Why Our Awareness for Plastic Waste is Far from Adequate

Our society now has been filled by campaigns by celebrities, activists, and students that endorse the awareness for plastic waste, which is very positive. We can see this increasing awareness by looking around where many people have bought stainless steel straws, and they feel good for themselves. They think that it's enough to change something, when it is definitely not the case. 

Don't get me wrong, I think that using stainless steel straws is a step in the right direction. However, I do think that it is not enough. What we need to change is our behavior and how we see and perceive things, not what we use to drink our beverages. We truly need to change our habit in our lives, in order to conserve this earth. 

Yes, stainless steel could help save the environment. But imagine if you buy A LOT of stainless steel straws with various colors (because it's trendy now); how much energy is needed to make 1 straw, and how much carbon dioxide gas is emitted because of you? 

Here's my point, what we need to change is: our consumptive behavior.

Let me give you another example of how we still are careless about our plastic wastes. How many of you has started to use food delivery services more frequently due to the existence of GoFood and GrabFood? 

Our lunch that should look like this: 

Typical Lunch | www.whatsnewjakarta.com

Would turn into these wastes because of using delivery systems: 

Wastes generated because of delivered food | private doc

This is a huge problem for us, because we just don't realize how much plastic waste we produce by just changing our behavior from dining in to using delivery services for our lunch.

We also don't realize how much we produce waste by buying all of the trending Bubble Drinks and Ready-to-Go Coffee Plastic Cups that generates new uses of plastics that would encourage producers to produce even more plastics because of the rising demand. We just consume way too much than we should. There's only a limited amount of resources, and we're milking our earth to its very limit. 

Therefore, from this short piece, I just want to remind my readers to be aware of what you're buying and continually improving your consumptive behaviors. There are simple examples that we could do: bringing your own water bottle instead of buying plastic-bottled-mineral water, dining I instead of delivering food whenever possible, consuming less plastic-packaged products, bringing your own utensils (including your stainless-steel straws!), and simply, consume less.

Buying stainless steel straws or reusable shopping bags are a good start. However, it won't be enough. 

Remember, the easiest plastic waste to treat is the ones that was never produced; and more importantly, we have the power to change this!

*Disclaimer: I'm still doing these things that I know are damaging to the environment. Let's try to change together! 

That's all from me, 

Cheers,

Joshua Suhadi 

Sustainable Energy & Environment

Swiss German University