The Zero Waste Lifestyle

This was the norm in India a few decades ago, but today we are careening to destruc- tion on the consumption bandwagon. How about emulating eco-warriors who strive to establish a zero waste lifestyle.

- Punya Srivastava

There is a scene in the 2013 blockbuster, Gravity, where debris from a recently bombed defunct satellite comes hurling towards the space walkers at breakneck speed, crashing into the space shuttle and rendering them all dead. It was a hair-raising visual. Something in it made me mull long after the movie got over. “As if trashing this planet wasn’t enough, we have started trashing the outer space too,” groused a voice inside me. I pictured a crumpled bag of wafers, a crushed water bottle, an empty soda can, a few broken CDs, and a discarded leather bag, among tons of other debris, languorously drifting away in the dark expanse of the universe. Thank God, this is not the reality yet!

Day after day, we are dumping binloads of trash on landfills. The developed part of the world is shipping its garbage to Third World countries; the underdeveloped parts neither have resources nor the acumen to suitably dispose of their trash. Innumerable waste management projects have been deployed to curb the menace of overflowing waste, and yet, everywhere you look, you can see a pile of garbage rotting away to glory.

Plugging the source

One summer in a village, someone noticed a baby in the river, struggling and crying, trying not to drown. He rushed to save the baby. Soon, more babies were seen drowning in the river, and all the villagers came to their rescue, pulling them out as fast as they could. However, two villagers started to run away along the shore of the river. “Where are you going?” shouted one of the rescuers, “We need you here to help us save these babies!”

“We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!”