Does Going "Zero Waste" Really Make a Difference?

I'm new to the "zero waste" lifestyle. I've always cared about the environment, but I never even considered the possibility of living without plastic and without landfill waste until I started to hear about YouTubers like "trash is for tossers."

In case you haven't heard of it, "zero-waste" is a recent movement where people strive to send no trash to landfills, and generally reduce the amount of resources we use. Zero-waste is not about how we currently live, it's more of a goal. We all produce waste and have a negative impact on the environment one way or another, but those living zero-waste are constantly striving to lessen that impact.

I've only been on my own zero-waste journey for about 2 months now, but I've made drastic changes to my lifestyle within that time. I've changed my whole bathroom routine, and shop completely differently to before. Within this time, I've encountered people responding with confusion, skepticism and downright disapproval. Mostly, people's response is something like:

"Why? You're really not making much of a difference."

Now, don't get me wrong, I get it. Sometimes it can feel so incredibly frustrating washing up a tiny metal lid to recycle when there are whole countries that dump everything—plastic included—in landfill sights. It's easy to feel disheartened and give up.

The thing is, there has never been a better, more influential time to start living zero-waste.

For better or for worse, capitalism happened. We are now at the peak of a consumerist age, so we might as well make the best of it. The biggest influence I can have on the human race right now is in what I buy. It's a bigger influence than who I vote for in the elections, or what I write and petition for online. What I buy influences what is made and what is sold.

Every time I buy something plastic-free, I am telling companies that I want plastic-free stuff. It sounds simple, because it is. Yet, many people are so utterly unaware of the power they hold in their bank accounts.

If you're reading this thinking, "yeah, but you're just one person," then you are ignoring the fact that every single change begins with a single person standing up for what they believe in. With social media at our fingertips, one single person’s change can spread faster than it ever could have before.

Despite these points, there will of course always be skeptics. This is because of the simple psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. We all sometimes have beliefs that completely contradict our behaviour, whether it's: "I love animals, but I eat them," or "Smoking is bad for your health, but I smoke." When this happens, it's human nature to dislike this contradiction and try to make our thoughts and our behaviour match up.

In this instance, people's belief of "I care about the environment" does not match up with their behaviour of buying and using endless amounts of plastic and waste. So, we either have to decide that we don't really care about the environment, or we have to devalue the significance of our behaviour on the environment. The latter is what most of us do. We say "Yeah I use loads of plastic, but that's because it doesn'treally make a difference," or "there's actually no point in me living zero-waste, because the company I work for doesn't even recycle."

I urge you to ditch your dissonance, and change your behaviour to match what it is you truly care about. In my case (and I bet your case too), it's the environment. Every time you choose a zero-waste choice rather than a wasteful choice, you are exercising your consumer power, and telling companies that you want the stuff you buy to not harm the environment.

If by some miracle I've influenced you to begin your own zero-waste journey, stick around and next time I'll write about how you can begin to go about this. Thank you for taking the time to read this!

From, a girl tryna' Bee-Better :)