So back in January 2019 I decided to reduce the amount of waste I produce on a monthly basis. Read it here

Initial plan was to behave "normally" for three months and then try the reduction thing. That did not work because I was inconsistent with maintaining the record.

But, I am a consistent person generally speaking so it should not matter too much and now 4 months later I have quite interesting results.

Let's get to it.

Where are we

So right now when I look at my monthly schedule I can confidently say that the only two sources of plastics on a monthly basis are the Oats and the dates that I buy every month.

I'm still a bit sketchy on how many of these packets I need on a monthly basis but the number should not be more than two packets each.

I should add that there are certain days when I do buy a pack biscuit or a pack of peanut brittle etc etc, but I have managed to cut down that number to almost zero.

So yeah, that is the tl;dr. Read on to know what else I tried.

My Diet

I do not follow a very rigid diet plan however the basic rules that I follow are: - minimize packaging of food (buy non packed food; order-in instead of take-out; no home delivery etc) - eat local (nothing imported; imported has a higher carbon cost associated with it) - minimize sugar - eat less (yeah!!)

Also this goes without saying that I am /not/ a foodie. I eat so that I can survive (rather don't die) and do other stuff that is important to me. Food is just a necessity, an implementation detail. (I am painfully aware how weird this apathy towards food is).

So, I eat lunch from a variety of different places and for dinner I generally eat oats (just add hot water) and sometimes I have fruits. I eat dates cause they are perfect for blood and they help with my sweet tooth.

Food Habits

Initially i used to skip a meal during the day. This was generally the breakfast. I would skip breakfast and have lunch directly at noon, followed by something light in the evening and then dinner by 10pm.

I tried to skip dinner and instead replacing it with breakfast. That would mean that I would not have to buy Oats and my total food intake would be same. That proved to be more difficult than I initially thought.

I really like the tasteless-ness in my mouth when I wake up and the idea of destroying that with food is un-ideal. So i try to maximize the time I can go without food.

So, can't skip dinner.

Moreover, I formed a habit of buying a packet of peanut brittle after lunch everyday. This was bad on multiple levels including adding a plastic wrapper to my waste everyday and adding a bunch of sugar to my diet.

However I could not will myself out of this habit.

Everything changed when I went to visit my family for 2 weeks. Those two weeks without any schedule that I formed in Mumbai really reset every habit that I had formed, and after returning I could not buy that packet of peanut brittle after lunch.

Normal Lifestyle

I'm quite spartan when it comes to other things and I do not buy stuff unless absolutely needed. Very recently I bought an amazon Kindle Paperwhite and I feel quite guilty about it. In my defense I wanted this for a long time, ever since my school days.

Why all this ?

It should not be surprising to anyone reading this that Climate Change is a big problem right now. In-fact it is probably one of the top most issues threatening the survival of all species on the planet. I am extremely pessimistic about the entire situation and I do not think that we will be able to contain climate change to a reasonable limit any time soon.

That said, I still want to fight the good fight and there are multiple ways in which that can be done. Currently the situation so dire that individual changes in lifestyle can not solve everything and the best way to fight this is to form groups and pressurize corporations and governments into making drastic changes that favor the environment. However, I would argue that individual changes also have a huge effect mainly because no individual exists in isolation, and hence they will spread some influence around. Furthermore, if every individual starts making drastic changes to their lifestyle then that will change the marketplace in which big companies operate and I think that that would have some positive effect.

Anyway, Thanks for reading. This is it for today. :-)