Thu 9 AM | A Guide To Zero Waste Living That Goes Beyond Feel-Good ijpr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ijpr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Stephanie Miller is the author of Zero Waste Living, the 80/20 Way: The Busy Person’s Guide to a Lighter Footprint. She founded Zero Waste in DC, to focus on the application of zero waste strategies that have a real and sustainable impact. With a goal of reaching as wide an audience as possible, she provides keynote presentations, learning events and individual household consultations. Within her 25-year career at the international finance corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, she served as director of International Finance Corporation’s climate business department where she led global teams to find innovative solutions to climate change.
An article published in the
National Observer on April 5, entitled “Cutting back on waste is possible if you can afford it,” states that reducing waste is a privilege. I disagree. There is a lot that can be done without sacrifice. And, in my experience, reducing waste actually saves money. Below, I’ll explain steps individuals can take, regardless of income.
The perception that living a low-waste lifestyle is expensive is perpetuated by the images we see on social media of beautiful lives in minimalist homes.
Canadian Anne-Marie Bonneau, author of the just-published book
The Zero Waste Chef, says: “For most people, real-life zero waste does not look like Instagram zero waste. Online images create a misconception that in order to reduce our waste, we need to buy all kinds of expensive gear and do zero waste perfectly, never producing a piece of trash.”
With the approach of the annual Earth Day activities, we offer 12 big picture books on biodiversity, oceans, food, and waste.
For April’s bookshelf we take a cue from Earth Day and step back to look at the bigger picture. It wasn’t climate change that motivated people to attend the teach-ins and protests that marked that first observance in 1970; it was pollution, the destruction of wild lands and habitats, and the consequent deaths of species.
The earliest Earth Days raised awareness, led to passage of new laws, and spurred conservation. But the original problems are still with us. And now they intersect with climate change, making it impossible to address one problem without affecting the others.