Take part in zero waste movement on Brač!

20/07/2019

Zero waste

Zeleni Brač (Green Brač), a project run by all the municipalities on Brač, has an amazing idea – it wants to teach people of Brač how to go zero waste! Each day, throughout the month of July, they shared tips on how to join the zero waste movement and eventually produce – zero waste!

WHAT IS ZERO WASTE MOVEMENT?

Simple answer: Zero waste literally means producing no waste. The Zero Waste Movement encourages the use of things again or using them for new purposes. It promotes composting, disposal and recycling. It encourages purchasing without unnecessary or additional packaging, with the aim of encouraging the production of less packaging in the long run, and thus waste.

More complicated answer: Zero waste moves to redefine waste management. It is not only the education of people that waste is to be sorted, recycled, but it is also necessary to start producing less waste at the start – it is necessary to reduce the amount of resources eventually ending either in landfills or in recycling facilities. It is necessary to reduce the excessive use of natural and other resources, reduce the amount of trees that are cut to produce different paper products.

Zero waste moves not only to reduce the amount of waste but also to the ways in which very quickly waste becomes a product at all.

At a personal level, there are many advantages of joining this movement, and one of them will certainly be particularly appealing to the Brač.

(1) Saving money – reducing the amount of waste, especially mixed, also affect the overall cost of waste disposal. However, since zero waste moves to reuse or overwrite already purchased items, and thus stimulates savings.

(2) Environmental protection – Reducing the amount of waste reduces the negative impact on the environment, but equally reducing the demand for a variety of short-lived life-saving items in the long run and their environmentally-friendly production not only because of their use but also because of the production process itself which uses too much of the natural resources.

(3) Better quality of life – the zero waste movement actually teaches us to live the way our ancestors lived – to return to our roots, to grow and prepare our own food, to compost, to repair damaged items, to make cosmetics from natural materials and the like.

The benefits are many, but we will stop on these three.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO JOIN ZERO WASTE MOVEMENT?

Because already, as a society, as a planet, we have exceeded our own capacities. Too much resources are spent to produce items that we use only very briefly, which do not contribute significantly to our lives or at all, and which ultimately end up unrecycled, into growing-up landfills that take up more space while the waste elements, and especially plastics, end up in waters, destroying the plant and animal world. It is not the world we want to leave to our children, nor the one we want to live in.

HOW DO YOU PARTICIPATE IN THIS CHALLENGE?

We decided that July 2019 would be zero waste month on the island of Brač. We could have chosen a month which is not in the middle of the tourist season when we are all overworked by tourism, but we did not want to. In the summer months, we produce the most waste, and it was the most important time to apply principles and advice from the zero waste movement. We are therefore inviting you to join us, join this one-month challenge, follow our daily announcements and tips on how to go zero waste, and apply a total of 31 tips that we posted and shared with you in July to initiate a zero-waste movement on the island of Brač.