Rethinking habits

The best waste is that which is not produced. Achieving this involves raising awareness of our everyday actions, adopting more responsible consumption habits and informing those around us of their importance. In other words, we need to change our mindset and that is one of the goals of the European Week for Waste Reduction, which is held at the same time in EU countries from 16 to 24 November. Between those dates, Barcelona and many other towns and cities are arranging lots of activities and initiatives to encourage sustainable waste practices.

The concept of prevention refers to waste that ends up in the dumpster. We need to prevent waste from being generated as much as we can in order to reduce the irrational use of natural resources, lengthen the lifetime of the objects and materials we use, and mitigate all the resulting environmental and social problems. So various organisations have prepared initiatives in the city that make it possible to find out about alternatives in our everyday lives that allow us to prevent the generation of waste in different areas of our daily lives. Some of them are performed within organisations, for example by workers in a company or students in schools. Others are open to everyone.

The proposals made during the Week make us rethink our needs, buy less, reinvent what we do not use and reuse what others do not use, pick products with less packaging, which are more biodegradable and last longer, repair things when they break and look after them ... There are all sorts of ideas that you can put into practice and the activities during this Week are an ideal opportunity to find out about them, put them into practice and become aware of the benefits.

You can find them all through the search engine. Also see this link for more information.