Wǒ Men Podcast: The Challenges of Going Zero Waste in China

The Wǒ Men Podcast is a discussion of life in China hosted by Yajun Zhang and Jingjing Zhang. Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men Podcast can be found here, and you can subscribe to Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

Living in an economic and sustainable way is not new in China. Actually, most of our parents and grandparents are still enjoying this kind of lifestyle. They use the same basin of water to wash vegetables, and then to water the plants. They take all their leftover food from the restaurant home. They wear the same clothes for years.

They don’t waste anything.

However, the younger Chinese generation is totally brainwashed by consumerism and lured by the convenience of easy access to food and services. They buy piles of useless stuff during Single’s Day sales and rely on food delivery services for their three meals a day which generates a huge amount of plastic packaging. The earth cannot bear the burden of a big country like China consuming and generating waste at the speed in which we do today.

Are we doomed?

Carrie Yu, co-founder of The Bulk House, has a solution: living a zero waste life. Carrie dropped out of high school at the age of 16 and came to Beijing by herself. When she was then kicked out of her rental house, it made her rethink her whole lifestyle. Buying lots of cheap stuff and generating a lot of waste didn’t make her happy, so she changed. She is now not only living a zero waste life in Beijing, she has also started her own company to promote a sustainable lifestyle.

Today, she shares her life experience with us.

Listen below on Mixcloud, or find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.