Samsational Living

Here are some tips to maintaining your zero waste lifestyle while living with roommates... This is not as difficult as you may think when it comes to maintaining a zero waste lifestyle. You can’t tell others how to live their lives, but you can open a dialog and offer a more sustainable way of living. My roommates use plastic and produce trash. That’s okay. But since I’ve started this lifestyle, collectively we are able to be more sustainable in several ways around our home.  Bar soap is the easiest place to start. You don’t need the plastic bottle of foaming soap no matter how fun it is. Get a bar of soap from a local farmers market or package free store and put it on a tray in the bathroom. Washing your hands just got a whole lot more sustainable. We have a homemade cleaning spray with essential oils that act as a disinfectant. It’s stored in a plastic spray bottle because that’s what was previously owned, but that bottle keeps getting reused when the solution runs...

The easy answer is - Zero waste is sending nothing to a landfill and refusing all single use items, primarily plastic.  But it’s not always that easy... I believe that zero waste  is an aspirational goal and something you’re always striving for. No one can become zero waste overnight. It requires planning and flexibility in the beginning and grows into a lifestyle. This isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being more conscious. I am going to try and give some insight to this lifestyle and it’s goals. Most people know the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle With zero waste there are five Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot  Refuse This can be hard at first especially in college when free things are passed out left and right. The largest part of this is refusing single use products/plastics: straws, cocktail napkins, plastic cutlery, free pens, etc. start to think about where that free XL T-shirt is really going to ...