BY AILEEN ZANGOUEI
Lauren singer dedicates her blog trashisfortossers.com and her YouTube channel to teaching people how to live a zero-waste lifestyle, therefore being eco-friendly.
For five years, she saved her trash in a jar, and made a video exposing the contents of that jar. The jar shockingly only consisted of an amount of trash most of us probably clean out of our back-packs on a weekly basis.
Here’s what was inside the jar:
- wrappers from food
- a credit card
- present ribbon
- things that connect price tags to clothing
- band-aids
- festival bracelets
- straws from restaurants
- protective seals
- silica packets
How does she do it? Singer one day realized that while she cared about the environment, she wasn’t living that way. “So I decided to go zero-waste,” she says. The three main sources of her trash were coming from food waste, food packaging, and product packaging. Singer found ways – some very nifty – to eliminate these sources of trash.
She did this by:
- composting
- shopping at farmers markets (food w/o packaging)
- making beauty products
- making cleaning products
- asking for drinks w/o straws at restaurants
According to Singer, by doing these simple things, she eliminated essentially all of her waste.
“I used to think that the solution to environmental problems was through politicians and proactive policy decisions, but I realized that individuals have a huge impact on the world and the climate,” says Singer. Every American makes 4.5 pounds of trash per day, therefore every individual does contribute to climate change, and that individual contribution adds up quickly. The solution to climate change in Singer’s opinion is “taking simple steps to reduce our waste, if we all take little steps, and all make little changes that has a big positive impact…”
On her blog and YouTube channel, Singer answers frequently asked questions. Examples include what she does about toilet paper, how to have “zero-waste sex?” and how to have a “zero-waste period?” Finally, she demonstrates how she does zero-waste shopping at stores.
Making a lifestyle change is never easy, but it also doesn’t have to be impossible. Making simple, small changes at a time, eventually add up. Singer is living proof that a zero-waste lifestyle can, in fact, be achieved.
She states: “I believe we can make a difference.”
