For my #climatechallenge, I decided to reduce waste to a minimum.
At the beginning, I asked myself how much waste I produce.
- This is how the idea for my Footprint-Challenge "Zero-Waste" came about.
For me it was extremely interesting to deal with the topic of waste management and to question personal habits. Unfortunately, I had to make the experience that the packaging of many products is very poorly designed, to the detriment of our planet. Low prices for virgin plastics make remanufacturing very uninteresting for many companies. While there are (new or long established) technologies in the recycling and plastics industry, they are reaching their limits, especially when it comes to composite materials.
So the findings from my challenge were clear: It's better not to create waste in the first place.
Material processing of "waste" is usually a high-tech process that always requires energy, and sometimes not in short supply. This energy must of course be generated in a renewable way in the long term.
So why waste energy on something you can do without?
I tried to opt for products that had no packaging or, if not otherwise possible, no composite materials in the packaging. This allowed me to significantly reduce my packaging waste.
I can only recommend this challenge, not necessarily just to test your own limits, but much more to get a sense for your own consumption behavior. But the reality is that shopping without packaging is already structurally difficult. Not only in the stores themselves, because a lot is already produced during transport, etc.
Consequently, reducing consumption is also an important factor in reducing packaging.
Another way of achieving this would be to change the structures. This can be tackled with a Handprint-Challenge.
I can only plead for everyone to opt for a more sustainable lifestyle and try to change such structures.