but hold onto for emotional reasons? Well time to clean out that closet and give those clothes to people who will wear them. You can also sell them on various online portals to make some money, who knows this may become a new venture for you, trading and selling old clothes! Plus, you could start an exchange program with your friends, just like books, send them clothes that don’t fit you any longer or that you just don’t wear and have them do the same. This one activity will give you an insight into yourself, and by cleaning out that closet you will also be cleaning out a lot of emotional baggage.
4. Going grocery shopping or ordering online? Make a list and stick to it! Also, don’t discriminate and buy produce (fruits & vegetables) based on the way it looks, I bet you have experienced such discrimination in your personal life, how did it feel? Most, if not all, deformed or “not so good-looking” produce is perfectly edible, in fact, eating some items such as bananas extra ripe is known to be even better for your health. Use the app “Super Cook” it helps you utilise the available ingredients at your home, to prepare delicious meals, while cutting down on your expenses and unnecessary purchases.
5. Don’t shun plastic, just stay away from certain types: There is something called LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) which measures the impact of a material from when its mined, drilled, grown, harvested, transported, manufactured, sold, used, disposed etc, you get the point. It basically measures the entire life cycle of a material. Some of you may be surprised to know, but plastic has one of the lowest LCA foot print of any material out there. Which basically means, its carbon foot print across its use is much better than glass, aluminium cotton and paper. But this is not true for every type of plastic and this does not mean that companies continue to produce virgin plastic at alarming rates and we the consumers keep gulping it up. We need to be informed, so that we stay away from certain types of plastic materials. Every item made of plastic has a code which represents the type of plastic used to manufacture the item. Look at the code, 1-6 are easily recyclable, 7 is problem. Some things to keep in mind with regard to plastic:
a. If you are buying plastic bottles for water at home, stay away from the coloured type and buy clear PET bottles, they are easily recycled in comparison to coloured bottles. I have been using these in my home to bottle filtered water for over 7 years now.
b. Stay away from bio-degradable or compostable materials. They are not what they are advertised to be. Compostable & bio-degradable material requires industrial composting units to degrade them in presence of oxygen. Further, when disposed with general garbage or as plastic they contaminate the recycling waste stream as they can’t be conventionally recycled. So, in the end it all ends up in the landfill where it stays for hundreds of years. Try this at home if you have composting unit. Try composting these bags or take out containers in your bin, document the results. Chances are that material will not break down as claimed. further the part that has broken down would have broken down into micro or Nano plastic particles that are hard to see, so get the compost tested. The results will be your practical proof. The best thing to do for bin liners is to use clear LDPE bags that are easily recyclable and have a recovery value.
c. Stay away from MLP: Packets of chips, namkeen etc, these can’t be recycled. Better option is to take your own container to Haldiram and tell them to fill it up with your favourite namkeens. If it can’t be avoided, try first looking at other options of similar products that are packaged in materials that can be recycled. There are hundreds of options available in the market now, plus many shops do sell namkeen loose. It’s about making the effort and remembering to carrying your reusable container with you.
d. Cosmetics: I will not get into this in this post. But here is an app for all of you to use: Beat the Micro Bead. It tells you whether your cosmetics have micro plastic or not.
As mentioned, everything that is plastic is not bad. The challenge is the over production of virgin material, poor material selection, and designing of packaging along with the severe lack of infrastructure to collect, recover and process the material and a flawed government policy that favours big business & big money. So, stay informed, look at the codes, buy if only needed, avoid products that have access packaging, remember to carry your reusable container/bag where ever possible and use the app mentioned above so that you also know what you are putting on your skin. Ask these questions from brands by writing to them, tweeting the question (this actually works), posting on LinkedIn and Facebook and tagging the brand.
· Why are you using non-recyclable material in your packaging? Provide specific time of when you will start transitioning to packaging made from recycled content ?
· How much packaging waste is generated due to your companies’ activities?
· How much recycled content do you use in your packaging?
· How do you ensure that your post-consumer packaging is collected & processed as per the government’s EPR norms? Provide details please.
· What are your targets to stop using virgin plastic and switch completely to recycled content in your packaging?
· Why do you use micro plastic in your cosmetics & not inform the consumer about it?
· Why is labelling in regards to recyclability so hard to find on your packaging? In some cases, its completely missing! When you start providing information about recyclability of your products through prominent labelling that is clearly visible, hard to miss and in the front of your product?
Ask the right questions, not just to get answers but to also force change through information received. As of now brands and producers don’t provide this information and what is being claimed in terms of sustainability steps taken by brands and producers is far from what is happening on the ground. Get a bunch of people together and have them all write to these brands asking them to answer these questions. There are so many ways to bring about positive change via the overly visible, far-reaching, free media platforms. So, pass your anxiety on to them and let them be concerned that future profits will depend on their action today.
6. Stop Buying Milk in Pouches: This makes no sense, when you can either have bottled cow milk delivered to your home or walk to the closest mother dairy with a closed steel container, plastic, or glass bottle and just fill it with milk through their dispensers.
7. Tetra Packs are Non-recyclables: Make fresh juice at home, bottle it, or buy juice in PET bottles as they are recyclables. Tetra packs are made of multiple layers that are stuck together and impossible to take apart using the conventional mechanical recycling methods available in the country as of now. This material requires a process called chemical recycling. Chemical recycling is in testing phase, with only a handful of companies doing pilot projects here in India and abroad.
After giving you all that to think about, I am going to tell you not to stress! As mentioned in the beginning of this article, this is a journey that each and every one of us chooses to undertake at our own pace. So pick and choose what you want to start with and then keep adding to it as you become more comfortable. While undertaking this process of change, don’t forget to live your life and enjoy yourself without beating yourself up, it’s not worth the stress. If there is something that COVID-19 has taught us, it is that we can live without many things that we thought were a necessity. Do a simple calculation to see how much money you have saved by not buying garbage of the net just because its being marketed to you. Remember, we collectively have the ability to change the behaviour of large corporations by voting with our wallets. The important thing to remember is not to force your thought process or ideas down people’s throats, rather lead by example and put out the facts before them: posts that leave it to the individual to make up their mind.
The process starts with us first, and the only way that we can actually change the course of where we are headed is by making educated decisions about our personal beliefs and by putting in the effort to really understand the information that we are consuming. The single most important thing to remember is that we need to look at everything from a scientific perspective and no, we don’t need to be a scientist or a PHD to do so. All you need to do is think (I know it can be tiring but try it sometimes). Go onto google and see if the information has any scientific credibility or not for yourself.
Note: A great author who teaches you how to think scientifically in a fun and easy to understand manner is Neil deGrasse Tyson a renowned American Astrophysicist.