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WHY I AM TAKING THE ZERO WASTE CHALLENGE.

  • Writer: Jenni Lippold
    Jenni Lippold
  • Sep 7, 2015
  • 3 min read

Alright, so I have this crazy bucket list. I would love to be able to speak several languages, fluently. I want to sail on the open ocean. I would love to open a cafe based on the same old English pub where Lewis and Tolkien wrote together... but the item on the list that is most important to me has to do with my family. I think of the future for my family and I love to picture living very simply, in a dwelling that is warm, inviting and hospitable, full with friends - and I picture some land with a huge garden and a very sustainable life where my daughter has chance to escape some of our consumer based society. Not escape our society, but see it outside the box of consumerism and materalism and then work to make the world better. A world that maybe doesn't have a floating isle of garbage miles by miles out in the pacific, and maybe one that does't have an international economy that is based on bigger-better-faster-more.

I think of this often, and although plans for moving on this dream ( the dwelling on some land, living very sustainably and in close community with others) are in the long game right now, I feel convicted to start teaching my daughter now, while she is so young. To teach her about how to live and still be a good steward of this planet, enjoy foods and enjoy the diversity of where they come from, engage in hospitality to promote environments where people get together and think up wild earth-changing notions and that turn into action.

This is weighty. When I look at this as whole, it seems like too much of a heavy lift for a working mom who very much relies on quite a lot of what consumer America has to offer her to make life easier.

However, over the past few years, I have read article after article and post after post of normal people in everyday life making choices towards this end. please wanting to build Tiny Houses. People eating locally and investing in their community. People giving up buying so so so much at Christmas and focusing on each other and spending time that counts. I feel like I might be able to take a stab at all this.

I am going to embark upon diving into a Zero Waste Challenge. There are many forms of this challenge if you read up on it from not buying anything in packaging, trying not to have any waste, eating healthy and using every ounce of food taken, all the way on up to entertainment choices and choice of abode.

I have no preconceived notions about being 100% successful. But, I plan to start making these changes each week.

I do not expect anyone to read this blog, but I am creating it for my own accountability as I plan to work at this over the year and will make myself document what I discover as a way to keep me on this path.

I believe this will be a challenging and great journey and do great things for my family. Even if it is just a little step each week. Learning each week what moreI can chop out, scraping away each unnecessary layer that society tells me is a "need", so that what actually remains is good. To aspire towards more meaning and less excess.

Every week, just a little bit less.

 
 
 

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