So every year I have to set some personal goals for myself,
and one of the ones that I set for this year was to learn
how to produce less waste.
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All right, so just as a little disclaimer,
these are all just little steps that I have taken for the last
maybe six months or so.
I'm not zero waste.
I doubt I will ever be zero waste, and a lot of that
does come down to my diet.
I guess the three main culprits for this
would be meat and the packaging that it comes in, obviously,
having some convenient options around,
like rice that you can just heat up in the microwave,
and sometimes, because our schedules are hectic,
we like to have ready-made meals-- example, Youfoodz
or something like.
But I'll never be zero waste.
And if you're fater complete zero-waste tips,
I'm probably not the best person to watch.
But if you are after more sustainable ways
to reduce your waste, then, yeah,
keep watching, because I wanted to find things
that fit into my lifestyle reasonably well, like changes
that I was able to implement without it being too much
of a struggle.
I think this is one of those touchy topics,
and I have noticed, when I was reading comments
on blog articles and things like that when
I was doing a lot of research myself,
people get really hectic about it.
But you don't know all the changes
and effort someone else has put in.
So I think it's really important that we all
try to do at least something, and if everyone
was able to make some small changes,
it would just add up so much and make
a huge impact on the yearly garbage
that we're all throwing away.
Honestly, one of the biggest things
is not purchasing heaps of new stuff,
which, obviously, if you've seen my minimalism series,
is something that I've been doing for years and years.
And what that looks like is going
to be so different for everyone.
The next step that I took when I realized
I want to reduce the amount of waste that I am putting
is I had to sort of audit what was coming out.
So the major contributions that I saw
were food packaging and oral and beauty hygiene products.
They were my main things.
So one of the first steps I took was I got myself a compost bin,
and with that, I am able to compost down any food waste
that we have.
Once that's settled down, I can actually
use this as a diluted fertilizer.
The next thing that I wanted to tackle was cleaning supplies.
While I have sort of dabbled in making homemade cleaning
supplies, if we ran out and I didn't have something
done in time, I'd just pick something up,
and I wouldn't really care or look where it was coming from,
and I just kept going through so many plastic bottles
of cleaning supplies.
And I was like, right, cool.
Well, I already know how to make cleaning products.
And if you check out my book Less,
I have a whole page of recipes that I use.
And I was like, OK, cool.
Well, let's just be more prepared
and make sure that I've always gotten made things on hand.
There are some things that I don't want to hand make.
So for example, floor cleaner, rather than
buying heaps and heaps of bottles of it,
what I decided to do instead is get a concentrate.
And same with dishwashing liquid--
I got a concentrate for that.
So both of the concentrates are more natural ingredients,
which are probably better to be flushing down
the sink than some of the other things.
But I personally don't have time to make everything
from scratch, and if you do, kudos to you,
but I feel like convenience has to play into it somewhere.
There are heaps of natural alternatives
to store-bought clean products that
are still capable of getting rid of bacteria.
Another thing that I like to do for this
is buy some of these ingredients in bulk.
So you can see, I have some bulk supplies in this cupboard here.
This way, you can make some of your supplies
yourself and just put them in one of those amber
spray bottles.
Here is a quick little recipe for an all-natural, all-purpose
cleaner, and it only has two ingredients.
Firstly, you'll need to start collecting some citrus peels.
So you could use oranges for this.
I personally like to use lemons just because I never
have oranges in the house.
I do have lemons, though.
As you eat the lemons, start to collect them up.
What you do want to do, though, is make sure
that there's not too much flesh left on the skin of the lemon.
So I like to take a knife and run that along and just take
the pulp away from the lemon.
Pulp and all the inside parts, they
can actually be thrown into the compost bin as well.
So then I keep collecting those lemons in the jar.
This is a 1-liter jar, and once it's halfway full,
I'm going to fill it all the way up with white vinegar
and leave it in a cool place for two weeks.
Citrus peels contain a substance called d-limonene.
It's a natural solvent, but what we need to do
is break it down into the vinegar.
So that's why we're leaving it for two weeks.
So there tends to always be a jar
of this sitting in the fridge.
After the lemon peels have had the time to soak,
you're going to take a sieve and pour the mixture through that
into your glass jar.
And you can chop up those leftover peels,
and they can be thrown into the compost bin as well.
Grocery shopping is one of those tricky things
because I don't have a car.
Like, I'm not going to drive around to a million
different places to get my things.
I personally go between three places.
When it comes to the grocery shopping,
it's just about adopting some new habits.
Firstly, you're going to want to bring reusable bags with you.
So I have a few different kinds.
You can see, I've got these big, heavy-duty canvas bags,
and I got these from an art shop.
So they do actually have seams along the sides,
and it's a more supportive base rather than
just being branded like a regular tote bag.
And then I have cotton produce bags for bulk items--
so for example, nuts, pasta, quinoa, any kind of flour
that we might be using, all that sort of thing--
because these sort of bags, there's
such a fine weave on them that the produce
won't get out of them.
And it saves having to buy the pre-plastic packaged version.
One of the biggest ones I noticed was, like, oats.
I was like, damn it, we're buying oats all the time.
Like, things like that are so easy to swap over
into buying in bulk.
I've bought in bulk before, but I've never been super, super
consistent with it.
So it's one of those things where
as I start to run low on a product,
I write it down in my shopping list in my app in my phone.
If you are going to something like a package-free shop,
you're also going to want to make sure
that you're bringing things like glass jars
with you, if that's convenient for you.
I try to bring the produce bags and a couple of glass jars.
Too many glass jars just make the trip to heavy.
So produce bags, a few glass jars-- you're good.
Now, a crazy stat that I read-- now, this was based on the US--
and it's that, on average, Americans
go through 1.6 straws per person per day.
And I was like, Jesus, that's so much.
I personally just don't use straws
unless it's like this container.
But if you're someone who uses straws when you go out,
just grab either a metal straw or a bamboo straw.
And yeah, you can just leave that in your bag.
And that's another thing-- in my bag,
I leave a bamboo cutlery set.
If you are eating somewhere out of the house,
rather than picking up plastic, cutlery you
can just use the bamboo set that you've got.
There's also metal versions of this available.
One thing that I knew needed a shakeup was my beauty slash
hygiene routine.
OK, when it comes to this stuff, don't just
go out and buy new things.
That sort of defeats the whole purpose.
What we're doing here-- just wait till you run out,
and then we're choosing the better option.
So it's waiting until you're about to run out of a product
and going, OK, well, what can I replace this with which
is going to cause less impact when
I have to throw it away, or use it, or whatever it might be?
When it comes to dental hygiene, there
are a couple of things that I did.
You have the option of making your own toothpaste.
But to be honest, I'm not going to sit there and make
my own toothpaste, and I also really hate
the idea of using toothpaste that's got coconut oil in it.
Like, being on keto, which was--
I finished keto a year and a half ago, by the way, guys.
I still get comments about it, but I finished that off
so long ago.
Yeah, it really turned me off coconut oil.
One really easy swap-- when your toothbrush is dead,
replace it with a bamboo one.
Check on what kind of bristles you're using.
There are some of these bamboo toothbrushes are fully
compostable, can bury them in the garden, that kind of thing,
and some of them the bristles actually cannot,
just the handle.
So make sure you're checking which one you're getting.
I did buy a tooth powder.
I have noticed-- like, I've had this for a while now.
And I brush my teeth twice a day,
and it's just hardly made a dent in it.
It's something which I feel like it's
going to take so long to get through all the powder.
Floss also has its issues, so when
I ran out of my last floss, I replaced it
with a natural floss that comes in a glass container.
The glass container can be reused as well.
And I bought another insert for the floss.
So from now on, all I have to do is buy
the inserts, not the whole container over again.
So I'm not chucking away an extra piece of plastic.
And I thought this mouthwash was such a great idea
because it's portion controlled, so it's already done for you.
So the mouthwash comes in these little tablets
without throwing away those huge bottles.
If you want to know where any of this stuff is from,
I am putting together a blog post for you as well,
and I will link absolutely everything in there.
When it comes to hair removal, years ago
I had a bunch of laser hair removal done.
But I still need a razor for little things like--
I know this sounds super weird, but I shave my arms
because it makes the tattoos look better.
Are they finished?
No.
Am I lazy with it?
Yes.
But anyway, I still require a razor,
so I swapped it out to a safety razor.
This thing feels so much sturdier.
And when the blade is done, I have a little metal
tin that lives in my bathroom, and I just collect the blades
up in there because you do want to get them collected safely.
You don't just want to be dumping them
into the regular rubbish.
Another quick thing in the beauty routine-- instead
of using those cotton face rounds,
I actually started using a linen cloth to scrub my face.
The skin is showing that it's fine.
You wash it.
That's what you do.
You just chuck them in the wash, and then you use it again.
Now, I know paper towels are one of those kitchen items
that a lot of people have become accustomed to.
But worldwide, yearly, we use about 250 million tons
of this stuff.
So I have a couple of reusable hemp cloths.
Another option that you can have is cut up some old fabric
things that you have around.
If you have a tea towel that is on the verge of needing
to be thrown out, use that, or a super old bath
towel or something.
Cut them up and use them instead of the paper towels.
Upcycle things in your kitchen.
So any time I finish a jar of something,
I'm probably going to use that jar for something else.
So I have some spare jars sitting in a cupboard.
So if I cut up some veggies or I have something left over,
I'm just going to take one of those jars
and use that to keep the other produce
and things fresh in the fridge.
And you could use the glass jars that you've
finished to store home cleaning supplies
or whatever it might be.
You can always use them over again.
When it comes to books and reading,
I don't know how I feel.
I know some people say, go digital,
and then other people say, going just digital is wasteful.
But I tend to use birth options.
I have some digital and e-books on my phone,
but then I also have some proper books because I do
love having books that I enjoy.
And another thing-- uni books.
There's a couple of uni books that I've
had to just keep because I keep referring back
to them for things.
So that's sort of one that's largely
dependent on your lifestyle, whether you
want to go to a library, or whether you
want to have that book and then pass it on,
or whatever you feel is going to work for you.
Now, I really don't drink coffee.
So I was not going to mention reusable coffee cups,
in case you're wondering.
And I don't drive a car, so I think
that's a huge waste reduction in itself.
But so far, with these changes, none of this
has been immediate.
And I would say, the more I'm doing it,
the more the rubbish amount that's being thrown out
is dropping down.
I feel like this is one of those things where you can't
beat yourself up about it.
You can only do what you're capable of doing.
You cannot compare what your doing with waste reduction
and minimalism to what someone else is doing because if you
live two different lifestyles, you can't even cross that over
at all.
So do what you can do.
So if reducing your waste is a step that you want to take,
have a little audit of your house.
Have a little audit of what you tend to throw away
or what things you go through the fastest,
and think to yourself, how can I replace
this was something that is more sustainable?
I hope you're having a fantastic day or evening
or whatever the time is where you are.
Make sure that you hit the Subscribe button
if you haven't yet, and if you are looking for ways to slow
down the rate of purchases, check out my Minimalism series.
I have so many videos in that series,
and I will leave it linked in the Description box for you.
Good luck on your journey to creating less waste,
and I will catch you in my next upload.
Bye.
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