Zero waste: more than steel straws and recycling
The world is drowning in rubbish. But, by doing the right thing at the individual level, we can make a big impact, as long as enough of us do it.
We need to stop creating rubbish. We need to move from linear economic thinking and use of stuff, to circular economic thinking, where, ideally, stuff gets recycled again and again and again, with the only input being energy, to repair the item. The figure describes the ways in which we can do that, in a descending scale of "virtuosity".
Minimising waste to landfill:
Reduce Buy less stuff in the first place.
Reuse Keep reusing stuff if it works fine.
Repair Repair your stuff so that you can keep using it, reusing it. Learn how to repair stuff. Often it is easier than you think. You just have to start and be a tiny bit patient..
Recycle Always sort stuff for recycling when you have finished with it. Clean it! Sort it correctly. Contaminated recycling goes to landfill including the stuff in that bin/container that was not contaminated.
Down-cycle Not as good as recycling but better than dumping to landfill. An example of down-cycling is converting soft plastic bags to plastic fence posts. Its down cycled because the maker of the soft plastic bags needs new plastic to make more bags. They cannot make them out of plastic posts.
Compost Put food waste into worm farms and recycle their waste (worn casts) back into yo ur garden. Great fertiliser.
Dispose to landfill The last resort! But better than throwing stuff out the car window. At least in (properly constructed and managed) landfills, plastic etc cannot enter the ocean food chain and back into us and every other living thing via the fish we eat.