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Knowledge Tech Cameron Is Spreading the Zero-Waste Word |
How do you spend the first five minutes of your day? There’s no better time than the morning to ground yourself and prepare your body and mind to set the tone for the day ahead. And since we only have about 25,000 mornings in our adult life, it’s time we made them count. In our Wake Up Call series, we take a look inside the morning routines of people we admire to inspire our own AM rituals and start the day on the right note. Up next, zero-waste pioneer, Lily Cameron’s morning routine.
There’s nothing quite like travel to open your eyes to a new way of life and shift your perspective. For Lily Cameron, leaving her corporate job for a three-month backpacking trip through the Pacific Northwest and French countryside inspired a complete change of lifestyle, one that is zero-waste and plastic-free. The trip proved she could live minimally and eliminate unnecessary waste from her life—and enjoy it! But when she touched back down in her native California, Cameron was frustrated by the lack of low-waste options and the plastic packaging they were often shipped with.
This inspired her to start her own zero-waste store, Wild Minimalist to make it easier for people to discover sustainable alternatives and integrate eco-habits into their daily lives. Cameron’s fusion of convenience and sustainability is the secret sauce to her “wild” success, not to mention every single item in her store is impossibly chic—we’re eyeing these upcycled cotton kitchen towels and zero-waste lunch kit with coffee cup. And now she’s continuing to spread the waste-free word via her new book, Simply Sustainable.
We caught up with the eco-trailblazer to dive into her mission, the hurdles of switching to a plastic-free life, tips for getting on board, and how her morning routine sets her up for success.
On the moment that inspired her zero-waste lifestyle…
After my husband and I got engaged, we did a month-long backpacking/road trip through the Pacific Northwest. We had to travel light, only bringing what we could carry in our backpacks, and quickly realized that we didn’t need a whole lot to be happy. When we returned home, we were ready to make a huge lifestyle change. I had been learning about the zero waste movement and minimalism and to me, they went hand in hand.
I started by going through all of our belongings that had been in storage and donated everything we didn’t need. Purging these unused items helped reset my consumption patterns and realize that I was creating a lot of unnecessary waste. We slowly used up our disposable products and started to integrate more sustainable practices, but struggled to find many of the low-waste items that support this lifestyle at local stores. And, whenever I bought things online, they were always shipped with wasteful plastic packaging which felt like it defeated the purpose.
I knew that if I was struggling to find sustainable alternatives in the SF Bay Area, I wasn’t alone so I set out to create a one-stop-shop for people trying to ditch disposables.