One day, I bought a drink on the side of the street, here in my town. After I finished ordering it, I saw the waitress had put a straw into my plastic bag and I said, “oh, no straw please.” Then she said to me back with a strange look, “ee, why?” At that moment, I realised that humans are very used to using plastic nowadays, it has become the norm.The strange look aimed at me was because it feels strange when you buy a drink and the store doesn’t give straws for you to enjoy it, whereas you can still savour the drink by slurping it directly from the bottle or glass.
Yet, reducing plastic use is just one of many ways we can start implementing sustainable living.What we use, what we eat, what we wear, and everything in between should be used for a long time, and benefit all aspects. What I can say is that in short, sustainable living enables life for continuity.
“As a young generation with more knowledge about this lifestyle, we have more easy access about how to start sustainable living.”
This lifestyle is surely not easy. But, what’s wrong with trying? You can start from simple things, especially ourselves. And so I called it, starting from within. When a company is in fact responsible for today’s awful environment but does very little to act, the best way to fix this situation is to inform yourself as much as you need.
As a young generation with more knowledge about this lifestyle, we have more easy access about how to start sustainable living. In my experience, instead of buying store-bought jam that has preservative addition, I usually make my own jam, it is pretty delicious too. I learnt this from Youtube, and it’s actually super easy to follow. With this act, you can avoid disposing of more rubbish and have healthier jam; saving yourself some money too. And the fun part is, you can also customise your own jam and have the best homemade jam ever. This is so cool, you should try this at home. The feeling when you try something made from scratch and it succeeds, is quite something trust me.
In my opinion, we can all start living a little more sustainably by making things on our own. Whether that be DIY things, homemade, or handmade. We are lucky enough, most of us, to have access to learn how to make things from the internet. I mean, there is a wealth of content available to us on the web right now, so we can learn how to make things from scratch. With this action, we can reduce our plastic packaging consumption from products at the store, and make something so less waste goes into landfill. This might not be for everything, but we should try as best as we can to reduce a huge amount of waste.
Just some food for thought, next time – try ditching the straw.
Authored by Safira Firdaus, Imagen Insights Gen Z consultant