Sips with Sitti: S2 E2: "A Beginner's Guide to Sustainable Living" w/ guest Kate of The Tare Shop!
S2E2 Show Notes
“I started our positive planet in like 2016 as a platform to share environmental success stories to inspire action and that’s kind of how I fell into the zero waste and started making steps in my own life to reduce my waste and at the time in Halifax it was really hard - there was nowhere that made it accessible, easy and affordable.” - Kate from the Tare Shop explaining how she first got into the sustainability world, after graduating from sustainability studies.
“I love suggesting people to record their waste. Do a waste audit for a month or week - you can just do your garbage, you can just do your recycling, you can just do your compost, you can do all of it or a combination. Just record what you’re throwing out and after however long you decide to track your waste for, you’ll have a really clear picture of what you create. From there you’re like ‘Okay I saw like 15 Starbucks cups I’m going to bring my own travel mug to get my drink or make my coffee at home’. By understanding the waste you’re creating, you can make informed decisions and something that is attainable and sustainable for you.” - Kate explaining her top suggestion to people looking to lead more sustainable daily lives.
“If you’ve ever seen those infographics that are like ‘a disposable/plastic water bottle takes 500 years to decompose’ - those are super misleading because plastic doesn’t go away, it doesn’t go back into the earth. Instead of breaking down it breaks apart into smaller and smaller pieces and these are the microplastics and nanoplastics that we’re finding everywhere.” - Kate on how toxic plastic can be.
“We all play a role - we all have a certain role to play in the impact on the environment that we’re living in.” - Jackie on the importance of self-accountability and shared responsibility we have to keep our environment clean.
“It’s really interesting because what we’ve noticed outside of the fact that there’s a lot of homegrown initiatives to reduce waste, it also is a tradition in the home in a lot of ways to use as much of something as possible.” - Jackie on the sustainability practices of the Sitti team and community in Jerash.
“I have tried to start moving away from the ‘zero-waste’ word because in reality nothing is zero waste. We have garbage, we have recycling, we have compost, that we put it. In any system there’s going to be waste.” - Kate on why ‘zero-waste’ can be unrealistic and untrue.
“We do try to reuse and get crafty and thrifty with everything that comes into the store but we are not zero waste and one of the things that we do is we do a waste audit as well so we weigh all of our garbage, recycling, the compost - anything that goes out, we weigh. So we know what impact that we are having as well as tracking the waste we divert from entering the waste stream.” - Kate on The Tare Shop’s sustainable waste tracking practices.
Watch full episode here.
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