Fast food; destroyer of both health and wealth for many decades…  and yet recently I’ve started to notice the amount of waste generated by these diabetes producing establishments as well. This isn’t just waste in the form of over-excessive packaging (Why does everything need it’s own individual box when you’re eating inside?) but all the crappy plastic toys given out with Happy Meals.

We recently babysat my partner’s 2-year old niece and she brought with her the remains of a lunchtime happy meal, complete with cold chips and chicken nuggets of dubious origin. Sat at the bottom of the box was a discarded lump of molded plastic, soon to serve no other purpose than to sit for thousands of years in a landfill.

This thing had traveled halfway across the world from China in order to provide 30 seconds of entertainment whilst your child chomps away on their McNuggets before being discarded onto your car floor or kitchen bin. I don’t even want to begin to calculate the man hours wasted and pollution generated just to get it manufactured and transported over here!

One of the key concepts of living cheaply and aiming for Early Retirement is to reduce your wastage and thus reduce your expenses. While we can make little difference to big corporations who insist on producing huge levels of wastage.. we can actively decide ourselves to try and reduce our own waste levels. Some of the things I’ve done recently to reduce my waste and expense:

Repair instead of replace

When my motorbike’s exhaust had rusted over last month, I had a browse of the owner’s forum and found a thread of people in a similar situation who were discussing the costs of buying replacements. These were coming in at £99.99 each, not a bad price for a vehicle exhaust but way over my budget! Instead I used a bit of elbow grease and Ultra-heat paint to save myself the cash and the environment the waste.

Reduce and optimize

Fine tuning our gas and electricity bills has been a bit of an art-form over the past few years. One of the first things we done when we first purchased our house back in January was to replace every downstairs light with an LED equivalents. In our old rented flat all the lights were 50w GU10s which created some serious energy bills! Our new bulbs use just 4w each and produce the same levels of light. Similarly by optimizing our gas use through careful boiler timings we’ve halved our combined energy bill and saved that little bit of fossil fuels.

Recycle

One of the best things about buying your first home is that everyone uses it as an opportunity to clear out their old furniture and appliances. Much of our household furniture is 2nd hand from friends and family and yet still in excellent condition. We’ve gladly accepted many donated items and instead put the allocated budget funds towards mortgage over-payments.

Although I’ve no doubt that my waste savings will not have much of an effect on the decline of our environment, I’ve no doubt that it will have a huge effect on my personal finances and bring me that step closer to financial independence.

What do you think? Is the enjoyment gained from the McToys worth the wastage or should they just be removed altogether? And what things have you done recently to reduce your waste and increase your wealth? Please let us know in the comments below.