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A Sustainable Mind - environment & sustainability podcast

006: Living a Zero-Waste Lifestyle with Bea Johnson

A Sustainable Mind - environment & sustainability podcast

Marjorie Alexander

Society & Culture, Science, Nature

4.6 ā€¢ 588 Ratings

šŸ—“ļø 28 September 2015

ā±ļø 35 minutes

šŸ”—ļø Recording | iTunes | RSS

šŸ§¾ļø Download transcript

Summary

Bea Johnson is one of today's foremost experts in the area of zero-waste living and voluntary simplicity. She is most well-known for being able to fit her family of four's trash for an entire year into a quart-sized jar. She has helped people all over the world achieve various levels of voluntary simplicity and eco-friendly living through her blog ZeroWasteHome.com and her book by the same name. She continues to spread the zero-waste message through talks which she gives all over the world.

Ā 

The turning point

  • By living with less we all of a sudden had more time to do the things we enjoyed doing

How she got started

  • Eliminated plastic bags
  • Bought all dry goodsĀ in bulk
  • Made reusable bags out of an old sheet

Resources

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A Sustainable Mind, Episode 6.

0:05.0

This is A Sustainable Mind podcast, where we delve into the minds behind today's most impactful environmental campaigns, organizations, and startups, inspiring the environmental changemakers of tomorrow.

0:18.0

I'm your host, Marjorie Alexander.

0:26.2

Today I am delighted to have on the show one of the biggest names in Earth Conscious Living, B. Johnson. Since 2008, B. Johnson and her family

0:33.0

have been dedicated to living a zero-waste lifestyle. They generate a mere court-sized jar of waste per year.

0:40.0

Through her blog and with her book, Zero Waste Home, Be launched a global movement and

0:45.0

continues to inspire a growing community to live simply. She shatters misconceptions,

0:50.2

proving that zero waste can not only be stylish, but also lead to significant health benefits

0:55.1

and time and money savings. She travels internationally, speaking at universities, corporate events

1:01.3

and conferences, and has been dubbed the priestess of Waste Free Living by the New York Times.

1:07.2

Welcome to the show B. Well, thanks for having me, Marjorie. Absolutely. So I've given a brief intro, but why don't you go into a little bit more detail about your background and how sustainability played a part in your life growing up?

1:22.0

Well, actually, sustainability did not play a part in my life growing up. What happened to us was we were living out in the

1:31.2

suburbs of San Francisco and we were living in a large home because I had wanted to live the

1:38.0

American dream and we found, after living in that house for seven years, that we were missing living within walking distance to things.

1:50.4

Where we lived then meant that we had to take the car to go to the grocery store, the school, movie theater, restaurants.

1:59.8

And we kind of missed the active lifestyle that we had

2:02.6

known in the large cities that we had lived in before.

2:06.8

So we decided to relocate, to get closer to an active downtown where we could walk to things.

2:13.5

And before finding the idea home, we rented an apartment for a year and we only moved in with the necessities.

2:21.2

And it is during that year that we found that by living with less, all of a sudden we had more time to do the things that we enjoy doing.

2:29.2

We had more time for our friends, our family to go on picnics and go on hikes.

2:34.8

So when we did find the ideal home in the downtown that interested us,

...

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