Lipstick Nerd

I am PISSED…. With a PASSION! Here’s why you should be too…

Estimates:

103 BILLION TONS of food waste generated in 2018 globally.

103 MILLION TONS of textile waste generated each year, of which 95% is recyclable.

100 BILLION BOXES produced in US alone each year; 33.3 million tons generated in 2018.

82.2 MILLION TONS of packaging and container waste produced in 2018.

And what are we doing about it? Buying MORE things we don’t need online, MORE than ever.

What SHOULD we be doing about it? Refusing to eat meat!!!...

No, not really… but there are less extreme ways to be part of the solution.

Let’s begin….

Food Waste:

Think about it: we have trash pick-up, we have recycle pick-up, and we even have yard waste pick-up. But food waste?

It’s estimated that 40% of food goes wasted in the US, alone. Where does it end up? Mixed in with all the trash in the landfills. It's too easy to toss in the trash, to be forgotten and never consumed again.

However, if it can be eaten or grown in a field, it can be composted. That’s right; so your: Fruits, vegetables, dairy products, grains, bread, eggshells, meats… can all be properly composted. Newspaper, coffee filters, napkins, etc. etc.? Compost.

While there is minimal science involved in maintaining the pH for rich organic compost, luckily it takes zero brain cells to figure out if it can go in the compost bin or not. So why aren't we making composting a common household activity? And why aren’t municipals taking this into account in their recycling programs?

For now, who knows why…. but with twenty-two and a half grand, I’d buy a piece of land and an ol’ dump truck and go door to door myself, and create a following and impact. I'd imagine I could build my way up in going to local legislature to try to implement solutions to this growing global problem by making food waste composting as common as the trash receptacle pick up. You know, give all the politicians a little “food for thought”.

Not only would composting cut down on unnecessary landfill waste, but it also has the potential to cut back on excessive fertilizer use that is making out water toxic and killing our marine life through algal blooms.

Compost is a naturally organic way to provide nutrients and the microorganism needed for thriving crops… and all of this can be done essentially for little to no cost!

Memberful would be great in organizing outreach and managing communication with members. Members would include: residents wanting their food waste picked up, food entities wanting their food waste picked up on-site (grocery stores, coffee shops, cafeterias, etc.), farmers and lawn service whom might also like to become involved, and many more! And then there are the members whom would want to receive the mature and nutrient rich compost post production. It's now a non-vicious cycle!

That’s the general idea, now let’s move onto…..

Textile Waste:

True story. Over the course of the pandemic, I have taken up a hobby-like passion in upcycling clothing. It’s simple to do, and it creates an overall “new” feeling to clothing items that individuals are more than willing to purchase and love the item like it’s new again.

T-shirt has a small hole in it and now it’s ruined? Not so much, that’s a simple fix. Add MORE holes to make it look intentional to give it a worn look. A small stain on the shirt that you can’t seem to get out? Simple: tie dye it! Got a little bleach on your favorite shirt? Spray it with MORE bleach! Rip in your jeans? Rip them more!

And so on, and so forth.

The creative possibilities are endless! Throw the clothes in a decontamination sterilizing machine and PRESTO CHANGE-O! They’re just as good as… if not BETTER than, new!

I would even love more than anything to take my upcycling passion to the new hobby of upcycling furniture, but I’ll save those thoughts for another time….

Memberful again, could help maintain a following and make for an excellent opportunity to offer members further savings through email communication. I would also love to get a passionate community going full of artists whom may want to join the upcycle journey with me! Memberful could help me expand my reach.

Packaging Waste:

If anything, the pandemic has really allowed for a hiatus from the bustle and distractions of just how over-consumed our daily lives have become with unnecessary clutter. Whether it be penny pinching preventing us from splurging, or just getting tired of all the useless waste we create in our endless consumerism through the convenience of insta-online purchases. Online shopping has become even more of the new norm post-COVID, and I’m horrendously guilty of this. If it bothered me 5 years ago, it’s certainly bothering me more now.

Ironically, I used to be part of the problem working seasonally for THE largest online marketplace that I’m sure 98% of us have at least bought one item from over the course of this pandemic. And that bothers me. It bothered me then as I spent 12 hour shifts that involved packaging singular one items such as one eyeliner in a box that was 5 times oversized than what was necessary. With only eight size variations in boxes, if one box is just a centimeter too small, you up the size to a box that is now 5 times to large, and move on with your production. But wait, now that the box is 5 times too large, there's a little too much room for the item to endlessly shift around in. The solution? Here, just pack in this air-filled plastic packaging bubble wrap to secure the free space.

Screw the environment, we are all about logistics and meeting numbers… and we have 2 million more packages to worry about that need to be fulfilled by the end of the day. And so the vicious cycle repeats.

If you mentally visualized this magnitude correctly, you’d equate that…. That’s A LOT of waste!

Back then I didn’t think about the impacts my line of work was having on society. It wasn’t until after I started studying my undergrad in Public Health that truly opened my eyes to the smallest impacts we have on our health and the environment that can far outweigh the more obvious bad habits. I’m thankful for the science I studied, as it helped me to perceive the world we live in differently, and to better understand prevention measures by recognizing just how poisonous human behavior has become when we make a habit out of the smallest things we repeat on a daily basis.

After all, it’s the ants in accumulation that make up the largest biomass on earth; not humans, not even elephants…. that's right... those small, tiny, miniscule ants beneath our feet outweigh us all! Yet it’s ironic how everyone always wants to talk about the more obvious elephant in the room.

When it comes to packaging waste, for me, the solution is simple: reusable shipping packaging.

Think about it, why was a certain movie service that could be rented just about anywhere down the street in some shady parking lot as long as you saw some static big red box lit up, so successful?

Easy. Access and convenience. Ease of use, and no extra stop needed. On the way to pick up some groceries? Visit the big red box for the latest movie to watch with your dinner. On the way to pick up your prescription? Why not check out the big red box before you leave. Grabbing gas? BIG... RED.... BOX!

Convenience creates habit, and immediate access creates instant gratification in a reward. Cheap membership is also a plus.

So why can’t our packaging be as easily returned and reused through incentivization? Do certain states not refund individuals for glass and aluminum bottles and cans? I think we can instill the same system in reusable packaging.

Memberful would help create a subscription need to the service. Individuals could purchase the reusable packaging online (it would essentially cost no more than a new box from the post office), except when the reusable package is received, a certain percentage of the money spent on the packaging can be refunded and disbursed back into the customers account. It’s as simple as that.

Before I go....

The thing that irk me the most is, I view this horrendous lack of care as a societal challenge that needs awareness and a not-so-out-of-the-box approach. It truly is so simple. A following to prioritize new habits to break us from our old ways of “convenience”. Who says that being environmentally conscious can’t be easy?

It would be great to build an online platform that encourages and promotes social change by reducing our carbon footprint and wasteful habits. Memberful just might do the trick!

Now I’m not saying we can’t eat meat... in case you didn't pick up on it, that was just a joke earlier…. but what I AM saying is that if we can become mindful and accountable on what habits we make and what actions we become members of through our participative consent, then I believe that’s the start of getting somewhere. That to me, sounds like a start to the TOTAL PACKAGE!