Zero Waste Tag | Tea With Shia

Grab a nice, hot, yummy cup of tea, and let's talk trash 😁! My favorite kind of talk LOL.

I have recently started to dip my toes into the big youtube lake. And there, the Zero Waste Tag has being going around youtube like lice in a pre-school, which, unlike, lice, is a good thing though 😝. Fellow zero waster Christine from Snapshots of Simplicity (blog | youtube) kicked off the tag last October.

In light of all the zero waste bloggers out there, I thought it would be great to start a zero waste tag — we all have different stories, motivations, favorites, and perspectives, but we all come together and unite in our passion for reducing waste!

When Christine told me about the Zero Waste Tag, I loved it and instantly decided I would also film a Zero Waste Tag video. Of course I started out by watching all the other Zero Waste Tag videos aka procrastinating LOL, but in a very inspiring way 💚.

A big shoutout to Christine for starting the tag!

Jump to:

• So this is my Zero Waste Tag video 😊
• 1. What got you started?
• 2. Most memorable moment?
• 3. Favorite bulk purchase?
• 4. Most recommended zero waste item?
• 5. What keeps you motivated?

So this is my Zero Waste Tag video 😊

1. What got you started?

Hm, I have been eco-conscious ever since I learned how to read and found a flyer at home about how we should protect our environment from all the pollution we are causing. I remember how shocking it was to me and that I just could not understand why we would do something like this knowing very well how wrong it was.

Later in grad school, my husband and I often talked about wanting to pay the real price for what we buy when we got “real” jobs. By “real price” we meant what things would cost if they were actually produced without exploitation of any kind. Most things are produced by harming workers, animals, and the environment. So if you sum up the overall cost, the cheap products are far from inexpensive. It is just that we are not the ones paying for the true costs.

However, after we graduated and got jobs, we got sucked into a 9-5 lifestyle, and we were always too busy. We lived off processed food, and instead of spending our money on organic and fairly produced things we spent them on convenience products and shortcut that would save us time. In the end that made us really unhappy, because we knew that this definitely wasn’t what we wanted our life to be.

So Hanno, my husband, and I decided we needed to take control of our lives, instead of just living it according to societal expectations. I quit my job, we moved to another city, finally went from vegetarian to vegan, and we were also looking into other ways to reduce our environmental footprint.

This was also when I happened to stumble over a video about Béa Johnson and zero waste on Facebook. Back then, we really admired the idea of ZW as another, maybe more radical approach to live more sustainably, but like most people we thought we would never be able to live “like that”. But just because you can’t go all the way it doesn’t mean you can’t do anything at all, right? So we started to reduce our waste here and there, and it just somehow got out of hand.

2. Most memorable moment?

My most memorable moment was probably when the 10 year old son of the girlfriend of a friend wanted to spend a day plus sleepover with us. When I asked him what he would like to do, I expected him to say something like “watching a movie” or “going to a theme park”. But instead he wanted us to go grocery shopping, because he wanted to see and learn how we managed to buy our food package-free!

3. Favorite bulk purchase?

Definitely the vegan, organic kimbap and sushi we buy every Saturday! #SushiSaturday

#SushiSaturday! Wir kaufen unser Sushi beim Wocheneinkauf im Tofuhaus. Das ist ein Bochumer Bioladen und Tofumanufaktur mit einer Bratlingtheke (alles hausgemacht). Jeden Samstag bestellen wir uns telefonisch ca. ein bis zwei Stunden bevor wir dort aufschlagen zwei Portionen veganes Sushi und bringen halt unsere eigenen Dosen mit.
Jede Woche poste ich unseren Wocheneinkauf auf Instagram, und jede Woche sagen mir Leute, dass sie so neidisch sind und ich verstehe meistens nicht ganz, warum :D.

 

A photo posted by Zero Waste Blogger (@_wastelandrebel_) on Jan 16, 2017 at 3:55am PST

Sushi is my favorite food! Buying sushi “in bulk” is actually pretty easy. Pretty much every restaurant that sells sushi will sell you their sushi as take out, right? And as long as you bring your own food containers and ask nicely, they will put it into your container. What makes our sushi special is the fact that it’s vegan and organic!

4. Most recommended zero waste item?

I am a big fan of hankies! I know many people find them super gross, and they are usually one of the last items people are willing to switch to even when they do decided to reduce their trash tremendously. Anyway, I don’t care, I just really love using handkerchieves!

I have so many allergies and spring is HELL for me, and my hankies are just my lifesavers, even though I might have some of the fugliest ones ever produced! Whatever, they are so much softer on the skin, and they do not tear. I used to run around with red, irritated skin on and around my nose from March to June. No thank you!

5. What keeps you motivated?

First of all, I am not a naturally altruistic person or anything. Just last week my aunt called me selfish, ahahaha. And she’s right. I only ever do what I want and I also have the worst self-discipline! I’m also a fun-oriented person, I mean, seriously, life without fun would just be so lame and boring. I remember I even once said in a job interview that I would only do the job as long as it is fun :D. I got the job in case you were wondering, and no, it wasn’t as much fun as they promised, so yes, I quit.

I guess you can say that I keep living sustainably because in the end I just really enjoy it. I have never liked nor enjoyed living at the expense of other humans, animals, and the environment. Not that we can completely avoid it, but I do think we should take responsibility for our own actions. As you have brewed, so you must drink. And this is my way of taking responsibility, which is something I personally consider very important, especially as a person who used to get into quite a lot of trouble.