Minimalism and Environmental impact

It just felt wrong and something to be ashamed of, after reading Why Greta Thunberg is the Person of the Year and looking at what we are doing to our planet. How much more do we want a 16-year old do?

What Greta says is very true — “governments need to act”. If they don’t act NOW, our planet stands no chance. Gen X and millennials who will be gone in a few decades might be ok with this inaction (#actnow #grass-roots-alone-wont-work #needs-to-be-topdown). Countries negotiating who should do more is useless bickering; India, claiming that developed countries had their turn, cannot ask them to hold back, and developed nations like USA complaining that it’s doing a lot already but countries like India and China are not taking on larger responsibilities. This blame game is like a murderer pointing fingers at an arsonist — both are evil and it’s not an either/or choice.

I recently watched a documentary on minimalism called Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. My family of three lives in a 2500 sq-ft house, which per world standards is huge, but according to some American standards is not big. I have always been conscious about not filling up the entire space. One of my friends said “Sri, your house echoes” that’s because its empty (think minimalism). An extension of Parkinson’s work/time law is that “things expand to fill space available”. In my Econ class, Prof. Rice always said, “There’s no ‘need’, it’s all just want”. This applies to a lot of things that we accumulate in our homes, especially because of how inexpensive things are these days and how easy it is to buy them. It can’t get any easier than 1-click buy and Prime NOW; wait till we have Artificial Intelligence based auto-buy.

Merging minimalism and environmental friendliness made sense based on my priorities. This write-up is related to consumer-based environmental impact, tied to me wanting to be a minimalist; industry based environmental impact is completely different ball game.

Here is my 3-pronged approach towards minimalism and being more environmental-friendly. I got some cues from Buyerarchy of Needs and 5R’s.

Refuse & Reduce: Think twice before buying anything. This helps with me wanting to be a minimalist. Use “add one after removing at least one” logic wherever applicable. The mantra will be — only add one when needed and not when wanted. For things that have already been bought, in other words, damage has been done, either use them to the end-of-life or recycle or donate. I ask myself “Why buy in the first place?”. This was before I paid any attention to the environment (#thankyou-greta). Trying to reduce by recycling or donating contradicts being environmentally friendly, since this generates waste compared to using the product to its life.

Examples of how I am implementing:

• Walking around the home every few weeks to look for unnecessary items and donating or recycling or trashing is my thing. Last week, I decided to donate the night stand. My wife wasn’t sure about that “That’s needed, where will we put the books and the remotes?”. The night stand is gone now. Books go back to the book shelf and the remotes sit on the window trim.
• Donate gently used son’s toys at Goodwill
• Pack of single-use plastic straws (#dumb-ridiculous) which I bought before realization — in this case I have no choice but to use them
• For every new toy I am buying for my son, I will give up at least one toy from his collection.
• For every non-monthly recurring purchase, reduce existing items by the same amount. I recently bought Rachel Ray 10-peice cookware so reduced existing cookware by the same amount.
• Donate decent cookware at Goodwill; deposit unusable cookware at nearby scrapyard. Before I knew better, I used to dump these with trash that ended up in landfill (#dumb #ashamed) https://earth911.com/recycling-guide/how-to-recycle-cookware

Buy ethical, environmental-friendly and organic: When I have to buy, then I’ll buy environmental-friendly. My bathroom is full of all kinds of products. More varieties of shampoos than people in the house, several body washes in various scents with all sorts of chemicals in non-recyclable plastic bottles, dollar store q-tips (#ban-single-use plastic), closetful of Charmin tissues and Bounty napkins (half a forest worth), electric tooth brush with batteries that can’t be replaced (#how-else-will-companies-make-money), 5-blade Gillette razors that tell me when to change the razor (#because-humans-are-dumb), foam shaving cans (aerosols and non-recyclable), dental picks (#ban-single-use plastic)

Examples of how I am changing:

• Switch to safety blade razor and all-natural shaving “soap” and brush
• Buy bio-degradable trash bags, q-tips
• Use silk/charcoal dental floss; all this while, I have been using plastic picks (#dumb-ridiculous)
• Use 100% recycled toilet paper. I wonder how I never paid attention before?
• Use rags, kitchen towels and cloth napkins instead of paper towels as much as possible.
• No more Ziploc, use glass mason jars instead
• Say no to straws, plastic cups or lids at restaurants before placing meal orders.
• Go grocery shopping with mesh bags and reusable grocery bags. This is where governments need to act, why is it difficult to ban single-use plastic and find alternatives? Have you wondered why every banana has to have a sticker on it?

Things I can’t avoid (this is where governments and companies need to act): Despite this effort, I’m only making a very small dent in saving our planet and will need governments to step-up. Until then, we all need to practice proper disposal or recycling or donation methods.

Examples of how I am implementing:

• Instead of dumping expired / unused prescription medicines in the toilet, I will use pharmacy medicine disposal locations for proper disposal
• Deposit dead batteries/ bulbs in the recycle bins at work. Switch to non-battery-operated devices.
• Donate unnecessary furniture and items that I collected over the years to Goodwill or equivalent.

With all this, I’ll only score a ‘C’ as a minimalist and an eco-friendly person, but this is a start, much better than my current score of an ‘F’.

Yet to assess and plan how to handle these…

1. Books: I have always fantasized a giant fancy book shelf with tons of books. There are only a few books that I’ll ever go back to, so I plan to donate the rest. Since, I am not an e-book kind of person and love to take notes while reading, I cannot borrow books from the library. Going forward, I will buy paperback books (used if available) and donate them once I am done.
2. Clothes and shoes: Claiming that I am fashionable, I accumulated a lot of clothes (ten jackets, several pairs of jeans, shirts, tees) and three racks of shoes. After all, having a walk-in closet with well-organized apparel is must-have. (#dumb #vanity #hoarding). Will read about Project 333
3. Cosmetics and other bathroom stuff: Finished one round of correcting mistakes (that’s approach #3 above). I will be doing one more in a few weeks.

Will leave you with this…

Randall Munroe, in his what if? book, imagines what Times Square will look like in a million years: Our most lasting relic will probably be the layer of plastic we’ve deposited across the planet. By digging up oil, processing it into durable and long-lasting polymers, and spreading it across the Earth’s surface, we’ve left a fingerprint that could outlast everything else we do. Our plastic will become shredded and buried, and perhaps some microbes will learn to digest it, but in all likelihood, a million years from now, an out-of-place layer of processed hydrocarbons — transformed fragments of our shampoo bottles and shopping bags — will serve as a chemical monument to civilization.