Early Beginnings
My zero-waste journey started right after school when I got into a hotel management programme. It was an on-job training programme. I had to learn everything while I was working 12 hours a day in the hotel. In the first few days, I realized how much waste a hotel generates just to please their customers. For example, we used to discard fruits/vegetables even if they had the smallest imperfection on them!
I tried to change a few things around the hotel to minimise the waste, but there was only so much I could do. But I had to finish what I started, so I worked for three years and completed that programme. I just knew I couldn’t be a part of the problem anymore; maybe this was one of the contributing factors towards me leaving the hotel industry.
I started by minimising the waste that is generated by me and at home. Terms like composting and recycling were not new to me at all. Since childhood, I have loved nature and animals. Unknowingly, I had been associated with them since childhood. My mother used to put all the vegetable waste in an unused matka (earthen pot) in our garden till it was full, then I used to dig a pit, empty all of its content, cover it and leave it for few months and behold, we would use this pure compost for our garden.
My love for photography made me aware of the environment even more. This is what led me to a path where I could give back to the environment in my own little way and make my planet a better place to live. Recycling and living a minimalist lifestyle is second nature to me now.
An Individual’s Guide To Waste Audit
All this came to my rescue recently when I travelled to Kanpur from New Delhi by Shatabdi Express. I thought of auditing the waste that an average traveller generates while traveling by this train or any other train that serves food to passengers and understand the level of waste generated every day.
I began collecting almost all the wrappers and packaging in which the food was served to me. Below is the list:
- Paper liners for the tray-1 big and 2 small
- Tissue papers-2
- Multi-layered Coffee sachets-2
- Multi-layered Milk Powder sachets-4
- Sugar Sachets-2
- Multi-layered Biscuit packet-1
- Disposable cups-2
- Juice tetra pack-1
- Plastic straw-1
- Paper packaging for sandwich-1
- Plastic packaging for sandwich-1
- Paper packaging for Samosa-1
- Multi-layered ketchup sachet-1
- Salt and Pepper sachets- 1 each
- Breadstick packaging-1
- Amul butter blister packaging-1
- Amul butter multi-layered cover-1
- Multi-layered Nutcracker packaging-1
- Multi-layered Popcorn packaging-1
- Aluminium food containers – 4
- Multi-layered food container lids- 4
- Ice cream spoon packaging-1
- Wooden Ice cream spoon-1
- Plastic Ice cream cup-1
- Paper ice cream cup lid-1
- Plastic water bottle- 1
All of this weighs only 70 grams, I know it doesn’t sound much, but wait till the end. Out of the above-listed 42 items, only 3 (7% plastics) can be recycled, 8 (19% paper) can be either recycled or composted, and the other 31 items (74%) are neither compostable/biodegradable nor recyclable and will end up in our environment somewhere.
The so-called paper sachets of salt/sugar and so-called disposable paper are actually made up of plastic-lined paper, it means that maybe the paper will decompose in the environment in some time, but the plastic in it will stay there for a very very long time, possibly killing few animals too in its lifespan.
If this wasn’t enough, now imagine this is just the waste that a SINGLE passenger generates during ONE meal (Shatabdi Express are day-trains, and they return to the station of origin the same day).
So let’s do a little math:
Multiply this by 3 (no. of meals)
Multiply this amount by 72 (no. of passengers in each coach)
Multiply that by 17 (average number of coaches in the train)
Now multiply that by 25 (no. of Shatabdi trains operating presently)
The number of waste items comes out to be about 38,55,600 PER DAY!
Every day there are about 50 trains more which serve food on board.
Solution
What can be the solution to this? Following the 5 R’s: refuse, reduce, reuse, re-purpose and recycle, is the best we can do to avoid unnecessary waste generation as an individual. Refusing is the first stage of expecting any change in the system, and what better day to start this change, than Today?
About the author:
Srijan Mathur is a consultant at Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group. In his free time, he enjoys gardening, photography and honing his zero-waste skills.