My Efforts to be Sustainable
After I published an Instagram story about being a writer who doesn't write, my friend Jenna Stein suggested I write an article about sustainability. "Nah..." was the first thought that came into my mind. Sure, I am a trained journalist and call myself a writer but I haven't written articles per se in years since my writing took a whole other path and became all about heartbreak. But I digress.
I should say that I am no expert in sustainability and can only speak from personal experience about what I do to try and make my life more sustainable, which is not always easy.
Swapping is the new shopping
One easy decision on the sustainability journey was replacing clothes shopping with clothes swapping. I have been swapping my clothes at Berlin Clothing Swap events since I heard about it in 2018 and I barely ever bought a new item of clothing since. As a volunteer for Berlin Clothing Swap, I became much more aware of what a clothing article being extremely cheap really means, the reality often being that someone else was basically enslaved to produce it. And now I cringe every time someone even mentions shopping for clothes at Primark or the like.
With the current lockdown situation, a clothing swap event is not possible, which is why Jenna created the group Clothing Swap in Berlin on Facebook so that we all could still have the chance to give a new home to those items that are still in good condition but don't suit us anymore. And if the clothes are no longer wearable, there are textile recycling sites or even some shops that accept them.
Recycling, recycling, recycling
Another big part of this journey for me has been recycling. I have always recycled. The first product I knew was recyclable was glass since I remember seeing the green containers in the street as a little kid. When I was about 10 years old, we started sorting paper for recycling at school. I immediately brought that idea home. Some time after that, we started having containers in the street to collect used paper and cardboard for recycling. I knew, however, that some places already had proper recycling points with containers for plastic and metal as well. Not in my neighborhood though. So I wrote a letter to the mayor when I was about 13 to ask for a recycling point for my street. I don't know if anyone read it, but the truth is, not long after that, we got one. So recycling became a routine and since a very young age, throwing a plastic bottle in the regular trash became an unbearable thought.
When I studied in Salford, UK, back in 2003, I was shocked that recycling plastic was still not a thing there. I still collected all my plastics in hopes of getting them recycled somewhere and I would keep them in a laundry basket in the flat's corridor right outside my room. We had a cleaning service in the dorm and I remember being in bed and hearing the cleaning guys' voices saying to each other: "Is this rubbish? It looks like rubbish." I jumped out of bed and opened the door just in time to stop them from taking it to the trash. And then I found out about a recycling facility a few train stations away and took my plastics there, only to realize it had all been in vain since they only collected paper. I didn't know what else to do so, unfortunately, that large bag of plastics did end up in the trash.
Later, back in Portugal, I worked in a child care store where we would sell strollers, baby chairs and all sorts of big items that came in huge cardboard boxes. I was always the one sorting them once the articles were sold, removing the sticky tape and taking them out to the proper container for recycling, because nobody else had — and I quote — "time for that". People looked at me like that was my own personal whim. Later, I worked as a waitress in a Café and again, nobody could care less about recycling, so I would be the one separating the items and taking them with me, sometimes in the train back home, because there was no recycling point in the vicinity.
Then I came to Berlin and I was super happy that recycling was mandatory by law and every building had it's own recycling containers and you could also separate biodegradable trash and that there were even three different colored containers just for glass. I lived a happily recycling lifestyle for about three and a half years. And then I moved to Wedding. When I walked down the stairs to the inner patio right after signing the contract for my new apartment in 2018, I noticed for the first time that there was no yellow container in the backyard. I could not believe it. I immediately called my landlord and he explained that there used to be one but the BSR (the entity responsible for waste management in Berlin) took it away, because apparently people threw all sorts of things in there and all the recyclables would get contaminated and could no longer be recycled. Which means I cannot recycle plastic in my building even though it is supposed to be illegal not to do so. So I became sort of an environmental outlaw, taking my plastic and metal recyclables to another building — which is also supposedly illegal.
Getting rid of plastic
But I know what you're thinking. Why am I going on and on about recycling plastic, when we all know that it barely solves anything? Recycling plastic should be the last resource solution, I know, and avoiding it all together, the first.
I wish plastic weren't this problematic, horrible thing, I really do. It is still the most practical cheap and hygienic option that I know of. But of course, it being cheap and therefore still heavily used for everything is gonna cost us all a whole lot in the long run, so going about using plastic as we have so far is definitely no longer an option. Which is why I am trying. It is just much harder than I would have thought.
I am just one person in my household and the amount of plastic waste I produce in a week is just crazy. First of all, a lot of what I buy in the supermarket comes in a plastic container. A lot! Either veggies, meat, dairy or snacks, most things are just wrapped in plastic and, if you are on a budget like me, there is no way around it. For example, I started buying my meat at the butchers to avoid all the single-use plastic containers from supermarkets. It lasted about a week. So I went back to buying packaged meat in the hopes that I will some day be able to afford the butchers again. I should add that Lidl has recently been reducing the amount of plastic the meat comes wrapped in. It is not much, but it is a start. The problem with sustainability is that it is not financially sustainable for a lot of people. I would love to buy my veggies at Bio Company and Denns but unfortunately can not afford it. The price difference is just too much. Not to mention that sometimes you think you're buying plastic-free fruit, like in the Turkish grocery store next to my building, until one day you see from your window that they bought it in 1 kg plastic containers and then unpack it to sell it loose.
The price difference situation happens in other contexts too, like cosmetic, where the solid alternatives, apart from a few exceptions, are still considerably pricier than their liquid counterparts. I was luckier in this department though. I went back to using soap bars instead of shower gel and even got a facial cleansing bar. The shampoo and other hair products still come in their traditional plastic home, because my scalp was not happy with any of the solid alternatives I tried on it. And apart from some a few shampoos and conditioners, the market is really not there yet. I heard on BBC World Service that there are these machines that dispense shampoo, conditioner, etc, and they would be used in stores and automated to dispense all brands of shampoos and conditioners, and hopefully other products as well. How amazing would it be to just go to the shop and be able to refill your shampoo bottle without giving up on your favorite brand?
What else?
In my waste-reduction journey, which is barely just beginning, I also got rid of:
cotton pads to clean my face or remove make up — I now use reusable bamboo pads or a microfiber towel instead.
saran wrap — I bought recycled aluminum foil, beeswax wraps and reusable stretchy lids for bowls and plastic containers;
flushable wipes — they don't actually disintegrate like regular toilet and result in bundled up fatbergs in sewers;
washing dishes by hand — I got a dishwasher: the water and detergent;
consumption is much lower with the plus of being a life-changing kitchen aid!
It is still a small list but it is a start and hopefully I will be adding more items to it sooner rather than later. I do what I can and I believe that is already something. Achieving a zero-waste lifestyle is not impossible but still difficult and I am confident that the world (myself included) is going — albeit rather slowly — in that direction.
May 2021