Less Stuff, More Happiness

It’s all about “more” these days. Best if this “more” comes wrapped in lots and lots of plastic.

Why is it so hard to reduce the stuff we surrounded with? All the things laying around where we live, that accumulates everywhere and that never really seems to dissapear.

Once is Not Enough

I am definitely a freak. Disposable stuff freaks me out. Whenever I get to a party or a get-together I don’t really know what to do.

Of course I’m not allergic to plastic. Rather, I simply cannot stand the idea of something being used just that one time. At the parties we eat on disposable plates with disposable cutlery and drink from disposable glases. My – and I’m sure also your – grandparents would probably cry seeing that kind of waste.

But really, isn’t the disposable lifestyle just about what is common today?

Bring Your Own

Fill your stomach, not the landfill – that’s what I call a catchy headline for a campaign. Let’s start the fight on the convenient.

“It takes approximately 20 seconds to put our food into take out containers. Convenient? No, it’s actually inconvenient since the packaging can remain in our landfills forever, causing continued damage to us and our world.” says the TakeOutWithOut campaign and promotes change.

Bag it

News from the plastic bag front. There is a new documentary out there asking “is your life too plastic?”

This movie got it all. It tells us more about the plastic bags we are trying to avoid and the politics behind it. It also goes into the recycling topic. Finally, you will get more on how plastic is destroying our oceans and how it is bad for health.

You are not Changing the World.

One week after the No Impact project I am finally facing the critique. Does going green make sense at all?

Gernot Wagner from the New York Times just recently wrote an editorial titled Going Green but Getting Nowhere. Starting of by saying – provokingly – you can go as green as you want, “just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming.”

Day 2: Trash

Not buying anything is not so hard for a week. But the second challenge which started today is tricky: not producing any waste.

The idea is to see how unnecessary are all the things we throw into the trash-bin every day. In other words, it means taking responsability and control of the amount of waste we produce. What happens to the things when we dispose of them?

An Ode to the World’s Recyclers

In Freiburg they head from one rubbish bin to another and in Buenos Aires they move along streets opening garbage bags: the city recyclers.

I can only imagine how much rubbish we would produce if they did not exist. Personally, those people are my heroes in a world in which still only a minority of people recycles glass, paper, plastic ect.

“No, I don’t want a bag”

New country. New challenge. How hard can it be not to go home with a bunch of new plastic bags every time I go grocery shopping?

In Argentina I find plastic-free shopping to be quite a hussle. It is not like that all over the world though. Let us have a look around: Bangladesh did it in 2000. China has done it too in 2008. And by numbers like 500 billion to 1 trillion a year worldwide, I find that a rather necessary move. Those countries have

Oceans of Waste

We are still on our surfing holiday, so here comes the Surfers’ Special, Part Two.

Imagine that you are paddling into the best wave ever and that is when you get hit by an empty paint bucket or your hands get caught up in a lost fishing net.

Do you think that won’t happen? Well, think again. The oceans are becoming oceans of waste and your favourite beach won’t be spared.

If you don’t believe it