Last weekend when I cleaned out my bag, there were a couple of receipts, a plastic spoon (the pink ones you get when you buy a Baskin Robbins ice-cream), a crumpled zip lock, and other random items that I didn’t want to throw in the trash and vowed to find some use for. There was a tiny golden safety pin and some black thread—it was a part of the tag of a jacket I had recently purchased. A stray button had also found its way into my large and often heavy tote bag that doubles as a catchall for everything from essentials like the phone and wallet to parking stubs and pointless flyers regularly stuck on the car’s wipers. On a daily basis, I try to minimize waste. Besides the most basic things like carrying a steel water bottle and refilling it multiple times a day at the office and keeping a cloth tote bag for grocery shopping in my purse, I rethink almost everything I do. If I get an ice-cream, it will be in a cone so that I don’t have to throw anything. I have pretty much stopped eating instant noodles because there’s just so much plastic in a single packet. I segregate my waste and give away the recyclables to Doko Recyclers, a waste management company. Doko actively conserves resources by reducing, reusing, repairing, repurposing, and recycling. Their services help you do the same.  

But it’s so difficult to not create waste as I go about my days. The problem is that our consumerist setting thrives on single-use items for convenience. We are governed by a ‘consume and throw away’ mindset. Even when I say no to receipts or the free samples of spices and brochures promoting sales, the attending staff at the stores I go to—for a quick coffee or to buy some groceries on my way back home from work—will invariably hand them to me or shove them in with my purchases.

A few months ago, at the Bhat-Bhateni Supermarket in Pulchowk, I asked the cashier why she had printed the receipt despite my repeatedly asking her not to do so. She simply shrugged and said I could throw it away if I didn’t need it. I told her I didn’t want to waste paper which was why I had said I didn’t want a copy in the first place. She said it wasn’t a big deal and that she would throw it for me. This kind of incident happens on a regular basis. I tell cashiers I won’t be needing a customer copy of the receipt when they start ringing in my items but most of them will still print it out. Manu Karki, the founder of Eco-Saathi, a brand that provides sustainable alternatives for single-use items, says she faces similar issues every day. Karki says eating out is an ordeal because she is given single-use cutlery and straws even when she specifically tells waiters not to bring them. She carries a set of reusable bamboo cutlery but many plastic ones end up in her bag at the end of the week as she doesn’t want to throw them out. She says this shows people’s lack of awareness regarding environmental preservation. “As someone who works in the field of sustainability and practices it too, it’s very disheartening to see people being careless about consumption,” she says. Karki adds it’s almost impossible to lead a sustainable lifestyle while traveling. The problem is that potable tap water isn’t available in Nepal and we must largely rely on bottled water. This inevitably creates a lot of waste. Karki says the reaction of hotel staff when she asks for hot water is funny. They think she is trying to save money by skimping on mineral water. I have also had this problem every time when traveling. Recently, I went to Lucknow in India. Determined not to create more than a small bag of trash, I carried a water bottle and reusable shopping bags. My husband and I even chose a ‘sustainable’ hotel. Unfortunately, the only thing sustainable about the swanky hotel we stayed at was that the electronic room key was reusable. After printing out bills and vouchers that we didn’t need, sticking little tags on water bottles, and proving paper napkins instead of cloth ones at breakfast, the message on our key card thanking us for ‘helping them stay green’ by returning the key at the end of our stay made my eyes roll far back into my head. The business industry is profit-driven and sustainability has become a trend, a CSR at most. It’s not practiced responsibility or with a conscience. At Biryani Queen, one of the restaurants we went to eat at while on this trip, I asked the waiter for regular water. He told me they didn’t serve it and offered us the bottled water that was already on the table. I said they must have a lot of plastic bottles to get rid of at the end of the day, he agreed and said they couldn’t do anything about it. Even when I offered to pay the same price for regular water, he insisted on bottled water. The problem isn’t limited to water bottles only. Everything comes in packages and it’s pretty difficult to avoid. Traveling is sometimes a nightmare when I think of all the things I have to throw away. This time, I purposefully saved the little tags that the hotel would put on water bottles saying they were complimentary. I thought they would reuse it. But they would toss the old ones and use new ones every single time. They said it was hotel policy. “It’s stressful to have to explain to people why you are trying to save these little things. Most don’t get it,” says Karki. Sadly, there seems to be no way out of this situation unless things change on a policy level. “There must be more environmental awareness and policies to support an eco-friendly lifestyle,” she says.