10 zero waste habits I phased out // these are ridiculous, tbh

[Music] hello everybody and welcome back to my channel my name is gy Mary and a couple of videos ago I shared zero waste actions or habits that I still do after 8 years of trying to live as zero waste as possible and I thought I wanted to continue that thought today but in the entirely opposite direction so I want to talk about 10 things that I no longer do as a Sero waster let's dive into it because the first thing that I luckily don't do anymore it was a short period of time in my Sero waist transition where I did this mainly because there was no Alternatives available to me and it's making your own toothpaste it is as Grim as it sounds and there was the same recipe floating around everywhere it was the same combination of ingredients it was coconut oil an optional few drops of essential oil and um baking soda yeah um so I actually talked to my grandparents about this because they remember using baking soda as well the thing is just with baking soda it wears down your teeth and it was actually because of this conversation I have with my grandfather that I realized that perhaps this thing is not amazing but this is also a texture thing for me the texture of it was awful I hate the feeling of just having a spoonful of oil in your mouth it it's not great I also prefer my toothpaste to have fluoride in it um some people don't but there is a significant amount of data that suggests that that's probably a good idea also I asked my dentists about it and they all recommended it now I do tooth Taps but I've actually also slowly transitioned out of them I still use some kinds but actually depending on what kind of brand you're using they might actually have a bigger impact than using toothpaste I would love to make a longer explanation of this but atas that's the G so sometimes I'm getting toothpaste simply just in a recyclable and recycled packaging or I get my tooth Taps I said never ever ever going to use homemade toothpaste again and speaking of homemade things I've also made homemade mascara quite a few times and I actually have two videos on how to make homemade mascara online the first one being extremely problematic as I use petroleum jelly as the base of course not amazing to get in your eyes it's also a byproduct of petroleum production which which is a fossil material so also not amazing then I made a second version of it where I use aloe vera it's not actively harmful as far as I have seen uh and the times I've used it like everything's been fine would I recommend it today I don't know like if you're curious about how to make your own Cosmetics it's a brilliant fun experiment it's just it doesn't work as well as professionally made formulas so today I get a mascara in a little plastic container from a company that has overall all really great values um I switch it up once in a while but I always research the companies that I use especially for cosmetics and to see if they thinking about material and what kind of ingredients they're using all this kind of stuff I would much rather do that rather than using something that actually doesn't really work for me and the thing is with the homemade mascaras the mascara would always hang on my cheeks after a few hours no all you just wouldn't be able to see that I was wearing any now this I know for a fact I've talked about multiple times on this channel but it is hilarious to me and it is something that I continuously insist on talking about and it's the fact that when I started my serero waste journey I wasn't vegan I wasn't vegetarian I wasn't plant-based I wasn't flexitarian I ate meat basically every single day often many times a day at least two times a day on average I think yeah I I ate a lot of meat and when I started to dabble with sustainability it was because of plastic pollution and I focused hyperfocus some would say specifically on plastic waste so what I did was that I brought my own little jar to The Butchers and then I got my meat in a jar and then I had zero waste meat completely as sustainably as it could possibly have been sure and today I'm plant-based it's a lot cheaper it's a lot easier for me it's also one of the things that made me refind my food Joy so cooking plant-based is just an immense joy for me I would say that I'm at a point in my own Journey with sustainability plant-based eating and veganism and been through the ringer as it's been like 8 years of zero waste and probably 7 years of plant-based eating veganism um I don't think everyone can go vegan I don't think everyone should go vegan it's also unrealistic to have that as the only goal that we're working towards because it's not going to happen I would say that according to all the data we need to reduce the impact of animal agriculture with around 75% if we want to meet our climate goals so any kind of reduction in the meat and dairy products that we are consuming is a really good thing and if you can reduce by 7 75% you're also doing amazingly but yeah a lot has happened since I went to The Butchers with my little meat jar and I have several videos about that as well if you want to check them out I also have a video about the impact of animal agriculture if you want to check that out as well just a little bit of History lesson in there too moving on now something that I used to do when I started my Ser waste journey is that I would bring all my reusables and you probably heard me say a lot of reusables no no no no no I would bring all my reusables because I wanted to be so so certain that I didn't create plastic or any kind of disposable product so I brought my straw and my plate and my Cutlery and my glass and my tote and my everything I brought everything all the time my bag was so heavy I don't recommend that anymore um and I think it comes with having a little bit of experience you kind of know what you'll need during the day and then you pack those essential things and if it turns out you would have needed something else the world's not going to fall apart I don't give myself a tough time if I'm I'm not 100% successful I bring the things that seems reasonable in that situation and the rest I leave at home another thing this was something I did especially so in the very early stages of serero waste in a time where any kind of plastic was instantly demonized in my head because I just wanted to reduce and refuse all plastic so any product and any material other than plastic was better than plastic that was sort of the logic in the early stages of zero waste so what I did often is that I used single-use bamboo plates and Cutlery instead and I've made several videos on bamboo later on turns out bamboo has a pretty big impact it has the potential to be very sustainable the thing is these potential farming practices isn't necessarily always reality and it's still an incredibly opaque industry there's very little transparency so all these amazing potentially good things about bamboo might not even be utilized in the production and it's a lot lot of resources to create something that's initially thrown away after one use still replacing a single-use plastic product with a single-use bamboo product is not a very good solution at least it's not a very sustainable solution another thing that I don't do anymore is buy reusable straws mainly because I now have the straws that I bought in the beginning of my journey I have also been gifted several reusable straws by friends and family as well as companies sending me things um but I think the reusable STW is such an interesting symbol of environmentalism and a really interesting symbol of how we can end up focusing so much on tiny small things that we forget the bigger picture and it was all sort of reduced to having plastic straws or having paper straws or using reusable straws very straw related conversation we ended up having while plastic straws only account for less than 1% of plastic pollution in our oceans and if we wanted to focus on plastic pollution looking at legislation for fishing and over fishing and ghost gear might be a much better way of doing it from a consumer standpoint simply not to buying commercially caught fish is a much better way of reducing plastic pollution in our oceans but we ended up focusing on this straw and overall this development has resulted in me having just a thorough disdain for straws in general I prefer to drink my drinks without them completely while I acknowledge that straws and especially so actually plastic straws can increase quality of life for people with disabilities but if only people with disabilities used the straws straws would never be a problem we wouldn't have to discuss it anyway so I don't buy reusable straws anymore or any kind of consumer product like that unnecessary and sometimes I feel like the zero waste movement especially so helped push this narrative that we need a reusable Sleek looking aesthetically pleasing alternative to Conventional products even when it wasn't necessary and I've seen our movement in zero waste and sustainability definitely evolve over time which is really really good to see so we're focusing a lot less on these sustainable swaps there are some that are amazing but we don't need a swap for everything sometimes the original thing although not perfect is fine and we could use our energy in much better ways if we focused on bigger issues rather than hyperfocusing on these tiny things anyway that's enough F draws another thing I also don't do anymore I cannot however say that I'm never going to do it again I might um because I still have some but I don't use soap berries now I really miss I wish there were more information more data more just any kind of credible sources talking about the supply chains of soap berries because one of the things I've heard the most times when I've talked about soapberries is that they come from these places where people in local areas in in India Nepal they used the soap berries but then white people from the West came and it like became a trend and then we started taking them instead and selling them so the market Rose so like the price got higher and now the people cannot afford the soap berries anymore so they're using shitty Alternatives like detergent with harsh chemicals in them and while that sounds like something that would happen I haven't seen any credible sources talking about this so I've always been referred to the same block post which is very anecdotal and it's always bothered me that there isn't really more information about this because I would love to communicate these issues if they are actually there but I cannot communicate them based on a blog post from one person so that's one part of why I'm not using them anymore then I think I just craved something that was a little bit more convenient and I know convenience has been a big no no word on this channel for a really long time but sometimes you have and I respect that when it's something that is not relatable to me but I feel like we need to respect each other's sort of lives I don't know but sometimes you have so much going on and you have so much in your head and you have so many things to do that there are these tiny things that end up becoming really massive because of a small inconvenience and it's irrational and it's idiotic but nonetheless I think that's how the human mind works and for me I I had weeks months where I didn't do my laundry because I just couldn't wrap my head around opening the little bag and taking all the small shells out and dumping them out into my compost and putting new in it just didn't happen it never happened so instead I got detergent sheets that I now use um and I have comments on those as well because they cannot actually be made without plastic synthetic binders at least I would love to talk about this more in detail at some point but there are other ways you can also get powdered detergents they usually come in paper packaging Etc I think I should make a video about this I don't know we'll see don't use so bars anymore because of uh actual just stress and lack of resources mental resources on my end so it was one of those things that went I would still love to know more about the actual Supply chains of them even though I've actually freelanced in a company that works with them and I've heard the anecdotal experiences from that specific supply chain but that doesn't mean it's the same everywhere Etc you catch my drift I don't do that anymore I'm kind of happy I don't do that anymore because now I actually get my laundry done sometimes when I share these things by the way I'm really scared how they will be received because sometimes I see people in the comments going oh she's just seeking validation for her shitty half ass zero waste lifestyle just like sure thing we can call it that but I want to be real with you guys when something changes and my perspective changes because obviously I've been in this lifestyle for a long time and no one is the same always I think Miley cus said something like that anyway so I already mentioned a little bit how in the beginning of the Z waste lifestyle I would focus so much on plastic being the bad guy that I would choose any material over plastic in any situation and one of those things where I did that constantly and all the time was with glass so glass is an amazing material I have many too many glass yars that I use for food storage for all kinds of bits and Bops and leftovers Etc you catch the drift but I would go to supermarket and I would get uh things in glass that was meant to be only used once and then the glass was to be recycled of thrown away I don't know we have pretty efficient glass recycling in Denmark but that I know is not the case everywhere and this issue with glass and glass actually having a really really big carbon footprint made me want to look into it further so I made an impact analysis video about glass and how you can use it in a sustainable way but overall I would just like to point towards the fact that my mentality towards material has changed now there's no need to demonize a certain material it all depends on what it's used for and how it's used and how long it's used how it's produced and what's the purpose and function of the material so plastic can have multiple practical applications which are all amazing and they can be used in really shitty ways and that goes for every type of material now I've talked about this so many times I think I have dedicated videos to this but nonetheless I wanted to squeeze it in here and it's the fact that I don't carry a trash jar around anymore I think the trash jar is an idiotic way of showing your impact because it's dishonest and it's also not working out I I I don't think it's I think it's okay so there's no way to be 100% zero waste in a society not designed for it alas we're creating a lifestyle for ourselves in a movement where we're doomed to fail at it and that's fine if we integrate that into The Narrative of the movement that we are doing our best here but that when I started in zero waste wasn't what was happening we were all looking at these trash jars and we all thought we needed the trash jars as well and then we ended up f focusing on the things that got in the jar to the point where it just wasn't rational balanced or healthy anymore so I don't carry a trash jar around I don't even save my trash sometimes when I do like these Vlog Style videos I'll show the amount of trash I've produced in a day but then I'll dispose of it in its proper recycling bins and I'll do all the normal everyday things and sometimes I produce more trash than others but I can tell you for certain my trash from 3 years can definitely as inde definitely not as indefinitely definitely not fit into a mix J and that's okay now I feel like such a hypocrite talking about this last bit but I really really wanted to so I have all these things I just think they're not necessary and I want to make sure that I am a part of creating a narrative where people know and they get into this lifestyle that these things are not necessary and it's buying aesthetically pleasing instant worthy solid containers for your food so everything can look aesthetically pleasing in your pantry or in your cabinets Etc it goes for any kind of storage product whether that's mason jars for your pantry or it's your stainless steel lunchbox you don't need these things it's okay that everything doesn't match and align and look perfectly symmetrical it's fine if we want to be sustainable we need to also be okay with things not matching up because that's the whole point we cannot just exchange and replace everything we own with something new and pretty because that defeats the whole purpose of lowering our carbon footprint so it's okay if things doesn't look like that I often say in my lectures um that I have a stainless steel lunch boox because I got it very very early in my transition into cereal waste where I thought this was necessary and it isn't so now I have it but I always tell people that if you have a plastic lunch boox from the 80s or from the '90s or from the 2000s with dentist stickers on top or whatnot how we used to decorate our things in school that lunchbox is a million times more sustainable than going out on buying a new stainless steel launchbox 100% of the time no doubt it's more sustainable to use the things we already own and that inherently means that we're using things that aren't as pretty and as sustainably looking but sustainability is not an aesthetic it's a practice and it's the functionality of products and how we use things thank you so much for watching this video I hope that you liked it leave me a comment down below and let me know what you started doing when you started going zero waste or started being more sustainable that you don't do anymore for one reason or another let me know I would love to hear if you do any of these things or if you have done them previously as well or if you could relate to any of the things that I said let me know thank you so much for watching have an amazing day I'll see you guys next time take really good care of yourselves until then bye thank you so much for watching this video and also a special thank you to my patreon supporters you guys help me create green zero weight content and I love you guys you can find the links to my social media accounts down below and the link to my patreon on this screen bye

Channel: Gittemary Johansen

Views: 177,128

Keywords: zero waste, less waste, eco, sustainable, sustainability, eco friendly, hippie, boho, girl, plastic, no, free, trash, waste, vegetarian, pollution, plantbased, earth, friendly, tips, zero, waster, inspo, vlog, vegan, veggie, green, low, impact, positive, low waste, low impact, hacks, guide, recipe, meals, inspiration, veganism, climate, change, environment, environmental, diy, homemade, living, lifestyle, how to, zero waste habits, zero waste actions, yikes, trash jar, problematic, outdated

Id: Ici_0cooRxQ

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2023