this is all of my trash from the past
five years
[Music]
I am Lauren singer I live in Brooklyn
New York and I'm the founder of a blog
called trashes for tossers it's all
about living a zero-waste lifestyle I
also have a company called the simply Co
where we make organic vegan laundry
detergent and may have a zero waste
lifestyle store called package free I
realized that I cared about the
environment but I wasn't living that way
so I decided to go zero waste I was an
Environmental Studies major at NYU and I
always was really passionate about
environmentalism since I read Rachel
Carson's book Silent Spring in high
school but it wasn't really until my
senior year of college when I was in a
course called the Environmental Studies
capstone course which is the last class
II of to take as an Environmental
Studies major and in that class there
was a girl that every day would bring a
plastic bag full of food a plastic
clamshell plastic fork and knife a
plastic drink and a bag of chips and she
would eat her whole dinner and then
throw it in the trash and I thought she
was the worst person that I've ever seen
for being an Environmental Studies major
but making a lot of trash but one day I
went home after class to make dinner and
I opened my fridge and I realized that
every single thing that I had in there
was packaged in plastic and I looked
around my apartment and found that all
of my beauty products were packaged in
plastic my cleaning products were
packaged in plastic my clothes
predominantly were made of plastic and I
realized that I was just as bad as the
girl that I was staring at and in class
thinking that she was the worst and so I
decided to make a change first I decided
to go plastic freak but then I learned
about the zero waste lifestyle and I
decided to go zero waste to really align
what I cared about which is
environmental sustainability with my
day-to-day actions and really live my
values wrappers of food that I had in my
house before I started going stairway
straws that I got from restaurant I've
learned to ask for my drink without a
straw things that connect pricetags to
the clothing protective seals tags that
come on like the inside of clothing
silica packets a credit card present
ribbon band-aids and lots of festival
bracelets my three main sources of trash
for food waste food packaging
and product packaging and so to
eliminate those I just started
composting I started shopping at the
farmers market so I could get food
without packaging and I started making
all of my own beauty and cleaning
products and by doing those three things
I eliminated essentially all of my waste
for me how I do that is by being
prepared by leaving my house with my
stainless steel containers and my
reusable coffee cup and all of these
multi-use items that help me prevent
trash in the first place so I don't even
have to make it at all
one criticism is how can you have a
menstrual cycle and live a zero-waste
lifestyle but I use a menstrual cup
which is a washable silicone cup that
enables you to go completely single-use
disposable free on your period another
criticism that I get is toilet paper how
can you go to the bathroom and live a
zero-waste lifestyle well I just got a
day so you can actually stop using
toilet paper all together haha so there
I used to think that the solution to
environmental problems was through
politicians and proactive policy
decisions but I realized that
individuals have a huge impact on the
world and the climate and so with every
American making four and a half pounds
of trash per person per day we
contribute to this overall climate issue
and so by us taking simple steps to
reduce our waste if we all take little
steps and all make little changes that
has a big positive impact and I believe
we can make a difference
[Music]