Reducing your Wastes

Waste is something you throw to your trash can that you thought you don’t need anymore. We humans continuously generate wastes each day. It can be from the junk food that you ate last night, leftover foods from a birthday party or from the stuffs in toilet bowls that you flush. These are just a few sources of wastes that can be accumulated from a single household. Most of wastes that we generated are from the package of food products that we’re buying and food leftovers. It’s a necessity for human survival. We can’t stop generating wastes but we can reduce it.

Why reduce wastes?

Carbon dioxide is one of the main causes of Global Warming. Our Sun heats the Earth. Most of that heat is returned back to the space and the remaining heat is retained by our atmosphere to maintain heat in the Earth and make it livable. Carbon Dioxide thickens the atmosphere and traps more heat in Earth resulting to Global Warming.
One of the sources of Carbon dioxide is our solid wastes. Solid wastes emits carbon dioxide especially food materials as it decays. If we reduce our wastes, we reduce Carbon Dioxide emission thus helping the prevention of Global Warming.

What are wastes?

Depending on its source, wastes can be classified as Household/Municipal wastes, Hazardous wastes and Infectious wastes. Hazardous wastes are wastes from Industrial plants and other factories. Infectious wastes are wastes that carry bacteria and/or diseases and usually considered as hospital wastes. We will focus on Household/Municipal wastes since everyone can relate with it compare to Hazardous and Infectious wastes which is more complex to manage by a single person.

We then now enumerate the sources of Municipal Solid wastes:

• Residential – Wastes from a single or multi-family dwellings.
• Commercial – Wastes from commercial establishments (i.e. stores, restaurants).
• Institutional – Waste from schools, Government office.
• Municipal Services – Wastes from street cleaning, park trashes and recreational areas.

Municipal solid wastes mostly include leftover foods, papers, plastics, metal, textile and glass.

How to reduce?

Now that we already knew the source and the common contents of it, we can now focus in the reduction of solid wastes.

We must reduce:

• Leftover Foods: As much as possible, estimate the volume of food that you usually eat. Control and maintain the amount of food you cook. Don’t throw unspoiled foods, instead, use your refrigerator and store it there.
• Papers: Papers are not only from your office files and school reports/portfolios; it also came from the food you bought. For instance, a pizza box is considered as paper.  As much as you can try to reduce the use of papers. Do not use your new pad paper for scratch works instead use the back of your old reports and forms. Buy less packaging products. Try to pick the economy size as this can’t just reduce wastes but can also save money.
• Plastics: When you’re shopping, try to bring your own shopping bag. This can prevent the mall or market in providing you plastic bags. When you have plastic bags in your home, don’t throw it right away, instead, keep it and use it again. You may also try to make a kite out of it. So the next time the garbage truck arrives, you do not have to throw your plastics.
• Metals: Metals which includes copper, aluminum and iron. These metals are not junk, in fact, they can be used as a raw material in other factories for their products. Instead of throwing it, try to make money out of it. Factories and industrial plant also want to save money and buying your metals is one of their solutions.
• Textile: Do you have an old shirt, old jeans, and an old cap? And you’re about to throw it in your trash can? Well I should shout, “Hey! Stop throwing it!” Let’s be kind for once and try to donate it or why you can’t just sell it to your friend. If he doesn't like it, bring it to the nearest sewing shop.
• Glass: Like metals, glass is also used as a raw material for other products so you can also make money out of it. Don’t throw it!

Reducing wastes is essential to environment. We people must be responsible for taking care of our environment that’s why we are creating laws concerning it. Encourage others to adapt in this lifestyle. Reducing waste is not too difficult to follow. There is only one Earth and I don’t want to lose it. Do you feel the same?