00:00I'm sitting here with a very interesting lady, Mariska Nell, who has taken on a month-long
00:08challenge to wear her trash on her body. Yes, you heard that right. Mariska and a fellow
00:15expat, Marita Peters, have both launched a campaign, Waste Me Not. During this campaign,
00:23they will wear their trash on themselves in a special suit and drive home a very strong
00:29message to refuse, reuse, reduce, recycle and rot their waste. It's really hard walking
00:39around, you know, wearing this. It's a lot of extra weight I'm not normally carrying
00:44with me. But yeah, I have to say, throughout the 11 days, it's really, for me, it's been
00:51worth it walking in, like, you know, Dubai Design District or at Art Dubai and seeing
00:59people looking at me all funny. And the moment they hear what I'm doing, they are so inspired.
01:07And I've had people looking at me and like, you know what, I'm going to try and reduce
01:11this. Or, you know, I'm going to use less of this item. And I've even had people hugging
01:17me and, you know, just thanking me for this to create awareness because they feel it's
01:24so needed to, for people to actually see how much waste they generate. So the suit was
01:30made by a South African designer, Jezi Bees. And she's designed this in a way where the
01:37inside of the suit is made from old curtains, which she reused. And also the 11 plastic
01:44bags, which I used to fill, that is from a recycled plastic that she used, like a heavy
01:51duty plastic. And then I used the trolley as well to carry more heavier items, like
01:58my food waste, which is replaced with rice. You are carrying a considerable amount of
02:03weight. So how are you taking care of your shoulders? You were just saying that you've
02:07added some pads to soften it on your shoulders. So before actually starting with this challenge,
02:15I did consult my homeopath and he advised that, you know, I take only up to a certain
02:22amount of weight on my body itself. He did say that I can, I can see how it goes anything
02:29from, you know, 10 to 20 kilos, but it will depend on, you know, how my back is at that
02:35day as well. But I am going to a physio, like once a week at the moment, I'm going
02:42to see a physio. And it's mainly just to check that I don't have any, like, sore muscles.
02:50So after the 30 days is completed, Marita and I would like to exhibit our suits as well.
02:57So then people can clearly see the difference, you know, when you look at the suits, which
03:02days the major differences starts to occur, because now you can already see, you know,
03:09some, some really drastic differences between her suit and mine. One of the things that
03:15me and Marita focus on quite a lot is we call it our five Rs. And that's one thing that
03:22we really want to educate people on as well and try and, and help people to understand
03:27what is this five Rs we're talking about. So when, when we look at the five Rs, the
03:33one is called, the first one is refuse. So people need to refuse, you know, rather than
03:39accepting things, they need to reduce the amount, that's the second R. Reuse is the
03:45third one. And then only the fourth one is recycling, whereas we feel a lot of people
03:52make that number one. So for us, that is number four. And then the fifth one is actually rot.
03:58So that is compost. And that concludes the whole circle of, you know, if you do that,
04:06your life should be a lot more sustainable. And, you know, it will, it will help a lot
04:12for our Mama Earth.
04:14Population and economic growth in the UAE has increased the quantities of waste. Most
04:20of this ends up in municipal landfills or dump sites. While the government is doing
04:25their bit to reduce and recycle waste, we need people like Mariska and Marita to make
04:31that little difference in the community. Anjana Kumar, Express.
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