We live in a society that is built around consumption. We buy things, we use them, and then we dispose of them. Everything is geared around replacing the items that we bought. A new car every few years. New clothes. New furniture. Fashions and styles will shift continually and, in order to keep up with these, we need to keep consuming and getting rid of our old unwanted items.
But this leads to massive amounts of waste. Many items are not degradable, meaning that they just end up being heaped high in landfill sites. All the while, these products may well have drawn on the planet’s natural resources when they were created and when we use them. This adds up to a looming environmental crisis that we all must play our part in addressing.
While big businesses and governments should hold the blame for creating a society that is geared toward just a heightened demand for goods, it is down to all of us to get involved in the solution by changing our habits.
Make Do And Mend
Very often, when we have something in our home that is starting to wear down, or has a broken part, we discard the entire thing and replace it. A chair leg is starting to work loose, it gets disposed of. A TV breaks, it is replaced. But very often, it would be cheaper and easier to repair these items and extend their lifespan by a few additional years.
For many home electronics items and household appliances, you can buy spare parts. For example, when your fridge breaks, buy a new purifying filter and have it fitted.
If you are handy at DIY you may be able to fit these replacement parts or carry out repairs yourself, however, if you are not, there are many repair companies available that will be able to help you.
Reduce
When it comes to buying new electrical items for your home, ask yourself if you really need it. There are constantly new gimmicks getting created that will improve on an existing product, however, quite often, we don’t need these features and end up getting sucked into replacing our existing items with ones we don’t need.
If you can reduce the amount that you buy and consume, you will reduce the amount of waste that you contribute to this planet.
Recycle
When it comes to the natural end to a product’s life, if you are sure that nothing more can be done for it, and it cannot be broken down and sold for spare parts, then you should ensure that you are taking responsible steps to dispose of it.
Make sure that any electrical items that you are disposing of are recycled in the appropriate way. You can either look to take these to the municipal waste disposal site for recycling, or you can find a private company that specializes in the disposal and recycling of broken electrical items to ensure that as much gets recycled as possible.
