Monday August 9th, 2021

The woman who produces no garbage

The majority of the waste we generate is plastics and packaging, which are the more polluting. We live in a world where everything we buy at the supermarket is packaged.

Lauren Singer, a young woman from New York, realized this and decided it was time for her to stop producing garbage. It may seem contradictory that in a big city like New York, this goal could be put into practice, without needing to move to the countryside. But there are actually easy and sustainable ways of living that we should all adopt if we want to protect the planet.

This 23-year-old young lady majors in Environmental Sciences and, for two years now, has been proving that putting words into action to have a sustainable lifestyle is possible, even in a big city.

She created her own company of environmentally-friendly products and buys her food at specialty organic food stores. Of course, she buys in bulk and makes her own home cleaning and personal hygiene products, so that she doesn’t produce packaging or plastic waste.

That’s how she protects the environment and her own health, by avoiding the chemicals that damage our bodies. Everything in her life is reusable or recyclable, and the only waste she produces are scraps from vegetables, fruits and organic foods, which she takes to a company that turns it into compost once a week.

Like Laura, there are many people jumping on the train, and increasingly more people are buying bulk at organic markets and using fewer plastic bags and packaging. It is also becoming much easier, as there are more and more shops selling organic products, which are affordable and spread across many cities. And several cosmetic companies have switched to handmade, making their own environmentally-friendly products with 100% natural ingredients and reusable or no packaging, like the British chain Lush.

So it is possible, we just have to dare to take the leap 馃槈