Road to Minimalism

Chapter 5: Minimalism and Plastics

If you put your heart and mind into minimalism, you'd be open to ideas of minimizing one-use plastics, social media and the betterment of mental health. Minimalism is not just painting your walls white, change to white linens, gray sofa and black furniture.

It promotes a better life. If you hate to have a lot of garbage that you throw every day, there are billions of people who does that every day. We end up with only a clean room, but our planet is full of clutter which is the result of our mindless buying. Mindless consuming. We live but other animals on sea, air and land are dying because of our pollution. Because we think we have evolved but aren't we just evolving to our destruction? Everyday, a lot of plastics are thrown to landfills and those landfills will one day be closed because it can no longer accommodate all our garbage.

If you are into minimalism, I suggest you buy things that you can just reuse and keep it for a long time. One time, we went to a fast food restaurant and the one who I was with bought Coke Float and the counter crew gave him Coke Float, a napkin and a spoon. PLASTIC spoon. He asked why there's no straw. The counter crew smiled and said, "Oh, we no longer have straws. You can use the spoon we gave you."

I know I posted in Facebook praising them, but what I failed to notice, because I am not perfect, is that they did not change anything at all. They only replaced a plastic with the same plastic but only it's a spoon. It's also plastic. It would have been better if they provide discounts for those people who brings their own tumbler and reusable straws for their Coke Float because I know it is so hard to sell Coke Float and not provide a straw and/or spoon. Not only would they help the environment, but they would also save for the costs in buying plastic spoons, forks and straws.

Since we mentioned fast food, since starting a minimalist lifestyle, I learned that it also comes with eating healthy. Imagine how much it would cost you to treat yourself in a hospital and compare it to the amount you would spend to buy vegetables and eat healthy. I mentioned earlier that I was a vegetarian few years back.

Only because there was a vegetarian option. Back then, I worked in a very safe-conscious, health-conscious and entirely amazing company back in Laguna and they have vegetarian options. They are a Japanese company and knowing Japanese (like I'm not obsessed with them), their bento boxes consists more of vegetables and a fish or if there's a meat, it was cooked in a healthy way and not fried with mayo and mustard and whatever you can think of.

I was healthy for the months I've worked there. It seems like my face is glowing, my face doesn't look tired, I don't feel tired and I don't get tired very easily. Although with shifting schedules, I don't see any problems with my health and I only went to our clinic in order to get the daily vitamins that we can get for free.