photo grabbed from Daña Marie Gibe Perez Facebook account
For two months now, Dana Marie Perez has been living a zero waste lifestyle.
With her current lifestyle, Perez aims to minimize solid waste production.
She posted her journey to a cost-effective lifestyle, which drew thousands of shares and reactions from netizens on Facebook.
As of this writing, her Facebook post gained 4,100 reactions and 2,829 shares.
Perez said the lifestyle encourages businesses, organizations, and the community as a whole to integrate sustainable processes that would benefit the environment.
”There are many environmental problems. At least, by this kind of lifestyle, we get to address individually one important environmental problem, which is the ballooning of solid waste that we all produce periodically,” the 24-year-old University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu graduate wrote in her post.
Her lifestyle now focuses on simple, organic living, with the intention to help conserve natural resources by non-production of waste.
Perez shared that she was influenced by a video of Lauren Singer discussing Zero Waste philosophy and lifestyle that went viral on social media last year.
In her first month, Perez was able to lessen her trash from three trash bags a week to three trash bags a month.
photo grabbed from Daña Marie Gibe Perez Facebook account
During her second month, it was minimized to one trash bag for the whole month.
photo grabbed from Daña Marie Gibe Perez Facebook account
When shopping for food, Perez uses reusable jars and eco-friendly bags during her visits to Carbon Public Market, supermarkets and department stores.
She also began making her own lotion, deodorant and toothpaste using organic ingredients.
Perez admitted it was not easy for her to start the challenge. It took her a year to finally decide to change her lifestyle.
”Living a zero-waste lifestyle is both cost-effective and doable here in our beloved Cebu City, but it is not easy. I can’t tell you enough how hard I struggled during my first month because of how inaccessible the products are and how established the use of plastic is in our community,” Perez said.
”That is also why I’m sharing all of these to you today so that you won’t get to struggle as hard as I did before,” she added.