NZ waste-busting business launches on Earth Day

NZ waste-busting business launches on Earth Day

After learning about the zero waste movement three years ago, West Auckland resident, Kristy Lorson began to transform her household, replacing environmentally-damaging disposable products with sustainable reusable alternatives. Now, with her husband and their 5 year old daughter, the Lorson family take nearly two years to fill up a wheelie bin with rubbish.

“For almost every disposable product you can think of, there is a money-saving, planet-friendly, reusable alternative. But, when I first started to reduce our waste, I found it a bit time-consuming and expensive to gather those resources that help to make this lifestyle possible”, says Mrs Lorson. “I wanted to simplify the process, in the form of an affordable, one-stop zero waste shop”. Enter EarthSavvy, a business named after the Lorsons’ daughter, Savana (Savvy, to her friends). EarthSavvy is a fun online store providing reusable products for those who want to make a serious dent in their household waste.

Mrs Lorson believes that Earth Day is an ideal day to kick-off her business, and significantly, the theme for this year’s Earth Day is plastic pollution, with the official Earth Day website declaring war on plastic: “From poisoning and injuring marine life to disrupting human hormones, from littering our beaches and landscapes to clogging our waste streams and landfills, the exponential growth of plastic is now threatening the survival of our planet. In response, Earth Day 2018 will focus on fundamentally changing human attitude and behaviour about plastics and catalysing a significant reduction in plastic pollution.”

Behaviour change is exactly what Mrs Lorson hopes to achieve with her business. She is launching EarthSavvy with affordable zero waste starter kits, containing reusable produce bags, cotton cleaning cloths and more...and aims to branch out from there. And as well as waste-busting products, there are also educational resources on the EarthSavvy website, including a detailed room by room zero waste guide.

Mrs Lorson has been educating people about waste issues for the past two years. She began by writing a blog and, soon after, started the now mega-sized facebook group, Zero Waste in NZ!, which has grown to an impressive membership of over 14,000 people. “Our members are appalled by the 8 million tonnes of plastic that end up in our oceans each year - that’s like a truckload of plastic every minute”, says Mrs Lorson. “We’re embarrassed by the fact that New Zealand was recently named the most wasteful country in the developed world (per capita). It makes you realise that we have a lot of work to do in the “clean and green” department.” But, Mrs Lorson says, everyday kiwis are starting to take notice of these issues and, over the past year, there has been a groundswell of support for the reduction of single-use plastics.

“It’s fantastic that two of our major supermarket chains (Countdown and New World) are phasing out plastic bags by the end of this year and that the government’s ban on microbeads comes into effect next month. But plastic bags and microbeads are just the tip of the waste iceberg”, says Mrs Lorson. “We need to do so much more to address this issue”.

“Ultimately, I knew I had to change. Once I understood how I was connected with the problem of overconsumption, I knew I had to rethink the way I lived my life. I couldn’t have just carried on as usual - I wouldn’t be able to look my daughter in the eye. We cannot continue to plunder the earth, fuel climate change and leave a trail of waste behind for future generations to deal with. Our waste is our responsibility and reducing it is something tangible that all of us can do.”

ENDS

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