Welcome!

Welcome welcome to my blog! I have set up this platform for myself to be able to share my methods of moving towards a more sustainable lifestyle with anyone who is willing to read along. Who knows how often I’ll post, but I’m eager to share all of the steps I have been taking over the last few years to further my sustainability journey.

I thought it would be nice to start out with a post about how I got to where I am now.

I grew up in a tiny town just east of Portland, OR called Corbett. We have a Post Office, School District, Fire Department, and a tiny tiny store. I graduated high school with the same people I started kindergarten with and wouldn’t have had it any other way. As I was growing up, my family recycled, we had a compost bin that we used for fertilizer in our garden, and we ate a lot of organic food. I never thought much of any of these actions until later in my high school career when I started looking into degree programs at PNW universities. I set my sights early on environmental science and landed on Southern Oregon University for their top notch program.

I moved to Ashland in the fall of 2016. I went in undecided, but after one term and one environmental science course I declared as an Environmental Science and Policy major. My second term I tacked on a Spanish minor, later supplemented with a Business Administration minor, and even later added on a Certificate in Sustainability Leadership. I looked forward to my courses centered around the social aspect of environmental science much more than those focused on earth systems and hard sciences. I was straight up thriving in Sustainable Tourism while I was struggling to pass Hydrology and Geology, but I did it y’all.

I wanted to learn about waste management, recycling systems, renewable energy, and how we as a society could minimize our impact. My capstone project as a senior focused on compost, specifically vermicomposting, and I ended up co-authoring the sweetest children’s book about worms in order to engage younger generations and encourage early learning. That is where my passion lies and I hope to land on a career path where I can explore and expand on these ideals.

The second half of my university experience was a little more enjoyable than the first. I spent a semester in Costa Rica studying environmental sociology and the Spanish language. I ate so much fruit, so much rice, and travelled around the country with my new found buddies. Costa Rica is arguably one of the most sustainable countries out there and it was refreshing to say the least. They still used a decent amount of plastic, but basically all of their energy comes from renewable sources. So cool!

When I got back from Costa Rica I started in on my journey to zero waste. I started with switching over to a lot of natural self-care products, later finding options that were both natural and packaged in a sustainable fashion.

The journey was and still is slow going, but I try my best to find products that work for me and work for the planet.

Now, as a college graduate I spend my days at my desk at my WFH customer service job waiting for the opportunities to move up into a more fitting position to arise. I have joined the corporate Green Team which is a group of like minded individuals working to expand the horizons of sustainability for the company. We meet twice a month and explore different ways we can get other associates engaged and thinking about their footprint. I published an article on the various fast food meat alternatives that are on the market, I started a group chat with three new friends that share similar goals to mine, and I rediscovered my urge to write.

So that's me! As I write my posts I want to preface with the notion that I am not perfect and there are still a lot of things I do that would be considered wasteful, but I am super proud of the progress I have made and hope to be able to inspire a few people to start really thinking about their impact on the environment.

Anyway, tag along if you’re interested!

Send me products you love and I’ll probably try them out!

Follow me on Instagram if you don’t already, I keep a highlight reel going of my posts related to zero waste.