Anita Vandyke - A Zero Waste Family: In thirty days

Trying to live a zero waste life while simultaneously raising a family can feel almost impossible at times, but Anita Vandyke, bestselling author of A Zero Waste Life , is here to help.

A Zero Waste Family is a gentle thirty-day guide highlighting the lessons Anita learned during her first year navigating motherhood, while also studying medicine and still trying to reduce her waste. Here she shares innovative ideas about how families can work together to decrease their household waste and make their lives easier, richer and more purposeful, and less full of clutter and distractions.

As parents we are constantly juggling the needs of children, work, chores and money. This book is not designed to add to the guilt that we already feel. Its about showing how, by applying zero waste and minimalist principles, being an eco-parent doesnt have to be difficult, and that by making small changes as a family we can make a big difference to our world for our children and future generations.

In the first year of my daughters life, I was also reborn. Before Vivians birth, I was the stereotypical Type-A personality with a five-year plan, a regimented morning routine and a daily schedule that was so tightly packed my assistant had to schedule in toilet breaks. Yes, this really happened: in my former life as a high-flying corporate engineer, my personal assistant had to schedule in five-minute breaks between back-to-back meetings to give me time to go to the toilet, eat, drink and do all the other essential things a human being requires. But all this fell to pieces when my daughter was born. Babies dont have a schedule, and they certainly dont give a rats ass about your morning routine. Five-year plans? Pft, you cant even make a five-minute plan. This, you can imagine, was a shock to the system for a person like me.

On the outside, I was pretending I was still managing. I thought if I planned it all thoroughly and asked for help when I needed it, then everything would be fine. I was wrong. The pressure I placed on myself to have it all, and look good while doing so, had turned my life into a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

This led to the straw that broke the camels back incident. I was sitting down at my favourite cafe after a ten-hour day of work in a hospital. After almost a decade as an engineering manager, I had returned to study to earn a degree in medicine, and was in the middle of a surgical rotation as a trainee doctor. I hadnt eaten all day and all I wanted was a green smoothie. Being the zero waste girl, I said to the waiter, No straw please, I am trying to reduce my waste. He nodded and smiled. Of course, we need more people like you. I was an eco-warrior, the bestselling author, the happy mother, the diligent medical student. If you looked at the perfectly tiled pictures on my Instagram page, youd think I really did have it all.

Then the smoothie arrived... and in it was a plastic straw. I immediately burst into tears. It was the literal straw that broke the camels back.

I was inconsolable. Youd have thought that straw meant the demise of all sea life, that that straw was the cause of all the methane in our atmosphere, but really, what that straw represented was overwhelm. I was completely and utterly overwhelmed by being a full-time medical student, by being a new mother, and by trying to live a perfect, zero waste life.

My tears represented the oppressive feeling in my chest that I wasnt doing enough, that I wasnt the best medical student, that I wasnt the best mum, that I wasnt being the most eco-conscious citizen. I felt like a fraud.

This sense of overwhelm is why I decided to write this book. As parents we are constantly juggling the needs of others, children, work, chores, money. The state of the planet is the last thing on our minds. To make matters worse, plastic pollution, climate change, ecosystem collapse and the extinction of the bees (the bees!) is splashed across the media as if it is an inevitable apocalypse. What can we mere humans do if we are doomed to fail anyway? The writing of the book also overlapped with our lives being impacted by the events of 2020, when emotions were raw and society was trying to grapple with the social and environmental changes the year had wrought. It illustrated even more clearly to me that we are all juggling different priorities, and sustainable living has to be simple and seamless.

This is a book about how I learned to be a truly zero waste parent. I wrote my first book, A Zero Waste Life: In thirty days , about how individual changes can make a big cumulative difference when it comes to reducing waste. This book is focused on actions you can take as a family. By family I simply mean a group of people that you love. That can be a biological family, or one that you have created with the people you care about the most.

My definition of a zero waste life is about more than just a diet that does not produce plastic waste. It is about not wasting your life. To me, being a zero waste parent means not wasting time trying to be the perfect parent. Instead, zero waste living allows you to focus on the things that matter most family, community and the environment. This book is a thirty-day guide highlighting the lessons Ive learned during my first year of navigating motherhood while studying medicine and still trying to reduce my waste. It is a guide to how families can reduce their waste and also avoid wasting our lives worrying about things that dont truly matter. I want to show you that, by applying zero waste and minimalist principles to your life, being an eco-parent doesnt have to be difficult. In fact, it can be easy!

As I write this, my hair is unwashed, dinner isnt ready, the baby is crying and I havent prepared for the exam I have tomorrow. I am tired. This tiredness is more than just a general fatigue, it is a bone-tiredness that comes from sleepless nights and the guilt of not doing enough . Not enough for your child, not enough at work, not enough for the environment.

Enough.

Enough of that. This book is not designed to add to the guilt that we already feel as parents. It is about recognising that everything you do is enough . Instead of just writing about reducing your waste, I want to give real solutions aimed at making your life easier. Thats why the book is broken into three sections, organised according to the concept of the ripple effect.

At the centre is Self care , which then expands into Home care and, finally, to Child care . Self care is placed at the core of the book, because if we dont put on our own oxygen masks first, how can we be expected to look after others? The first five days focus on putting in place habits that make you the top priority. This is done to improve your life, so you can improve the lives of those in your care.

As any parent can attest, we often place ourselves at the end of a very long list of people we need to take care of, and in doing so we neglect our own needs. Oprah has said, I consider it a compliment when people say I am full of myself, because only when youre full Im full, Im overflowing, my cup runneth over can you have so much to offer and so much to give. Thats the importance of self care: to make sure your own cup is full, so that we can be more mindful and have more energy to attend to others.