Sustainable Journey

Sustainable living is something I want to get into it – there is so much waste in the world that I don’t feel comfortable in contributing to it anymore in excessive amounts or unnecessarily. Every year, just one person in Australia makes 1.5 tonnes of waste every year! My little Yarris weigh less than that!

There are so many areas in my life where I can see just pointless waste that I really want to work on reducing as much as I can and as realistically as I can. Do I think I can be someone that has absolutely zero waste? Nope. Do I think that if I try and reduce how much I do produce, that that is more important? Hell yes. Going gun ho and trying to go zero for the average person is intimidating, scary and ideally not possible. It’s not about every doing zero waste absolutely perfectly. It’s all about everyone doing zero waste as best they can and as imperfectly as they can. The following areas, however, are the areas I think are the easiest to tackle in terms of waste. Every couple of weeks, I hope to have a little review on a category and how I tried to reduce my waste

Periods

This is a biggie. Every month for most women (in my case two) our uterus lining sheds and ensuing blood bath needs to be contained somehow. Unfortunately for us, pads and tampons are not only packaged in ridiculous amounts of plastic, but plastic is also a main part of tampons and pads themselves. All this plastic will take lifetimes to disintegrate and not be of harm to the environment. I am not someone who is really into free-bleeding, mostly because where I work, getting blood on my uniform would constitute a contamination to product. So in order to not loose my rights to enter the factory, I really want to explore period underwear and cups. Not only do I think this will help me reduce the amount of plastic I produce, but hopefully will mean I get to save some money along the way

Eating and Cooking

I recently made the decision to go vegetarian, part of the reason was because I have just lost interest in meat, but also reducing the amount of meat consumed is always touted as being something to help reduce waste generally. I don’t have the intention of going vegan because I do enjoy dairy product, but I will be making the choice to not only choose brands that support farmers but also from producers that are making conscious decision to reduce their environmental impact.

Im going to try my hardest to reduce the amount of packaging I throw out from food products. Recently I cooked dinner and took notice on how much plastic and unnecessary packaging some of my fruit and veggies were wrapped in. Like, why do you need to wrap mushrooms in plastic? They are perfectly fine in paper bags, and don’t get me started on potatoes WITH THE SKIN ON wrapped in plastic.

Something that really interests me though is working out where I can do my grocery shopping as ethically as possible, but also finding a way to support farmers and local produce makers as best I can. This aspect I am already struggling with so hopefully I can find something and places that I really like and are satisfied with.

General Grooming

I love skincare and makeup, I don’t not deny that. However I have an awful habit of always buying the bright new things without taking to account what I already have and if what I’m buying is actual useful. I already try and use Lush as much as I can because I believe in the ethos of the brand and I absolutely LOVE how much they are into sustainability and giving back. I feel like I will slowly introduce myself to natural beauty, I’m just reluctant because I don’t feel it is as effective as some other alternatives. I look forward to being proved wrong. Kinda.

Clothing

This is where I know I am going to struggle the most. I can’t be someone who owns the same pair of jeans year in and out because I fluctuate in weight so much that there’s no point. I am trying really hard to not go out and just purchase things for the sake of it, but I feel like I’m programmed to go shopping every time an event happens or something exciting happens. And to be perfectly honest, I’m really torn between buying secondhand or purchasing from sustainable brands. I went to tell brands with my money that I really appreciate them going sustainable, but there is already so much fabric waste out there already. Tough decisions

Sustainability I believe is something that everyone can work towards. It’s going to be a journey for me working out what I like and works best in my lifestyle, but I am really looking forwards to sharing in this journey with you!