How can I contribute to the circular economy?

1. I donate and buy used clothes

It is true that more could be done in the area of reuse of textiles, through separating the clothes that are still usable (neat, preserved clothes) from the unusable textiles (stained, dirty clothes, worn clothes and other household textiles). By reusing, we extend the life of objects and we save natural resources that would be needed to produce new ones.

In Novo mesto, we are actively pursuing the solution to this problem by establishing the Stara šola reuse boutique, in partnership with the Municipality of Novo mesto and Komunala Novo mesto. The boutique is located at Glavni trg 17. Citizens can bring useful clothes, fashion accessories and footwear, which are inspected by a qualified team, and if possible, repaired, cleaned of stains and have buttons sewed on.

In thrift stores, customers can find beautiful and preserved clothes at affordable prices. Of course, there is no recycling and reuse without the buyers of reused products. Therefore, if we really want to make changes, we need to start changing our shopping habits. The next time you need a "new" piece of clothing, a piece of furniture, or even a gift for your loved ones, first check in the thrift shops. There are over 30 such stores in Slovenia, and more and more of their products are also available online. For more information, see the store map at www.manjjevec.si

2. I collect waste (plastic) materials other than packaging separately

Following the example of Terracycle , an American company, certain products could be collected separately before they end up in mixed municipal waste. This would mean that we would have better quality materials and therefore less costs would be required for cleaning and sorting.

The most ideal are circles based on the "cradle-to-cradle" principle, where we ensure, for example, that new toothbrush handles can be made from waste toothbrush handles. In all other cases, it is "downcycling" of materials, which means that waste plastic, for example a bottle, is indeed recycled into, for example, plastic garbage bags, but "virgin" plastic from fossil fuels is again taken for a new bottle. In order to achieve the "cradle-to-cradle" principle on a wider level of plastic packaging, it would be necessary to raise the prices of packaging paid by plastic manufacturers and retailers, which would cover the higher processing costs.

It would also make sense to pay more attention to the separate collection of waste (plastic) materials that are not packaging and can be recycled. These are mainly:

Cigarette butts
Plastic toys
Household plastics: colanders, plastic utensils, bowls
Office plastic accessories and equipment: coolies, plastic rulers
Plastic cosmetic products: toothbrushes, disposable razors
All other plastic products

These products have the potential to be separately collected before ending up in mixed municipal waste. If they are collected separately, it means that they are cleaner, that further processing costs are lower and that they have a greater potential to make the same product again from the already used.

The so-called "clean" industrial waste also have great potential for recycling, i.e. leftovers from production and transport packaging, which is usually collected from manufacturers. Even in Slovenia, we have many examples where companies already sell their leftovers from production onwards to those industries that need them as raw materials. We should mention the company Termoglas, which collects and sells plastic shavings from its window production for further processing into other products.

There is also a lot of cooperation between companies and individual creators, so fashion sustainable bags by the creators of Smet Umet can be created from the remains of tarpaulin production. Smet umetIn this case, it is about extending the life, not about the circulation of materials in the sense of "cradle-to-cradle", but nevertheless the negative impact on the environment is reduced, since these production residues would once again go to incinerators or landfills.

3. I buy less plastic packaging

One of the opportunities is also a personal orientation towards "zero-waste" or living without waste. This means that we pay attention to what we support with our wallet. In Slovenia, there are more and more shops without plastic packaging, where you can get food, cosmetics, cleaning products and more in bulk or in paper or return packaging. However, if we do not only look at the price, we can also find many products that are packaged in glass, aluminum or paper in traditional stores. In many cases, the products in this packaging are also of better quality.

»Zero-waste« Lifestyle also means that we exchange disposable products for reusable ones, e.g. tampons and plastic inserts for menstrual cups and sanitary napkins, plastic diapers for washable diapers, we buy used clothes, but in general we buy less, but that of good quality, locally and in sustainable packaging. There are over 120 stores in Slovenia that offer food and other products without plastic packaging and in bulk.

Map of Zero Waste stores

Source: manjjevec.si

A few more practical tips for a simple life without or with less waste:

Unsubscribe from receiving advertising materials - stick a "stop advertising" sign on your mailbox, which you can print from the Internet.
To live with less waste, you don't need a wooden straw and wooden utensils made of bamboo, you can take cutlery from your kitchen drawer, and drink from a glass like an adult 😊
You can also make household cleaners or laundry detergents yourself from simple and inexpensive ingredients. There are tons of recipes online for homemade washing powder and tips for cleaning with vinegar and baking soda.
You can pack food for lunch, leftovers or food for freezing in plastic containers left over from cottage cheese, ice cream, sauerkraut and thus extend their life, instead of buying new, "fancy" aluminum containers and lids.

Otherwise, despite all this, we still cannot avoid the feeling that our positive effect on the environment is just a drop in the ocean, but still, several drops together form a puddle, several puddles a lake, and several lakes a sea. The unwritten rule should also not be ignored, if 30 customers in one store ask for certain items, that store will change the offer and adapt to the customers. Therefore, even if we demand from classic retailers and manufacturers, point out more returnable packaging, more paper packaging, we can achieve changes for the better and cause the map of "zero-waste" stores to be even fuller, and the pile of garbage to be smaller.

4. I buy drinks and food in returnable packagingi

With the »zero-waste« movement, we cannot ignore the opportunities, but also the challenges of returnable packaging, which deserves its own chapter.

The idea of returnable packaging was introduced to the world by Coca-Cola in the early 1920s, when Coke was sold in expensive bottles that the company's bottlers needed to return. They charged customers a deposit of two cents, about 40 percent of the total price of the soft drink, and got back about 98 percent of their bottles, which they reused 40 or 50 times more. Bottle return programs remain one of the most efficient methods ever invented for packaging recycling and are based on a system where the truck that brings the full bottles in the other direction takes the empty ones. However, we are noticing that trends are changing and that even recognized beverage manufacturers are switching to glass returnable packaging for bottles. Even most modern retail chains such as Hofer and Lidl do not sell or accept returnable glass packaging.

Their argument usually relates to the manufacturing process of returnable bottles, which must be thoroughly cleaned before reuse. In accordance with hygiene standards and to ensure the best quality of glass returnable packaging, drinking water, suitable cleaning agents and cleaning devices are used to clean the bottles. According to them, by abolishing returnable glass packaging, they save a huge amount of drinking water, kWh of electricity and natural gas, and reduce the burden on the environment with cleaning agents. Because the mass of bottles is much greater than the mass of bottles for packaging of the same volume, e.g. mineral water, and according to them, by abolishing returnable glass packaging, they also reduce the number of transports by about a third and thereby also reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Due to these arguments, manufacturers are increasingly using PET bottles, even rPET, which means that new bottles are made partly from already recycled bottles. In this case, it is considered that one recycled bottle consists of approximately 50% recycled bottles and 50% new, "virgin" plastic. There is a problem with this, that in the process of collecting waste from municipal companies and sorting it for recycling, only 75% of all produced bottles are returned. The costs of collecting and processing waste PET bottles, say recyclers, are high. Used plastic is transported from households to municipal companies, from there to waste management companies, from there to recycling industries, then mechanically and manually sorted, ground, washed and treated with chemicals, and finally recycled PET pellets are produced. These are then formed into plastic capsules into which hot air is blown during beverage production to produce the final bottle.

The industry that recycles PET bottles points out that the main challenge is to improve the collection rate so that the industry will get its bottles back, as this is said to be key to promoting recycling and ensuring a more sustainable future for packaging.

As we can see from the above, it is clear that PET packaging is equally or more burdensome for the environment due to transport and cleaning than returnable packaging, with the former still requiring the constant extraction of a proportion of virgin plastic from fossil fuels. In addition, even when the glass is no longer suitable for reuse, it is ground and recycled into other glass products, and the bottle always ends up being incinerated, thus putting an additional burden on the environment.

5. When designing products and packaging, I follow the principles of eco-design

Ecodesign is certainly one of the key opportunities and at the same time challenges. Ecodesign means designing products and their packaging so that they can be reused, composted or recycled.

Ecodesign can refer to:

materials for the product or packaging, which should not be composite or mixed, so that they can be recycled as easily as possible,
materials that should be made from "local raw materials" in order to minimize the burden on the environment with transport,
method of sale or use of products (rental instead of purchase),
the method of collection after use, as in the case of direct collection, when the manufacturer collects the products back after use and recycles them into new products.

Manufacturers play a key role in this.

6. I face the amount of waste I produce

One of perhaps the most extreme measures to reduce waste, but perhaps at the same time the most significant, would be a simple suspension of garbage collection at households for 1 month.

Customers are often shocked when they learn that only 21% of the packaging is recycled and that most of the garbage ends up in incinerators or, even worse, travels to third world countries under the pretext of recycling. There are no environmental standards, or they are very low. Thus, huge amounts of our garbage are burned between palm plantations or dumped directly into the seas. Although there are also attempts to recycle part of the plastic, the entire process of sorting, washing, and treating waste plastic takes place without supervision. The waste plastic is cleaned with fresh, potable water and the waste water is sent back to the rivers, where they also send cleaning liquids, all the waste and the waste plastic.

Buyers are usually horrified when faced with these facts and reply that they will be more careful about what and how much they buy in the future.

How quickly can we get the feeling that the complex system of collecting, sorting, washing, incinerating and recycling waste is intended to make our surroundings look relatively clean, that there is "no garbage", and that customers can therefore easily buy more and more and more complicated and unique.