I'm Mailyne, and I live a zero-waste lifestyle
It's different for a lot of people but for me what I try to do is basically just to reduce the amount of garbage that
I produce and my first step in doing that was eliminating my garbage can period. I try to avoid
plastic and I try to avoid even things that can be recycled
This is all of the garbage that I've produced in
11 months in this jar, and most of it is actually
stickers from fruits and vegetables I
I feel better as a person and I can function better
knowing that I am aligning my values with my actions, and I really believe that,
you know, in life if you are able to do that, then that is part of being happy
I was the consumer that would buy things in packaging and like canned goods and all that stuff and so it was more about
sacrificing and being okay with
having to like make things I make my own potato chips, deodorant
I make my own toothpaste and basically you know all of that stuff
You have to make but what I love about it
is that it simplifies my life, and it brings me back to a place of just the present moment
So, the five R's of zero waste are refusing. So, that just means trying not to
basically buy what you don't need or
accepting free things
Reducing. Reducing means and you want to buy as little as possible, and then there's reusing or
repurposing then there's
recycling and then the last one is rot. So, can it be brought back into the Earth? Can it be composted?
When it comes to like grocery shopping,
I try for it to be routine so that involves going through all of my jars and
bringing those jars to the store to buy stuff in bulk
I h ave my cloth bags, so I'll use like my pillowcases
I use fabric that I have laying around and so I bring that to the grocery store with me
Sometimes they'll put it in like my little cooler if I'm not going home right away
Lately, I've been trying to avoid products that has stickers on it
I've also been trying to select bananas that are all singles because a lot of those like single bananas actually get tossed out
So, I try to do everything on one day and
that includes also like going to the bakery they cut up my bread and put it in a cloth bag
I try to keep everything in like metal tins because they last longer
And there's a few companies that you can buy from that will allow you to
do a bottle exchange like so they'll
put a deposit on your jar, and then when you're done with it, you can bring it back
And you'll get that money back
For certain items, I have to go to different bulk stores because they don't all carry them in the same place
My building doesn't have any compost in it and so what I've been doing is going over to my friends' or my parents' house and
bringing my compost there, and it's been working out for now, but I'm hoping that in the future,
the management will have a composting option
So I'm self-employed
photographer, videographer,
artist,
graphic designer and
I've accumulated so many art supplies. So I have to use everything that is in my home and
after that, like I won't be able to purchase anything so
thinking about different ways to make paint like
earth-friendly paints or
even using the garbage in my jar to create art with
Having a child is
is definitely like a challenge in this lifestyle because
with him being so young, he doesn't fully understand why I want to live this way and what these choices are
and the toys that he has now actually have been
the toys that he's had since he was a little baby or have been gifted to him or
thrifted and I have reduced a lot of toys
We live in a world where everything is so disposable, and we do it without even thinking about it
And just because we can't see where it's going or what that effect is doesn't mean that we aren't being affected by it in a huge way
For me, that's kind of why it was really important is just to be part of the solution
If people wanted to be zero waste or try to like
adopt a Zero Waste Lifestyle,
a few really easy things to do are just to have a reusable water bottle and
avoiding plastic bags. Even those two things right there are just like that. They're really really easy and
they make such a huge difference
So, I started my blog A Dream Lived Greener
because it was a way for me to keep track of how I was feeling and of
all the sort of things that I learned along the way
There's definitely a misconception that living zero waste is more expensive,
but it's not it's actually saved me more money and has
actually made me healthier. Being able to like make my own toothpaste and shampoo and
conditioner and not having to buy
razor blades. It all adds up. So, I definitely have been noticing a lot of savings because of it and
feeling really good about it
There have definitely been some people who have] asked me, "you know you know after your year is up,
which is sort of the timeframe I gave myself for this,
documenting and writing about and things like that, if I would just go back to,
you know, a regular
lifestyle, and I can't. I definitely cannot. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to and
it would definitely be like
throwing away everything that I
have been working towards