Zero Waste Lifestyle

Hello there!

How was your day? I hope you had an awesome one. I started mine with some exercise, as I’ve been doing for the past week, and I must say that starting the day with a small workout and a yoga session makes you focus more and be more active throughout the full day ahead and just makes me feel so good! Really recommend giving it a try!

Today I’m coming with a short post about the zero waste life style.

I wanted to talk about this because I’m just introducing myself into it and I think it’s very interesting to really think about it and get conscious about the residues we make. Today I went to a zero waste supermarket so that’s why I’m bringing up the subject.

What’s the zero waste life style? Quoting the website www.goingzerowaste.com : «We aim to send nothing to a landfill. We reduce what we need, reuse as much as we can, send little to be recycled, and compost what we cannot.»

It aims to refocus the economy our society lives in. The process we make is linear meaning that what we use from earth goes into a hole in the ground or gets into the ocean but a zero waste lifestyle aims for a circular economy that is more similar to a natural cycle on Earth where there’s no actual residue because everything can be reused or composted.

I became really interested into this way of living about half a year ago and for the past months I’ve been investigating more and more. I’ve been really conscious about the trash I make specially now that I live alone and I saw how in about two weeks I had two bags of plastic, one bag full of paper and three quarters of a big bag of non recyclable items. I was shocked with this number for just myself and I know that one person trying to make a change might not seem as much but I believe that if I become conscious I’m already trying a change and that’s a very big step.

Although I’m just starting I’m really trying to organize myself to commit to it and give my best. I already saved several jars in Germany and I have a couple of reusable coffee cups to bring to coffee shops.

I own a couple of mugs really similar to this one

I also want to invest in vegetable bags and some more mason jars or containers that I can use to store cereals, nuts and powders, for example. Of course this is just a small beginning to a whole new lifestyle I want to commit to but baby steps, one at a time.

As I said, today I went to visit a zero waste supermarket in Barcelona called «Yes Future». (C/ Viladomat, 66) My dad discovered this place through the newspaper and when he passed me the link to the article I knew I had to go.

It’s a very beautiful place. All the products they have are ecological and chosen from ethical business where they treat their workers with respect and are paid fairly. Every single product has all the information in its jar and every jar is disposed in a perfect order so the space looks clean and allows you to watch all products calmly.

They also own zero waste accessories such as bamboo toothbrushes, bags for veggies, bees wax paper, bottles, mason jars to store the food, etc. They even had specific bottles for their cleaning products!

I was surprised to know that products like shampoo, bleach, detergent and so on could be zero waste as well. Being so abrasive (like bleach) I never thought of the possibility to have a container that you could reuse as many times as you liked to store it.

When I thought I had seen the full store I saw metal straws and a rammer to clean it. I remembered that plastic straws are one of the worst things to use as they cannot degrade or get recycled and unfortunately they get into the oceans and I’m sure you’ve all seen videos of turtles not being able to breath because of straws that got stuck into their noses. So I decided that to keep up with the change, the straw could be part of this new beginning.

It’s a big shame to know that we waste so much and we care so little. We all make this world and I believe that if everyone took care of it a lot of things would be heaps different now a days.

I’ve heard of people saying that it’s an expensive way of living and that it’s completely out of their range to get into this because it’s «weird» and «very hard to live that way». That’s what they make us think! But not so long ago, my grandma was shopping this way and I swear that my dad never missed a thing and they still cooked and live without a problem at all. Also, just to clarify, think that if you buy most of your produce by weight, you’re able to take the exact amount you need so most of the time you won’t need to throw any food to a container and you’ll also save money because you won’t need to pay for a full kilo of potatoes when you probably need just four of them, for example.

It’s hard to make a change in our lives sometimes, but some of those changes can really make us become a better person and most importantly, feel better with ourselves. Yes, everyone is free to do whatever they want, but I really think that if everybody stopped for a second and thought about all the trash they make and how much of it they can actually avoid, they would be very surprised with the result and they would probably like to be able to make it better.

I’ll keep you updated on how this journey goes and I hope that you also encourage yourselves to give a small step into a future without trash that protects our environment.

I hope you all have a lovely night and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Love,

Muriel