The days of festivals are the days of huge happiness for those who celebrate them. Every festival comes with a lot of joyfulness for the people, invokes their spirits, and gives them a new way to live their life. India is a country of festivals where its citizens celebrate a festival every other day. Because it is a combination of various different cultures, you cannot expect it to be free from the hustle-bustle at any time.
With this hustle-bustle, festivals bring a lot of other risks. These risks include financial, health-related as well environmental risks which cannot be easily overcome. To get rid of these risks, one needs to take some precautions which are very simple and everyone can easily follow these. What one needs is a little amount of awareness.
Here, I am going to discuss the environment-related risks and the ways to fix these. These risks when considered separately do not seem to be majorly affecting the environment but when we think of them as a whole, we get to know about a large number of consequences. Such consequences do not affect a particular person or a section of them but a large number of livelihoods across a very large area. In general, these affect the whole world.
What Are the Environmental Risks of Festivals?
With the arrival of every festival, there also come sources of pollution. These sources are created by the activities done to celebrate the festivals. People when celebrating, forget to think about the adverse consequences of their celebrations.
During every festival season, people use to shop for a lot of stuff. These vary from personal to professional uses. The shopped items need to be packed and carried and when it comes to packing things, we all know that there is no option better than plastic. So, we all use plastic bags, boxes, pouches, etc. for packing and carrying items. This way, a lot of plastic is used and the majority of which is not recycled. As we all know, plastic is one of the major pollutants of the environment.
Whether it be Holi, Diwali, Eid, Christmas, or Baisakhi, food is one of the most important elements of the celebration. Different types of food are served on different occasions depending on the region and season at the time of the festival. This is not a bad thing as serving food to our near ones on such occasions is just like feeding our relationship with them. This creates a sense of closeness among us.
What's wrong with this tradition is the food waste generated during the festival season. People go to their relatives' homes to share the happiness of the festival and are served food in turn. Not all of them eat all the food that is served. They leave a major part of food in the serving plates uneaten and the food gets wasted. Moreover, people prepare a lot of different types of dishes which are not all used for serving their guests. These are very common in a country like India. This way, a lot of food goes unused and wasted.
Food waste is one of the sources which harm the environment. Wasting more food means an increase in demand for food which means more production of food. To produce food, we first need to clear land to make it suitable for agriculture and then a lot of other resources like seeds, water, fertilizers, etc. This harms our financial growth as well as the environment.
A lot of preparation needs to be done to celebrate festivals which include cleaning and decorating the home and vehicles, organizing everything in its place, purchasing good clothes for ourselves and a lot of other things. All of these require resources to be consumed like electricity, water, petrol and diesel, and other ones.
The more such resources are consumed, the more is it harmful to the environment. We cannot avoid using these resources and therefore if used extensively will definitely be dangerous for the environment.
How to Save the Environment from Such Risks?
Making the festivals eco-friendly is not a very hard thing like building the Rome or losing 15 kg in three months. You do not need to work hard and burn your ass to such an extent that is very tiresome or financially very retardative. You just need to adopt some simple habits that are environmentally friendly.
Remember to adopt only simple habits like switching off appliances when they are not in use or wasting less food. Do not try to say to yourself, " I am not going to waste even a bit of food". Try to waste less food and gradually convert the word "less" into "no" or "negligible".
Starting from tiny things is the most efficient way to make your mindset ready for doing great things. Starting to adopt small eco-friendly habits and working progressively will make your mind habitual to doing big and good things.
Also, try to inculcate these values in your family members and friends. If only you start saving the environment and all-around you continue to damage it then there is nothing much going to improve. Whoever is in your contact, give him the best and the easiest advice for saving the environment.
Try to affect at least one person with your advice in a month and ask him to do so with the next one. Doing so will definitely make a big change in your surrounding and ultimately you can change the whole world with such a very small thing.
After discussing all of these things, let's start discussing what we can do to enjoy the festivals without compromising with the environment(the eco-friendly way).
Celebrate Festivals in an Eco-Friendly Way
As I discussed above, it is not very hard to lead happiness with keeping the environment healthy. You just need to endorse some simple habits in your life. The worst thing is with starting up to follow our habits. Just start doing one thing and the rest will automatically start happening as you continue to do that one thing.
Below are given some the tips for an eco-friendly celebration of festivals.
1. Avoid Plastic Packing and Carry Bags
On every occasion, we do a lot of shopping for ourselves as well as our homes. This is obvious for every middle-class family to decorate homes and then get them ready for the festival. We need to pack the purchased items and then carry them home. The shopkeeper generally uses plastic wrappers for packing and then gives us a plastic bag to carry these to our home.
Avoid this thing as much as possible(I am not asking you to avoid shopping). Use plastic bags as little as possible. Ask the shopkeeper to pack the items in wrappers made of other environment-friendly alternatives like jute. For carrying, the best option would be to take a carry bag from home while going to the market. Always keep multiple carry bags at your home so that you do not need to buy another from the market. Whenever you go shopping, keep a bag with you. This bag can also be of plastic. What you need to take into consideration is that one plastic bag should be used multiple times.
The Indian government banned single-use plastic(SUP) in June 2018 and set a target to eliminate its use completely by 2022. When I am writing this article, it is the beginning of March 2022 but still, I don't see any major change in the use of SUP.
This target can be achieved if the citizens start adopting some simple habits like the one discussed here. Also, it is the responsibility of the government to provide a safer alternative to SUP.
2. Avoid Food Waste
Wasting food is just like wasting environmental resources. When you waste some food, it is not because you just want to waste the food, it is because you are afraid if there occurs a scarcity of food while you serve it. And this fear in turn surrounds you because you do not have a proper idea of what is the requirement of your guests.
So, now the discussion comes to your ability to understand your guests properly. You even don't know what and how much your guests like. When you don't know what a person wants from you, should you call him to your home as a guest? Do you deserve the right to serve him?
Just think about these questions and then combine them with the financial aftermath of food waste. You will automatically come to a decision not to waste the food.
There are a lot of financial harms of wasting food as you know. The food wasted at a festival can feed your whole family for two to three days. These two to three days of food can waste your one or half day's earnings. If there are 12 such festivals in a year then you waste a significant amount of money which if invested properly can result in a big return over some time.
Just thinking about the health of the environment does not do any compelling work to us. But when we think of ourselves then a large amount of dopamine is released in our body and this forces us to do a particular thing. Here also comes the same thing, don't go over the environmental benefits of saving food. Go over to think about managing your finance and you will automatically be doing something to save the environment.
3. Limit Resources Consumption
This title itself is a very broad idea in itself. There are various types of resources to be limited like electricity, water, petrol, diesel and many more. Using these resources only when required should be the habit of everyone. Everyone should follow some simple rules in day-to-day life to work for the environment.
The use of such resources goes to a very high extent on festivals. Whether it be electricity, water, food, or anything else, consumption definitely rises. This rise is obvious as we cannot avoid celebrating festivals but can avoid overuse.
It's a very simple process to limit. To do this, make a list of the basic requirements for the celebration. By using this list, make a separate list of works where you commonly overconsume the electricity, waste the water, etc. Now try to eliminate the extra uses.
Do You Really Want to Celebrate Festivals in an Eco-Friendly Way?
This is not a very complex question. In general, when you answer this question, you just think about what you are doing currently to save the environment. If you are doing something environment-friendly, then you answer this question in a "yes" and if you are not doing anything like that then you answer this in a "no".
What I want to tell you is that you actually do not correctly answer the question if you use this method. This is not the real way to determine whether you want to save the environment or not. The right question for this answer should be like this, "Is your lifestyle environment friendly?"
If this is so, then what is the right answer to this question. Let me ask you another question. Do you want to live a healthy life and give it to your descendants? The answer to this question will be the answer to the question asked above in the title. You know the reason behind why I am saying this but still, let me explain why.
Wasting less water means saving water for yourself so that you can save money being spent on the water bills. The money saved here can be used for other needful things and you know the power of small habits, the small amount of money saved can be used to pay your big debts.
Saving water for yourself also means saving your children and further your children do this and the cycle gets repeated. This way, water is saved. Saving water means saving the environment.
After this discussion, I can firmly say that you really want to celebrate festivals in an eco-friendly way and save the environment.
If you are still with me and reading this article, then your response will be greatly appreciated. Do you celebrate festivals in an eco-friendly way? What else would you like to suggest to me?