Total annual waste of Silo Cafe, Melbourne, Australia (Photo credits: BBC.com) There has been a recent rising popularity about stories of people who live a Zero-Trash life, covered by media outlets like Buzzfeed and seeker stories. In most cases we see houses with very "Asian" family stereotypes and the super amazing "one jam jar = the total amount of trash in a year". Perhaps at some point you have thought to try a Zero-Trash life. So what are the benefits of and how to live a Zero-Trash life? One of the biggest ways to live a Zero-Trash life is staring right at your face; follow the 3 Rs, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Reusing is basically the most essential to reduce the total amount of trash produced. Perhaps you've been to the home of an Asian family and see the numerous collections of plastic bags and reused ice cream containers to store other food products and etc, etc. Well this, as stupid as it feels, is the biggest ways to live a Zero-Trash life. It saves cash too! No more need to buy trash bags when u have the bags given to you when u shop at Walmart. The milk jugs u had just emptied could be the cheapest water bottle u can buy for a road trip. The list goes on and on, the more creative you are with your trash, the cheaper life becomes. Now recycling is easy but most people just throw their ''recyclable" trash into the recycle bins and thats it. However there is alot more to recycling than there seems to it. Lets talk about plastics. Plastics are not all the same, the plastic used to make a lego brick is not exactly the same as the plastic used to make bags. And you would think so too, one being sturdy and one being flexible. Well plastics are labelled differently. If you look around on your plastic products, you should see a triangle with a number in it, like in the picture below. Now plastics labelled numbers 1-6 are recyclable whereas 7 is not recyclable. Each number represents a different type of plastic so of 1-6 which are most easily recycled. Well let us talk about 6, polystyrene, also known as styrofoam. Easily identifiable by look and the one you should avoid the most. 1 would be the most common plastic, a plastic that ends with -pete like polyethylene terephthalate, usually used to make soda bottles. 3 is PVC, polyvinyl chloride, used to makes pipes etc. 4 is a flexible plastic, low-density polyethylene, usually used to make plastic bags. Plastics that are not in 1-6 like nylon is in 7 which is not recyclable. Now let us talk about composting. This is to get rid of non-recyclable organic materials such as banana peels or remains of vegetables after cutting and washing. I'm sure you'all have heard of composting before but probably thoughts its hard to setup or start. Well today i shall debunk that and make your life a heck load easier with composting. First let us define organic material. Anything that you know comes from the earth, except metals, are considered organic. This includes fruits, vegetables and weeds. Now here's the thing, after the food is cooked like leftover fried chicken, we usually don't wanna compost it. This is as the oil from foods like these can cause issues with the compost's consistency and the decomposers doing the job. Meats are some thing you might want to avoid as well; proteins give off ammonia and urea when undergoing decomposition, the chemical that makes urine smell, so you might not want to use meats. Now let us start with how to establish a compost. First you should look for a location in your backyard or if you're comfortable with it like me, you can do it indoors. Then again its recommended to do this outdoors around the soil. You can start your compost in a hole in your backyard or in a bin, preferbly not made of wood. You can technically do it just on the soil itself but that's unsightly. Decomposition happens naturally by bacteria, that's why your food can rot, but it happens very slowly. So now we need decomposers such as earthworms and millipedes. Earthworms should easily be found when digging into your backyard or front lawn. Millipedes can be found in parks under leaf litter and tall grass. Be careful as millipedes can spray a foul smelling gas around its body as u pick it up so try to use gloves. Put these little critters into the compost bin along with a bit of soil and dampen it with water. From now on you can place whatever organic material you want to get rid off in here. If you are interested in bringing the bin up to the next level, you can consider introducing woodlouse, commonly found under rotting logs. The compost formed can be used on plants in your yard or mixed with soil for potted plants. It's basically natural fertiliser. Now the benefits of living a Zero-Trash life is clear, less money is spent and life becomes easier when disposing your trash, no hassle over large heavy trash bags and foul smelling rotting food. It kinda forces you to eat cheaper and healthier too, spending less on meats that usually come in plastic packaging and more on fresh vegetables. This is all at the same time of helping the environment, remember that we have just one Earth, and its is our precious Earth that we live on, if we don't protect it, it'll be gone before we know it.
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