Minimising trash in the New Year

Sri Lanka is a land of many races, religions and communities. Therefore, we enjoy a lot of holidays and festivals. Some of these are of a religious nature, but some are more of a celebratory nature, sometimes even resulting in mindless consmuption and reckless waste.

People all over the world tend to stock up on food and other goods around festive times without even considering what they may really need.

People are more concerned about what looks good on the festive table.

It is said that Britain produces an extra three million tonnes of rubbish during Christmas season (enough to fill 400,000 double-decker buses), but recycle only 12 per cent of it. This is half the normal recycling rate in the country as everyday routines tend to get disrupted during festive times. It is also said that the British people throw away an additional 750 million bottles, 500 million drinks cans, 4,200 tonnes of foil and 24 million glass jars.

This is true for Sri Lanka too. But the worst part is that most of these are thrown away without even being consumed. The idea behind most national festivals is to share what we have with our less fortunate neighbours and cousins, but does it always happen that way? If it did, such a large quantity of food would not have been thrown away.

One of the major reasons for this is that people are more concerned about what looks good on the festive table rather than what they really need, especially if there are children in the family. So a family of four will tend to cook enough food for ten people.

So a lot of it is wasted and is thrown into garbage dumps where it starts rotting. Most people think that food is biodegradable and that rotting food doesn’t harm the environment. But this is not so; when food degrades anaerobically (without oxygen) in garbage heaps, it produces an enormous amount of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more powerful than CO2.

The best solution for this is to take stock of the amount of food your family will need and prepare only that amount. Whatever is left could be refrigerated and consumed the next day after properly reheating it. However, you should be careful to have your fridge set at the right temperature (around five degrees Celsius).

It has been found that 70 per cent of fridges operate above the recommended temperature and that 30 per cent operate above seven degrees Celsius. When the right temperature is not provided, the shelf life of anything that you store in the fridge may be halved. Although this does use more energy, it is certainly a better alternative to methane emissions (releases).

Although some of you may find it a bit difficult to act on this, going vegetarian for festivities definitely works. A UN report has revealed that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases, principally methane and nitrous oxide, than vehicles. If you add to this, animal welfare issues and the destruction of rain forests to grow maize to feed cattle, you would know that vegetarianism has more than one benefit.

More rubbish is produced during festive seasons.

And since most food could be composted, it is better to put waste in your compost bin (if you have one) rather than letting it end up in a landfill somewhere.

You can also minimise the damage to the environment by opting for local seasonal produce instead of imported items which come with higher price tags.

Besides reducing the carbon footprint (the goods travel only within the country, thereby eliminating air travel), it will help local producers and industrialists too. Another sound move when buying goods is to opt for larger packs instead of several smaller packs as the former minimises the packaging which will have to be discarded after use.

Choosing glass bottles which can be recycled is also much better than disposable plastic bottles. If you have milk delivered to you in glass bottles, it would be wise to have an arrangement for bottles which could be returned. The same goes for disposable paper cups and plates. Most are coated with various substances which prevent them from being recycled.

Your festive foil could also serve the environment better if you can reuse them at least one more time. You could also recycle colourful paper from magazines and newpapers and use brown paper with your decorations added in instead of wrapping-paper.

These are some of the prudent ideas that you and your family can put into action during festive times. You are definitely old enough to understand the damage over-consumption is doing to our environment.

You can seriously think about this issue from now itself and start taking action to prevent this in the new year. After all, it is your generation that stands to suffer the consequences of environmental degradation.