this is the trash that i personally invite into my life that i choose to throw away how long is this so this is going in four years Wow yeah I'm still in Sullivan and I'm about to go meet up with Stevie Van Horn who lives a zero-waste lifestyle and I'm gonna spend the day with her and see how she does it good come on in Thanks so what is zero waste so zero East is pretty much where I don't utilize any plastic or trash and I try to avoid the landfill at all costs that must be pretty difficult you would think so but it's actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it all right also pretty much everything in the house is secondhand or vintage I guess I'm just kind of curious like how do you start your day I usually start my day I'm gonna wash my face and then I brush my teeth but I ran out of toothpaste so I can make some more if you want how do you make toothpaste okay I will show you I'm gonna get the ingredients here it's now pretty much three ingredients this is bentonite clay and this is coconut oil and this is baking soda this is fully recyclable this is fully recyclable and this is fully recyclable do you ever get any cavity you know I don't get any cavities so why did you decide to start doing zero waste so actually mushrooms was one of the big reasons why I decided to be zero waste mycelium is the neurological network of planet Earth and the forests known to repair replenish recycle and communicate with the environment I was kind of wondering what our role with the environment is and then you think of plastic pollution and overflowing landfills deforestation and species extinction and then I just got a like this big rabbit hole of trying to change it and one of the big things is cutting out plastic it's not too much no that's great Cheers it's very pretty early tasting not it's like coconut oil and how long ago did you start doing this I'm going into my fourth year wow this is a fourth year what was the transition like for you when you decided to do zero-waste I started about two months before to prep so I bought like utensils mason jars and cloth totes and cloth produce bags that made it really easy to like start fresh and not really make mistakes and then forming the habit of going out and making it happen like prepping except for your lifestyle basically yeah so before it was like ah [ __ ] I forgot my mason jar I guess I'm gonna have to like not go to this place to eat or avoid this place that was a little bit challenging right when I started how do you avoid using plastic products for showering so the ones that I use right now it's in bulk and it's all-purpose the same thing that I use to wash my hair I used to clean the floors and I used to spray the sink and the toilet and everything else that's so cool I think it's a myth that this lifestyle is expensive I'm saving so much in supplies just by buying bulk of one thing I'm not buying anything that's plastic wrapped and 15 percent of what we're spending is in the packaging and now we enter the bedroom what's it like dating being a zero-waste person any embarrassing stories if I have a drink if I have like a margarita and I have the lime I'll like put it in my purse but it just dries up like it doesn't mold or anything I'd have like a special compost bucket in my backpack so has anyone ever stumbled upon your compost yeah oh yeah definitely what do they say that's nasty maybe two are there ever any like temptations you have the only one is when I'm at the airport and I forget stuff it's super tempting there's plastic everywhere there's like no bulk sections at the airport it's just like trail mix and chocolate and all those like really good things that I love and when I'm starving sometimes I want to be like book it just like do it but it's not worth a shitty future just to have like a convenient snack you know yeah this is the compost we used you want me to open yeah so I usually put them in brown paper bag and I'll just toss it in there and it won't smell cuz it's frozen yeah it gets picked up by the city and gets distributed through different like gardens and parks and stuff how do you feel about doing this lifestyle in such an urban environment I've seen at like 8:00 a.m. I'll leave the house see a trash can that's empty and then come back two hours later and it's filled to the brim with coffee cups and not all that's going to the landfill so the biggest thing you could do is just carry like two things with you which is a produce bag a tote and a mason jar or reusable mug yeah I gotta go gotta get one of those yeah what are your friends think of all of this um I have a lot of different reviews we can actually meet up with one now for coffee if you want we can talk to him Oh baby you wanna do okay okay are we gonna bring our own mug yeah you can pick a mug you want them all mom so you should probably take do you ever feel like Stevie's judging ya like yes all the time right now yes No one of the greatest things about her is that she really is not judgmental like for me it's not a hundred percent doable yeah I mean I'm obviously I'm using a straw is there a line drawn between Stevie and zero-waste or like have they merged identities that's a really good guy I think she is zero waste Stevie like now I'm trying to think of the times where I wasn't there waste Emily but I'm zero waste Stevie no I'm not zero waste because I hate the sound of that but I just have I've gravitated toward that lifestyle and it like has been so many things in my life that's positive so yeah the identification is kind of like together when creepy if you think about it yeah I didn't really know what to expect spending a full day being zero waste for me personally I don't think I'm ready to make all those changes but I think simple stuff like being aware enough to bring a coffee mug to the coffee shop or a tote bag to the store is totally doable hangout Stevie was super fun she's a normal girl she just makes less trash you