Crisis of Commodities? How to Deal with it in Everyday Life

There are green proclamations in every television broadcast, on the internet, in newspapers, on social networks, regarding the need to reduce waste, not only plastic, but of all types.

From paper and cardboard packaging for online purchases, to food packaging whatever it is, from beverage packaging to used appliances, from old cell phones to used clothes, from broken tiles to food scraps, from old furniture to mattresses and many other things.

If we are slowly understanding that it is necessary to make a correct separate collection, to help the recycling system to reduce waste materials, that is those fractions of materials that we throw in the dustbin but they are not recyclable, due to separation errors in the home or due to product characteristics, we must understand that not everything is recyclable today and that recycling still has an environmental impact.

The recycling of waste is necessary to save raw materials that we take from nature to produce new materials, to reduce non-recyclable waste that could be accumulated in landfills, but At the same time, such an energy-consuming industrial organization makes sense if its environmental impact is sustainable.

By sustainability of the traditional recycling system, we mean the accounting of the percentages of non-recyclable waste that are produced at the end of the process, the analysis of the critical issues on the creation of these non-recyclable fractions, the amount of green energy used to process and reprocess the waste and the CO2 emission of the process.

It is not enough today to have understood that products should not be thrown away but recycled, because sometimes it would be better to take other paths, if possible, instead of starting the waste at recycling.

Waiting for the industrial process of chemical recycling to be consolidated, which allows the chemical breakdown of the components of a material and the reuse of molecules as new raw materials, without generate waste, we must question the balance of many factors in waste treatment.

Furthermore, in this period in which the prices of raw materials have exploded and there is a marked unavailability on the market, I believe there is no better time to analyze source the system of consumption that generates, then, the waste.

Consumerism, in the current era of attention to the environment, has unfortunately not changed compared to the past, we buy, use (little) and throw away .. (a lot), then someone will recycle the product (maybe).

It is a wrong and negative approach for the environment, which involves the failure to solve the problem of the consumption of natural raw materials, the environmental costs of recycling and waste that ends up in landfills.

The inattentive citizen cannot be completely blamed on the problem, without taking into account the lack of attention of politics to the issue, but today, it is necessary to work as a team to improve the environmental situation and reduce product costs.

If we take into consideration the products that generate the most waste, we can identify, among others, the packaging of the items we buy, often made of materials whose life could be very long, decades, but we use them with the disposable principle.

Soft drink and water bottles in glass or plastic, bottles of detergents or body products, food trays, etc ..

All these materials are made with durable raw materials and therefore it must be ensured that they are not thrown away at the end of use, even if they would go into the recycling stream (expensive), but it must be ensured that they are returnable to the supplier for their new filling or that they are filled by the citizen himself by reusing the packaging.

So let's talk about returnable empty for products to be sanitized and empty to fill, for example, for detergents or soaps, placing boxes in shops to fill bottles to reuse.

The returnable vacuum, however, is not always convenient, as it involves the transport of the empty packaging with a high environmental impact, therefore, if the charging is far from the consumer, it may be less burdensome to recycle it.

Here it becomes a social responsibility to educate the citizen on the true environmental impact of a purchase choice without allowing the Greenwashing actions that the producer of the good could do.

Two other important issues concern the reuse of assets and km. Zero.

Many items are thrown away, without a real reduction in the features of the product functionality or aesthetics, and then buy new ones.

The concept of product reuse does not mean going, occasionally, to local markets to look for the used product, but to create a collection network of reusable items, with the collaboration of producers, who recondition the object, fix it if necessary, issue a guarantee and re-enter it on the market.

A latest generation mobile phone can become obsolete from a marketing point of view in just under a year, but excellent and coveted for those who do not follow trends, because throw it away?

As regards the Km. Zero it is increasingly necessary, with a view to reducing CO2 emissions and to reduce the general costs of the product, handling costs are always recalculated within the product, try to buy goods produced ever closer to the sphere of consumption.

Why buy a bottle of mineral water that comes from a place 500 Km away from me when I have a source that produces a product similar to 50 K.? (or why not drink tap water or go and fill carbonated water from municipal dispensers?).

Why buy a candle that comes from the other side of the world when in our country there are waxworks that produce them, just to give examples.

There could be a thousand other examples that would concern the way we manage our daily mobility, our food choices, political, social, cultural ones, and many others.

Remember that each of our purchasing choices creates more or less pollution.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.

Photo: WP.F.