Navigating a busy life full of distractions and disappointments, it's easy to forget about the world around you. Unwholesome diets and lack of empathy for the environment plague society today because of grueling work hours and the desire for a fast-paced city lifestyle. As a result, consumption itself is now controversial. I'm aware of my wastefulness and often feel a strong desire to change. So why haven't I?
Restructuring daily routine can feel like a break-up. Ushering out comfort and familiarity is harsh, but sometimes it's necessary - a hurdle I've often struggled to leap. Throughout my daily routine, I consume a lot of stuff. My day begins with breakfast: Nutella on toast, a smoothie, and a banana. The Nutella spread comes in a glass container and the smoothie in a plastic bottle. I then brush my teeth using toothpaste encased in a plastic tube, spray myself with antiperspirant from an aerosol can, comb mousse through my morning mop from a plastic container, apply cologne from a glass bottle and then proceed to work.
These products grant me comfort. Without them, I feel incomplete. While the plastic and glass by-product of the items is recyclable, I’m not going to lie - it ends up in the trash. When I finish a tube of toothpaste, I throw it in the bin. When I finish a bottle of water, I throw it in the bin. When I finish a can of deodorant, I throw it in the bin. You get the picture. And that’s just the morning. Throughout an average day, I consume a whole lot more, such as plastic-packed snacks, biscuits, and bottled beverages. It all ends up in the trash. After a long day at work, I find there's nothing more satisfying than a tasty, well-priced meal. And that's where the problem lies. My lifestyle is fast, convenient and wasteful. I know this, and yet I find it so difficult to change.
The average 8-9-hour workday has programmed working adults to seek convenience and quick thrills to balance the heavy scales of work-life routine. Long work hours keep people unambitious outside the office. The average office worker completes less than three hours of work in eight hours, so it’s no surprise that people feel sluggish and unwilling to change their ways because health and environmental well-being isn't first on the agenda when your stomach is rumbling after a nine-hour shift. The 8-9-hour workday is terribly inefficient, but remains profitable for business, because tired, hungry, dissatisfied and socially deprived people crave quick satisfaction after hours.
Living on the 29th floor of an apartment building in Dubai bustling with busybodies, I avoid leaving my room as much as possible. That being said, I have it pretty easy because I can have food delivered directly to my door. When I finish a 9-hour day at work, the only thing on my mind is a quick-fix of comfort food and Netflix. There’s a garbage chute just down the hall, but no recycling bin in sight. Therefore, every consumer by-product that enters my room ends up in the trash... because it’s convenient.
Living in Auckland I wasn't as wasteful, but only because it was convenient and I wasn't working full-time hours. The recycling bin sat just outside the back door and I had more time on my hands to cook food at home. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming my current behavior on living in Dubai. It’s a very clean and well-presented city. But like all cities, Dubai’s citizens work long hours, and as a result, hardworking individuals crave convenience after a long day. If there are no convenient means to recycle, then citizens, like me, end up disposing anything and everything in the trash.
Take a look at all of those sauce sachets, paper napkins and plastic utensils I collected over the course of two months for the purpose of exhibiting just a taste of the waste that I produce. 61 sauce sachets, 31 plastic utensils and 67 paper napkins that would have ended up in the trash as a by-product of the meals that I consume throughout the week when I’m too lazy to cook. Imagine the size of the pile from two years’ worth of collecting...
CURSE OF CONVENIENCE
There's a ton of information floating around on the Internet aiming to sway individuals to adopt a cleaner lifestyle. But a persistent barrier seems to pop up everywhere: lack of convenience. A 2015 post on Upworthy detailing the ‘top 5 reasons people do and don’t recycle' refers to a 2011 study by Ipsos suggesting that some people recycle because they believe it contributes to a stronger economy, supporting a theory that for every 10,000 tons of solid waste going to landfills, one job is created. That same amount of waste – kept out of landfills – could create 10 recycling jobs or 75 materials reuse jobs.
Sure I was inspired by this information, but even when I acknowledge these statistics and experience a rush of motivation to recycle, the novelty eventually wears off because of inaccessibility and inconvenience. Where are the recycling bins in my building? I don't know, and unless it's obvious, I won't take the time to find out. Throwing by-product in the trash is easier than it is to recycle in my current situation. Even at my office, there isn’t a recycling bin in sight, and yet each staff member has their own personal rubbish bin emptied daily.
The Ipsos report identifies this issue, saying the majority of people don’t recycle because recycling isn’t accessible enough. The second reason is that people find recycling to be too time-consuming, while the third reason is forgetfulness, the fourth reason is ignorance and the fifth reason is cost. "When unsure as to whether an item is recyclable, half of the adults (50%) say that they are most likely to just throw the item away," says the report. "Roughly one in six (18%) say that they would put it into the recycling bin anyway. Just a quarter (26%) report that they would look it up before deciding whether to throw it in the trash or the recycling bin.”
Dubai aims to have zero waste-to-landfill by 2030. It’s an admirable initiative, but how realistic is it? I read that the government recently erected customer service centers in municipality parks and community areas that draw crowds, stressing the need for citizens to share the burden of waste disposal. Experts, according to The National, say the UAE “cannot succeed in recycling until its residents assume the responsibility or are pressured into it by government regulations and incentives.” I believe people do need a push in the right direction because while I admire Dubai for taking the initiative, the job is far from complete because so many people still aren't recycling.
While Dubai stands out in the Middle East for its crackdown on overconsumption, Scandinavia takes the lead globally. Measuring both the green economic performance of 60 countries and how experts assess that performance, the 4th edition of the Global Green Economy Index released in 2014 ranked Denmark's capital Copenhagen as the 'greenest city', known for advanced environmental policies and planning, and a goal to be carbon-neutral by 2025. Copenhagen's infrastructure is designed to encourage bicycling as opposed to driving a car. Singapore is another leading 'green' nation which I recently had the pleasure of visiting. I was impressed by its immaculate appearance. The 1968 ‘Keep Singapore Clean’ campaign was one of Singapore's first national campaigns as an independent nation, aiming to make Singapore the cleanest and greenest city in the region by addressing “inconsiderate” littering.
Even though there are admirable causes around the world pledging to reduce overconsumption, the amount of urban waste produced is growing faster than the rate of urbanization, according to the World Economic Forum. By 2025, there will be “1.4 billion more people living in cities worldwide, with each person producing an average of 1.42kg of municipal solid waste per day.” Lebanon currently faces a "waste crisis" after the authorities shut the main landfill site for garbage from Beirut last year, without providing an alternative. Since then, rubbish collection has halted and festering trash has piled up in the city streets, causing a public health risk. It's a glimpse of what could happen to any nation faced with too much waste.
The worldwide average municipal waste per-person per-day is currently 1.2kg. With tourism campaigns centered on a clean-green image, I was surprised to learn that my home country New Zealand featured as one of the top producers in the developed world with 3.68kg per-person, along with Ireland, Norway, Switzerland and the U.S. as top producers. Moreover, after reviewing The World Counts statistics platform, I found out that, as of 06/04/16, 104 million aluminium cans had been consumed so far this year, along with over 355 million tons of food wasted, over 1 billion tons of waste dumped, and over 1 trillion tons of water used in meat production.
Other statistics published by The World Counts address the overconsumption of meat. It takes 75 times more energy to produce meat than corn, and it takes an area of vegetation seven times the size of the EU to produce enough food for cattle and other livestock animals for Europe alone. A 2015 report by the Chatham House says global consumption of meat is forecast to increase 76 percent on recent levels by mid-century, adding that a “protein transition” is playing out across the developing world: “As incomes rise, consumption of meat is increasing.”
Meat has become a daily staple for the everyday meal in the Western world, and other cultures are following suit. The Chatham House report considers the demand for meat in the developing world to be “excessive" but the developed world still takes the lead. “While a typical American consumes roughly 250g of meat a day, an average Indian will consume less than 10g," says the report. In reality, meat should be consumed as a rarity, like it was before excessive farming took hold to feed 7 billion+ people. The World Wildlife Fund says around 50% of the world's habitable land has already been converted to farming land.
There are plenty of other foods I could consume day-to-day, and yet meat continues to feature as what I consider to be an essential part of my daily diet. Years of Western cultural conditioning have led me to believe that a meal is incomplete without a side of meat, even though I understand the harsh realities of overconsumption and animal cruelty. There are technological solutions to overconsumption of natural food resources, like hydroponic gardening, a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions in water, without soil. But it's an expensive process and only provides part of a solution to a grand complication.
OLD HABITS DIE HARD
So where does all of this leave me? While I’d love to share an inspiring tale of my transition to an eco-friendly vegan lifestyle, I can’t, because it hasn’t happened. Supporting myself has taken center stage the past year since I moved out of home and relocated to Dubai alone. Working long hours, every decision I make is based on spending within my means and feeling content. That means purchasing the cheapest food options available within proximity to where I live to maintain financial security, regardless of whether it comes in wasteful packaging or if it’s considered to be ‘natural’ or 'ethical'.
In her book The Problem of Changing Food Habits, anthropologist Margaret Mead said the challenge of changing eating habits is attributed to the difficulty of altering habitual behavior. Mead says culture plays a major role in what people decide to eat. She suggests that, because cultural traditions are so important to people, recommending healthier foods will not change an individual’s eating habits alone. Traditions and eating habits play a vital role in many people’s lives, more so than an introduced new healthy way to eat, even though there is so much research and evidence describing reasons why people should eat healthier. Traditions provide people with comfort and familiarity because they’re learned in early childhood. Food can also be eaten based off of mood, seen as a comfort or stress reliever.
But does that mean imprudence is acceptable? At the end of the day, it’s your life, and you can live it however you see fit. But it’s wise to consider the consequences, not just considering your own health, but the worlds. Working in media, I've been exposed to some of the splendor that Dubai has to offer, and often that involves blatant overconsumption. It's been incredible to experience the lavishness, but also very eye-opening. During a recent sponsored corporate dinner, for the first time, I felt guilty gazing over the elaborate spread of food provided for just a handful of fortunate people who would not be able to consume it all - so much good food gone to waste just to please a privileged few.
Don’t get me wrong, indulging in an extravagant buffet is satisfying, to say the least, and I'm grateful to have food on my plate every night. But considering the fact that 56 billion farm animals are slaughtered every year for food, and that consumers in wealthy countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa every year, our greedy and destructive nature proves one thing: old habits die hard. If current trends don’t change, generations down the line won’t be left with anything to inherit. Food for thought...
Comments
Post a Comment