Imagine yourself cheerfully living your life without producing any garbage whatsoever, in your house and outside. Furthermore, imagine yourself creating your own homemade, chemical-free, hygienic and cleaning products, including makeup, shampoos, and toilet cleaners, with the comfort of knowing that you aren’t polluting the world.
The zero waste, or waste-free, lifestyle is defined by Lauren Singer as “not producing any garbage, not sending anything to the landfill, not throwing anything in a trash can, nothing. However, one can recycle and compost”. Lauren Singer is a young and popular New Yorker who has been living zero-waste for three years now in an incredible effort to protect the environment and reduce her environmental footprint. After news went viral that Lauren’s now three years worth of trash fit into a single mason jar, young people worldwide were inspired to begin their own journey to living zero-waste.
In my opinion, living zero waste must be difficult with all the chips, chocolates, and other goodies we crave packaged in non-recyclable wrappers, which ultimately means that individuals living zero-waste wouldn’t be able to buy it. However, as Lauren disclosed in her TedTalk video,
I’m just an average, lazy person and I wouldn’t live this lifestyle if it was difficult. In fact, the benefits of living this lifestyle far outweigh the negatives that you can imagine. -Lauren Singer
She then continued to passionately express how her life has changed for the better because of her zero-waste lifestyle, taking into account that she
- Saves money by buying in bulk, creating her own products, and by buying second hand, recycled, clothes
- Eats better because of the absence of processed foods in her meals
- Has a safer lifestyle because of the absence of the harmful chemicals that would come with store-bought products
- Lives happier for all these reasons and because of the satisfaction that she lives in alignment with her values
These individuals are literally living their values, achieving what today’s world would have thought was impossible. Where do they get their motivation from? Why, or for what, have they changed every aspect of their lifestyle?
The small answer is reducing what sits, and will continue to sit, in landfills and pollute our air for generations to come- domestic trash. The big answer is ultimately fighting against the phenomenon that endangers all of mankind and all of the animal kingdom; a phenomenon that is taking place at a rate faster than the world has ever seen before, all because of us; climate change.
Without going zero-waste, what can you do about it? The small answer is a lot. To answer the big, I present to you the amazingly enlightening video below.
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