Healthy lifestyles start with the rubbish bin

Nima Abu Wardeh discusses how we can be more resourceful when it comes to waste.

illustration by Gary Clement for The National

How do you get a month's rubbish generated by a family of six, including a newborn, into five 40x50-centimetre bin bags?
This is no joke. It was what a long-converted green tree-hugger friend had to figure out - or face a massive fine if she needed more bags. She would also have to pay if the waste was not separated exactly as it should be.
A trip to the local municipality was a must for her - her family had recently moved into their new home in the Dolomites and this is part of the process. Recycling and reducing waste is serious business there - and my friend, who has campaigned at national level in the UAE for the cause, was struggling with how restrictive it is. But comply she must. Airbnb posts for the region get the message across with this:
"You must obey the rules on separate collection of household waste. Offenders will have to pay a penalty of xxx (it varied) per every undone separate collection."
I assume that clothes are not part of the mix - people there must dispose of unwanted items by selling or giving them away, not binning them. A far cry from folk in the United Kingdom, where about 350,000 tonnes worth of their used clothing ends up in landfills every year.
This becomes a bigger mountain in the United States, with 10.5 million tonnes of textiles tossed annually.
And it is set to increase if we extrapolate the findings of recent research in the UK: a third of 2,000 women surveyed consider clothes old after having worn them fewer than three times, with the majority of fashion buys used just seven times.
I shudder to think what the figures would be for us living in the UAE, with our increasingly disposable lifestyles and love of all things social media.
I say this because, along with weight change and ditching clothes bought on a whim, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are major reasons for this increasingly throwaway culture - one in seven participants in the UK survey said they could not be pictured and tagged more than once in the same outfit on different nights out.
This is bad news for the UK's Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), a government agency in charge of reducing waste. To deal with the issue, Wrap launched its Love Your Clothes campaign last year. The aim is to lessen our impact on the environment by reducing the amount of carbon and waste created through the manufacture, laundry and disposal of clothing. Doing this saves money and resources. Wrap wants people to make their clothes last longer, buy less and reuse or share more.
We buy new clothes for various reasons - it could be for growing, shrinking or taking part in specific activities such as sports. Personally, I'd rather share when I can - borrowing fleeces or rain/ski gear and reciprocating with what we own.
I cannot find figures for how much the average household in the UAE owns in the way of clothing, but I bet you it is a lot. In the UK the average person has about £4,000 (Dh22,900) worth and buys about £1,700 of clothes each year. My bet is that it is significantly higher for everyone reading this - and judging by the uptake of social media in the UAE, I would say the selfie has a lot to do with it.
On this note, I would like to share the findings of research by Ohio State University. The survey focused on men and included questions about how often they posted photos of themselves on social media
It found that men who posted more photos of themselves online scored higher in measures of narcissism (inflated self-image, often motivated by underlying insecurity) and psychopathy (lack of empathy and impulsive behaviour.)
The findings do not mean that all men who post selfies are actually narcissists or psychopaths - they scored higher than others in these anti-social traits, but they were still within the normal range of behaviour.
Thinking about it, I did not see a single selfie stick when I was in the Dolomites. What I did see, though, were the fittest people of every decade that I have ever come across. Men and women well into their seventies and I am sure eighties were walking, hiking, biking, playing tennis - just generally being fit, healthy, sociable and able.
It seems to me that society's obsession with physical beauty and approval from others would be best served by going the route of these ultra-fit of the Dolomites - you would look the part with your toned muscles and happy demeanour. You would be so busy living the life that you would not need to boast or post.
Marry that with an increased sense of empathy - forced or otherwise - that would come from recycling and reduction of waste, and you're sorted.
Nima Abu Wardeh is the founder of the personal finance website cashy.me. You can reach her at [e-mail].
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