Green living guru visits Durban
Bea Johnson, a stylish trend-setter who walks her talk about living with as little impact on our natural world as possible, addressed people in Durban about her zero waste lifestyle.
ETHEKWINI Municipality, in partnership with Food and Trees for Africa, hosted Bea Johnson of Zero Waste Home, the guru of the Zero Waste lifestyle at a workshop at Durban Botanic Gardens recently.
Bea is inspiring people around the world by sharing her journey to successfully living ‘waste free’. Since 2008, she and her family have produced a single jam jar of waste each year, using the five ‘R’ principles: Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot.
Bea is the 2011 Grand Prize winner of the Green Award, and is author of best-seller “Zero Waste Home” which has been translated into 14 languages.
Guests who attended her talk were entertained by her amusing story of her family’s journey to becoming waste free over the past few years.
Speaking at the workshop, Sbu Mkhwanazi from eThekwini Municipality said the aim of the workshop was to look at owning less, wasting less and living more.
“This is a very interesting concept and we hope to share ideas and learn how to walk the talk, rather than just developing strategic plans in council which gather dust. We need to learn how to deal with the issue of waste, especially e-waste, reflect on how we are living and questioning whether we are doing enough and where we need to improve. Everything is in our hands and only we can make a difference,” he said.
Raymond Rampersad, head of Durban Solid Waste, shared his thoughts on zero waste, a subject he said he was extremely interested in.
“The City generates around 6 000 to 8 000 tons of waste a day and we work on a R3 billion budget to service the 3.6 million people in the City. The question is whether this is sustainable and cost effective? And what about the environment? There’s a small voice inside me which says we can’t continue like this into the future as it is going to come at a cost. Zero waste is a possibility and we need to look at how this would impact the City and whose minds we need to change. We need timelines and a pilot of how we would do this in our city. We need new thinking and Bea’s idea is an eye-opener, and definitely one I would support,” he said.
The branch manager of Food and Trees for Africa gave tips on how to minimise and reduce food waste in homes. She suggested that when buying groceries people are realistic about how much they are going to consume, and buying less to avoid waste.
Take note of expiry dates, as food can be used three days over these, instead of being thrown away on the date.
Eat or freeze leftovers rather than throwing them out and store items better.
Make a compost heap to throw away fruit and vegetable peels and split a dish when at a restaurant to reduce the amount eaten.
If you do have to take a doggy bag home, ensure you eat the food rather than leaving it to go bad.
She said educating people to make a lifestyle change was key.
