15 AYAAT. 15 PRODUCTIVITY POINTERS.
“…But waste not by excess, for Allah does not love the wasters” [6:141].
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It’s lunch time: Khalid buys a can of fizzy drink and a sandwich wrapped in plastic. In another part of the world, Aishah picks a mango from a tree in her village.
Khalid finishes his fizzy drink and sandwich in about 5 minutes and the aluminium can and plastic wrapper are tossed away. His can will take 500 years to break down!
Now consider Aishah eating the mango in its natural environment. She eats the fruit; the seed and skin are discarded, and another tree may grow from the seed giving even more fruit, and the skin will compost in a matter of weeks, enriching the earth in the process.
If we live in a city, as more than half the world’s population does, we may also enjoy a mango; but ours will be individually wrapped, having passed the test for being the right shape and colour, transported across thousands of miles, stored in a refrigerator…in short, involving more packaging, more waste, more greenhouse gases.
Food and water are both big on the waste agenda and those that live in cities are by far the worst offenders. We don’t even notice we are not being productive at all in this part of our life. In the USA alone nearly half of all edible food is wasted. That’s around $43 billion worth of wasted food!!
Clearly, Allah 
DOES NOT LOVE waste. Here are some simple things YOU can do to reduce waste:
- Grow as much of your own food as possible, in gardens or allotments, on windowsills or in pots; in fact, any space that we have we should try to use to provide for ourselves (and witness the miracle of Allah’s creation in the process.)
- Compost food peelings and return the nutrients to the soil.
- Buy locally grown foods whenever possible.
- Only buy what you can eat (really challenge yourself to do this one as from today!)
- Be selective when buying at the supermarket. Buy vegetables loose. Say no to excessive packaging that can’t be recycled. Consider buying organic.
- Say no to a plastic bag.
- Turn the tap off when you make wudhu. If the Prophet
managed it with only a handful of water, why can’t you?
managed it with only a handful of water, why can’t you?Start dealing productive with your daily-life goods, this is one of the most neglected aspects of our Deen! You will be asked about your blessings and how you used them – so let’s use them wisely!
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