❤ liked by treesglobal and 3123 others
I guess you could say I’m a citizen of the world. I mean, sure, I was born in Randwick Royal Women’s Hospital and the past twenty-six years of my life I have “resided” in the suburb of Coogee Bay, but I like to think I’m globalised. I’ve travelled; I’m cultured. my favourite still water is imported from Finland.
My travels started with a whirlwind trip to Europe for my eighteenth birthday month. And I do mean whirlwind—some of the countries blur together a bit. At one point when I was on the plane, asleep against the window, snoring with my mouth open, eye mask on—$39 organic, locally sourced, silk—the whole of Austria just slipped under my window. Bethany and the hostess apparently found it hilarious.
This was all before I knew about how bad flying is for the environment. Before I began to think about my place in the world and started #projectplastic. Bethany’s dad loaned us the jet and we pretty much just flew anywhere and everywhere. Don’t blame me! You make some friends in high school, you just want to fit in, the popular girls turn out to have billionaire business mogul fathers. Or mothers, it’s 2019. I don’t make the rules.
Look—I don’t travel in jets anymore. I mean, I do take planes sometimes. I live in Australia, a giant island in the middle of nowhere. How else am I meant to get around? Can you imagine. Don’t say on a boat! One morally bankrupt issue at a time!
❤ liked by beam_me_up and 2044 others
I’ve finally got my jar! As I’ve begun to follow more ethically likeminded people who’ve also been monitoring their use of plastic, I’ve noticed a lot of them keep all the plastic they can’t avoid or recycle in a jar.
I went on a hunt for a jar that suits me, and I found it. It’s already pretty full #yikes.
❤ liked by greenmum74 and 2678 others
Before I began my #wellnessjourney, I was travelled, but I wasn’t worldly. Now though? Even as I write this, my pants? Ethical linen weaved in Ontario. Shirt? Made in a women’s prison in Saigon. Slippers? New Zealand sheep’s wool. My glasses are (responsibly sourced) Galapagos Tortoise shell. Even my hair dye is made from Indigenous red rocks from the Kimberly.
Now I don’t have to travel the world—the world travels to me. If you went through my house, you’d find something from every corner. Even the ocean. Especially the ocean. The bag I’ve been using is a limited-edition recycled plastic from the deepest part of the Pacific explored by human animals.
❤ liked by lilag and 1004 others
As you guys know, me and Bethany aren’t friends anymore. I’ve seen the light; she unfollowed me on every platform. I refuse to feel bad about that part of my life.
❤ liked by jorgef and 785 others
In my previous life, I travelled to a lot of places: America, Europe, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain. Recently, however, as I’ve been staying home and focusing on my #projectplastic, I’ve had time to think about things. And, on reflection, most of the places travelled to were for work.
What I’m saying is, I didn’t really spend time outside of OECD nations. Unless you count the seventeen-hour layover I spent sleeping under a row of chairs in an Indian airport. And Bali a handful of times—even I need a place to just unwind. Sometimes you’ve just got to relax, put a blue-light filter on your phone, limit your posts to once a day, get fully into some morning yoga, and just #reload.
❤ liked by ecobitch and 683 others
Last time I went to Bali, I met Pip at a silent retreat. Pip is my new friend. She lives in Sydney too. She’s from the western suburbs. She rides her bike everywhere, grows her own vegetables, and has a HECS debt. Sometimes she doesn’t go on Instagram for days at a time. She says things like “I don’t think you’re properly considering your privilege”. Pip makes me a better person. I’ve had some major breakthroughs with Pip. Epiphanies, even. She’s been making me think more deeply about the world around me, and I’ve started to realise how much I really don’t know—and how much more there is to do to truly live #sustainably.
I’ve also started seeing a therapist; it’s all because of Pip. It’s good to have a friend who’s more compatible with your lifestyle.
❤ liked by piploves and 459 others
Look, I’m not saying there aren’t people out there with bigger issues than me. Pip has been telling me a lot about climate refugees and corporate pollution, so I want to acknowledge that I live a fairly privileged life due to my upper-middle upbringing. However, there is real pressure on me. You have to understand what it feels like when strangers are obsessed with what you say and do and look like. Sometimes, as I’ve moved away from pure brand ambassadoring and toward a lifestyle focused on #community, #sustainability, and #wellness, it’s become overwhelming. Some of the people on here who used to be supportive have said some really awful things, and it feels like my whole support network will fall out from under me if I don’t post a photo in the latest Urban Outfitters ensemble. It’s gotten to a point where I’ll just be minding my own business, researching eco products or healthy smoothies, going about my life, and then I’ll look at my follower count and it will hit me. Yesterday, I was scrolling through my feed, and I started to think about all the things that could go wrong. About how I have so much power with this one thing, but yet, beyond it, I have none at all. No life skills whatsoever. Nada. I started to panic, my hands froze up and I couldn’t speak.
I’m feeling better, but I still feel anxious. I mean, what if I said or did the wrong thing and everyone turned on me? It would all be gone. All of it. I don’t have billionaire parents.
❤ liked by plantminded and 849 others
So, I’ve had to get a new jar. I’m working out a solution. I’ve started to think more critically about the stuff I’m promoting on here. I deleted some old posts and, yes, I lost a bunch of followers.
I have worked to change my content, but the truth is, even the ethically made products being sent to me, bamboo bras and bamboo toothbrushes, and bamboo face washes—a whole lot of bamboo really—are still sent in plastic. Not all of it, because obviously these brands are also trying their best.
It’s got me thinking about how hard it is to be sustainable in an unsustainable world. And I mean—what about all the postage? Isn’t that just as bad as travelling? Does that count toward my ecological footprint, or that of the companies sending the stuff?
Sometimes, I just want to get on the next plane to the Mediterranean, sit in the sun and forgot completely about the whole world-is-on-fire issue.
The point being that I had to get a bigger jar, which, to be honest, is already full.
❤ liked by medifaith and 432 others
My therapist says my way of immediately monetising genuine experiences is a product of an unhealthy relationship with my phone. I’m working on it. At the moment, I’m taking afternoon walks down to the beach just to go outside and be in nature. Right now, I have to go completely without my phone. Walking along and down the cliffs, seeing the blue sea and feeling crisp spring air—and all these dogs at the park—it’s all too beautiful and tempting, so the phone is staying at home.
❤ liked by quitesaige and 480 others
I know the whole point of my walks down to the beach without my phone is to reflect on my place in the world and how I could move forward ethically. But the truth is, at first, all I could think about was how I wish I had my phone. More recently, as I’ve started to look around and think logistically about taking a picture down at the beach, I’ve thought how it’s not even really that Instagrammable. What they don’t tell you about my job is how long you spend cleaning up places if you want a decent photo. And, all along the cliffs here—down the path, around along the crescent of sand along the beach, all the way to the north side where the teenagers jump off the cliffs into the water at high tide, where I saw a shy octopus once, black tentacles burrowing into the sand—it’s all filled with rubbish.
I’ve started to bring a bag on my walks in the morning, to pick up all the rubbish I see. I’m going to have to get more jars.
I’m going to have to rethink things.
❤ liked by frtuinat and 959 others
So, since I’ve started to pick up rubbish on my morning walks, whenever I do make a post, as I’ve cleaned up my surroundings, I ask: is this water bottle I moved to take a nice picture in the park my responsibility? Like, was the trash I was moving to benefit me, my rubbish? And then I thought, if it was no one else’s rubbish, and I touched it, it probably was my rubbish. I’d take it home and put it in the jars—I’ve had to get new jars, because the big jar filled up even quicker than the small jar because of all the rubbish I’ve been picking up on my walks. If I go on like this the whole house will be filled with rubbish—or jars of rubbish, really. But I mean, if I think about it, isn’t my house just a big jar? A big jar that contains me?
❤ liked by givemore and 845 others
#projectplastic is evolving. It started with the living room. I pasted all the plastic from my jars to my walls, and within the day I’d wallpapered the room in this bright collage of chip packets, and beer labels, those little sushi fish and even condom wrappers. My arms hurt!
❤ liked by lukas_g and 792 others
I thought it would take forever, doing the whole house, but before I knew it the floor and ceilings were done, then the kitchen, then the bathroom, then the spare room, then my room.
Now, I’ve started on the fixtures, pasting films of plastic on sinks, taps, lamp shades. Finding a piece of the right size and texture—it’s like doing a giant puzzle with no reference picture. There’s no cheating; only I can see the finished product. Only I know there’s a salt and vinegar chip packet in one of these bags that will fit the gap on the outside of the toilet bowl, wrapping perfectly to its curve.
❤ marxistvegan and 843 others.
Pip brought her friends over to look at the house, and a few of them think I’m an artist. This one lanky guy called Grisham, wearing sandals and socks, told me I should have a night where I open my house up, like an exhibition, and have people come over to look at all my plastic rubbish home, but later I learnt he washes his hair with beer, so I don’t know.
❤ liked by tasmin and 301 others
Today I started with the outside—this is what I do now. Every day, I take a bag to the beach, I fill the bag up, I come home, I wash the plastic, then I paste it to my walls (homemade paste: cornflour and water glue). If I can, in the evening, I go for another walk. Yesterday I didn’t even think about taking my phone, I just started walking and picking up rubbish. Soon I’ll start on another layer.
❤ green4ella and 673 others
I thought that coating my house in plastic would make me feel trapped, like how I feel with this job sometimes. Not that I don’t appreciate you guys, it’s just sometimes I feel like, if I don’t post, I don’t get paid, I have to find another job, and realistically, do I even have any skills outside this job? I said to my therapist how I wondered if I was subconsciously making my own jail, but actually it’s done the opposite, coating my house in plastic. It feels like a way out.
❤ liked by bellaaaa and 459 others
Apparently, I’m the street eccentric. People walk up from the beach to come stare at the house. School kids take detours to look at it, loitering in the car park until I wave at them, and they run off, snickering. Anthony, the neighbour’s kid, came over though. He asked what I was doing, and I said coating my house in plastic, then he grabbed a pasting brush, and climbed up the ladder. His parents don’t mind. Anything to get him out of the house, apparently.
❤ liked by enviro_mntl and 211 others
The roof is done now. In the sun it’s glossy and hot. The first wave of summer heat came in last week and thick steam rolled off the roof and distorted the air around it like a halo. You’d think it’d be hot inside but it’s nice and insulated, and when I open the widow at night the wind whips through the house and whistles gently against the plastic. It’s like falling asleep in a giant seashell.
❤ liked by koalaty and 356 others
Another good thing that’s come out of all this is I’m spending time with Anthony, who is really into a video game called Red Dead Redemption, and is definitely the kind of kid I made fun of—well, bullied—in high school. Not that I don’t make fun of him a little. I mean he’s a really bad swimmer (even though he’s lived about 100m from a famously swimmable—from the famously swimmable— beach his whole life). His knees are comically knobbly, and when we went for a walk to get plastic and ran into a girl in his music class, his voice did that embarrassing drop-lift-drop thing puberty does to it, so it’s hard not to. I think it’s good for him though. He’s learning how to loosen up. Mainly, though, I think he’s good for me. He’s made me think more about my past self. Not about my environmental ignorance—more how I treated other people and expected to be treated. I’m not really sure where to go from here, but I’m asking myself questions, for sure.
❤ liked by gothecology and 202 others
Now everything is coated, I’ve begun making new stuff out of plastic. Grisham, Pip, and Anthony helped me make a chicken coop. They keep asking me if I’ll open the house to the public. I said I think I’m on display enough, but you never know. Then Grisham asked me what I thought I did all this for, and I didn’t have an answer.
What should I call my chickens?
❤ liked by juliaglobal and 798 others
Okay I’m doing it! Open house tomorrow night, address closer to the night.
❤ liked by sheeva and 489 others
Thanks everyone who came out! It was a really good night. I asked everyone who came to bring something to contribute to the house so here it all is. Some of you brought nostalgic stuff (thank you for the He-Man figurine) and a little too many of you brought expired condoms, but I appreciate it anyway. I still don’t have a very good answer about why I did any of this, but seeing so many people come together is a pretty good result. Anthony came and didn’t even blush when I made fun of how pasty he is, Pip wrote a poem and shared it with everyone, and so many of you talked to me about future collaborations. Who knows what the future holds. For now it’s been nice to #giveback.
❤ liked by barbiehurl and 1305 others
It’s weird. I noticed just now that in my lounge room, where I first started, in parts where all the layers of plastic are clear, the wall underneath has started to crumble.
All around the house, where I can find tiny see-though holes, it looks sweaty underneath, like the house is under pressure.
Then I went to my kitchen window and looked out at the ocean. In the distance, a big wave swelled. I got this metallic taste in my mouth, and then I thought how maybe this was all just a sort of preparation. I began to imagine how, years from now, when the wind has eroded the cliffs and water has flooded the bay, how the house walls will disintegrate, but its plastic moulding will still be there. Erect and shiny, like a cicada shell.