Let us start learning to say No! Not asking for poly bags from sabjiwale bhaiyas and being okay with saying NO when they start putting our groceries in a plastic bag. Emergency Dabba: When I go out with friends or family for a meal, I carry a small compartment box to pack the leftover food on the table. Yes, the restaurants can pack it for us in a disposable box, but I hate collecting tons of those single-use plastics. They are going to be collected this way in growing numbers and aren’t even recyclable if I decide to dispose of them and not collect them. A box used just to transport the food from the restaurant to my house is used for minimal hours but stays on the planet for decades. This is avoidable by carrying our own non-toxic, reusable dabba, which is easy to do and if we are packing a full dish or 2, maybe we need to keep a check on how much we are ordering and be patient next time. Sometimes we may think, “It is just a small portion of food left. Why bother packing? Let’s just leave it”. But we don’t realise how much food goes to waste like this, which could have filled so many stomachs. Remember how parents told us to finish our food at home as kids? Why not do it outside as well, as a lot of effort and resources go into growing veggies, harvesting, transporting to the shops, transporting to the restaurant, washing them properly, cooking with other ingredients, and then we just leave it and it all goes to the dump. So we try to order as much as we can consume, but if there are leftovers, dabba to the rescue.
Single-use cutlery and straws are widely used so I like to carry my own reusable metal straw, spoon and fork. I was so excited when I started doing this that I made a small pouch from waste fabrics just to keep my travel cutlery clean in my bag at all times, for whenever I feel like having fresh juice or chaat on the street. Even if the café or street vendor offers wooden cutlery, it is still single-use if we are not going to use it again. I believe that anything single-use is not quite great for the environment as it went through the whole process of being made, using all that energy and resources to be used just 1 time for a few minutes and then ending up polluting and increasing our trash on the planet.
I try to use our resources consciously with these super simple and effective ways whenever I travel as we have no planet B and this is the least I can do. The basic mantra that I like to follow is to avoid one-time products as much as possible and opt for reusable alternatives wherever possible. There is a different kind of happiness I get when I go with these simple switches for the environment. I hope some of these simple acts motivate you too.
