What is Zero Waste? What is the root cause of Pollution?...

What is zero-waste? It is an effort towards minimizing the trash you generate, every step of the way.
Does it mean that you start looking for eco-friendly alternatives for everything in your life? Yes. But even that is not going to help us in the long run. What we really need to do is Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Donate.
Before we started mass producing things, almost all of the waste generated by people used to be organic, and problems in the area of waste management or pollution, were unheard of. After industrialization and then the invention of various forms of plastic and unrecyclable packaging, our trash started becoming a problem. A century ago, there weren’t as many people on Earth. So, we could simply dump off that waste somewhere far away and be done with it. Our planet is only so big. Our population has been increasing at an alarming rate, thanks to all the great work in the fields of science and medicine, as well as the lack of family planning in some communities. But then with the rise in population, cities started growing and all those ‘far away’ places, became a part of those cities.
We have also been rapidly using up our natural resources. We have mined our mountain rocks for gems and minerals, have excavated river banks for sand, drilled our grounds for fossil fuels. And then some wonder why there have been so many frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the past half century.
Thankfully, pollution, global warming and climate change, finally became a topic of conversation, around a couple of decades ago, when our scientists discovered the depleting ozone layer. There was a start in the right direction. Even though, there are still some of us, who simply refuse to believe these facts.
Over the past half century or so, we have managed to make so much cumulated trash that our oceans are covered in thick layers of trash, for miles and miles. We have been so irresponsible with waste management that all our wildlife is in danger of choking on plastic particles. All our landfills are overflowing. After the recent bouts of tsunamis and hurricanes we have witnessed tonnes and tonnes of trash getting washed up on beaches. There has plastic found washed up or flown into even the remotest areas of the world. There have been researches that say that most city dwellers in the high pollution-zone cities of today would need to start buying oxygen to breathe in a not too distant future. Every few years, we are hearing about brand new diseases and epidemics, from one part of the world or another. All of the plastic made till date on Earth, is all still here. It’s a substance that takes around 400yrs or more to break down. And even then, it does not decompose really. Still remains harmful. But do we still ever question our excessive consumerist ways?
There was a simpler time. There still are people who practice the same minimalist lifestyle. Actually the majority of the world’s population, continue to take from nature only what they need. Try noticing a poor person and you would see how little they own. Try to look up some village evacuations and you would see how little they are moving their entire lives with. Then why do we, all the so called ‘well-to-do’ urban population of the world, need so much stuff?
Why are we redoing our houses, every few years? Why are we getting entire wardrobe makeovers, every season? Why do we need to upgrade our gadgets every year? Why do we feel the need hoard things we don’t even need? What happens to all the stuff we get rid of?
It all either gets littered around our own environments, or ends up in the ever overflowing landfills, or gets dumped into our water bodies. It rots, causes harm to other species, contaminates our environment and causes diseases. And wherever on our planet it ends up, it still is there, pollution our planet. And eventually, whether or not you are getting affected by the pollution, where you live, we would all get affected. Because our planet in one single entity. The environment around it, is all connected.
Its high time we all woke up and started thinking from a sustainable, zero-waste, natural and minimalistic point of view. Stop creating more stuff. Take what you really need. And leave all the wants. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Donate!
Ponder on...