The Zero Waste Challenge which Angela completed I found to be interesting in and of itself, but I wanted to explore her motivations and what she got out of it. These were my questions to her and the answers which she gave.
Why did you do the challenge, what did you expect to get out of it?
I have always had an interest in zero waste and have tried to do a bit in the past. My friend was doing a new diet and was blogging about it on Facebook and everyone seemed interested in it, so I thought why not do a 30 days zero waste challenge to see if I could do it and then blog about it for people to see. To be honest I didn’t know if I would annoy enough people that they would start unfriending me but I thought I’d give it a go. I guess I wanted to see if it could be done or how close I could get and I also wanted to advertise the lifestyle and the choices that people could make to try and better our country and planet.
What preparations did you make (if any) before commencing the challenge?
Before doing the challenge I went onto Pinterest and looked up other people’s ideas and other peoples 30 day challenges. I even found a 60 day challenge. I was able to formulate my own ideas and then I chose a month to start it. This gave me some time to put together a zero waste go bag and a few ideas on what I might do each day.
When the challenge was finished - what were the lessons or insights the challenge taught you, any perspective changes etc which have happened as a result of doing the challenge. Did you get out of it what you expected?
When I started I got an overwhelming positive response from all my Facebook friends and they messaged me all month with ideas and options that I had not posted about. It was great because I got to see what was available locally and see what they all thought about it.
I didn’t really plan it, I just did things as I went making it a little bit flexible per day which was easiest for me. I got sick during the challenge and that was the hardest point for me as I wanted comfort items quickly which meant packaging. But otherwise overall it was a great experience that we hope to continue.
I got our waste down and didn’t really go without much, just looked for non-waste alternatives to what we were already doing. I learned that 30 days cold turkey is not really possible. It’s an ongoing process as you change little bits here and there. I got out of it what I hoped and that was to touch other people about the lifestyle and to reduce my own waste myself.
