On August 1st, the world reached Overshoot Day, meaning that our consumption of natural resources has overtaken the Earth's capacity toregenerate them for the year. On the occasion, Florence Porcel, a French author, actress and Youtuber, started a rant on Twitter that was shared more than 1,700 times and liked by more than 1300 people within 48 hours.
The thread, in French, has been attached to the hashtag #OpérationLingeBlanc - White Linen Operation: Florence addresses the waste of wet cotton-based towelettes that are given in long-haul flights, which are systematically discarded after each flight rather than washed and re-used.
She explains that her flying neighbour would actually keep them (which she did as well), and that the hostess gave them also a bag of un-used towels, as they would also be trashed after the flight. The reason behind such a waste would obviously be economic: it is cheaper to trash rather than wash and re-condition the products.
In her thread Florence tagged Air France, the company she used on her travel, but from experience cloth-based towelettes are used by many other companies worldwide. She also tagged Mr. Nicolas Hulot, current French Minister of Ecological and Solidary Transition, to hopefully raise a case on the ongoing avoidable waste.
Since her first tweet, many on Twitter have used #OpérationLingeBlanc to list and discuss absurd wastage (amongst many others, plastic packaging over vegetables and fruits, one-time plastic cutleries, branded freebies people distribute during events, magazines and advertizing brochures...).
The idea behind #OpérationLingeBlanc is manyfold: raising awareness on waste and absurd consumption patterns or requirements, educating as many people as possible on all thing that could be avoided, and hopefully creating a highly-followed movement to make all of us responsible consumers and citizens.
Not sure that Florence's thread will reach out to politicians and large airlines, unfortunately. She quoted for example the sustainability report of Air France and the airline's official message regarding using and recycling materials and accessories onboard the flights. From her experience there was an obvious discrepancy between the said measures and reality onboard.
But here in OUTSIDE THE BOX we want to believe in the magic of social media (meaning, used in a positive way of course and disregarding the amount of crap available, too) and online presence to share these messages and hopefully help each other learn and move things to the better.
So what we would like to suggest, is for you to share and list the absurdities you have witnessed around you. For example, we talked here about local free press in Zug which is generally reaching a limited share of the population, and creating inappropriate waste.
What is your example? What could we do about it?