I need to rewind 25 years to get to the beginning of the journey. I was part of a small team that set up an Environmental Group in our Secondary school. We planted trees around the school, organised speakers and began recycling aluminium cans. We even emptied all the bins in to the assembly area to see how much rubbish we produced in a week. The smell was far from floral as you can imagine! Do you ever look back and admire how you didn't really care about what others thought of you and just did things?! Projects on the flora & fauna of Killarney and animal testing must have made their mark on me somehow. That and running the school sweet shop! The years rolled by and I got on the materialism conveyor belt and managed to fill my house with lots of stuff! Three kids and two house moves later, I was seriously suffering from 'stuffocation'!
Inspired by my friend, Angie, I began reading Bea Johnson's book 'Zero Waste Home'. I devoured it over a few days during Christmas 2018 and a whole world opened up. I knew it was aspirational to get my family's rubbish in to a jam jar but the book was full of inspirational ideas. I questioned the idea of working hard to buy stuff that we spend so must time dusting and organising. I loved how Bea had gained so much family time back by simply living with less and placing more importance on experiences rather than material objects. Bea has lots of zero waste shops near her which certainly makes it easier.
One Tuesday morning in January, I was speaking with a mom at my son's toddler group. Her friend had just opened a zero waste shop in Jersey and I gushed and said I'd love to have one. 'Why don't you?', came a very casual reply. I was speechless and started humming and hawing! I had been a primary school teacher for 18 years and whilst I had often thought of having a business of my own, I had never done anything about it. That evening I signed up for a Start your own Business course with the Local Enterprise Office and bought the book 'Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway'! And so it began!
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