Woman’s Day (New Zealand)

Tidy Kiwis

We fill one wheelie bin a year

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When Nic Turner drags her wheelie bin to the curb outside her Cambridge home, it rattles with a few broken toys that couldn’t be fixed or recycled. The only other thing in there is some worn-out fabric from her family’s well-loved clothes.

Unlike her recycling bin that’s placed on the street every two months, it’s rare to see a wheelie bin outside Nic’s home because, incredibly, she and her husband Mike Ryan produce just one lot of rubbish a year.

In 2012, the parents to daughters Asha, four, and Makhi, two, made a complete 180 in the way they approach shopping and waste.

“It was a process of making one small change at a time so it didn’t feel like a big deal,” says Nic, 40, who has swapped

a fast-paced corporate career in New York, Sydney and Auckland for a quieter downsized life in the Waikato.

There were two reasons the self-titled “behaviour changer” took the dive into a minimalist lifestyle six years ago – the first being her eye-opening career in the consumer goods industry.

Of her 18-year career, Nic explains, “My area of specialty was understand­ing how we behave as shoppers in the supermarke­t and how we can orchestrat­e people into buying more. I started thinking, ‘There’s something not quite right about this,’ as it was very much about driving consumptio­n.”

The second trigger was 38-year-old Mike getting dermatitis on his hands, leading the duo to question if something they were using on their skin had caused the rash.

So they started reducing their chemical load, starting with omitting certain soaps, moisturise­rs, cleaning products and laundry powders. As they went through this process, their interest in simple living began to spiral.

“We went through other areas of our house and soon we were hooked on the whole minimalism thing. We got rid of a lot of stuff on TradeMe.”

New mindset

The couple of 10 years then took the next step of minimising their food waste, which Nic says forms a huge part of the average household rubbish bin.

She explains, “We started looking at how we could reduce our food wastage and got better at buying in bulk, storing leftovers in the freezer and creating compost – and then we made a worm farm!”

Once Nic and her IT hubby had their children, they opted for reusable nappies over disposable and with just one toy box for both girls, the family started renting items through their local Toy Library.

“We’ve had to change our thinking around gifts too,” tells Nic. “Now we focus more on experience­s over things, so for birthdays and Christmas, we’ll do activities together instead – and the girls love it.”

Other new habits included bringing their own containers to the butchers or if they’re out for sushi, and they’ve invested in reusable coffee cups for purchasing their daily caffeine fix.

Since shifting from Auckland’s upmarket suburb of Parnell to their modest Cambridge Camb id abode, b d Nic has also altered her clothes-shopping habits. She now works around a “capsule wardrobe”.

The vintage-shopping guru says, “We focus on quality over quantity – fewer, better items that work well together. I often source mine from recycle boutiques and fix things as opposed to getting rid of them.”

When the family’s clothes wear out, Nic cuts the material into squares for rags and if they’re natural fabrics such as cotton, she’ll put them in the compost once they’re no longer usable.

The less-is-more concept has other benefits too. Nic insists, “It’s great from the point of view that my washing pile never gets too big!”

Nic also points out that while her shopping habits are tight, it’s not that she doesn’t does ’t like lik nice i things. “Society’s just become very programmed to go out and buy something new or replace something that can be fixed.”

Since this bout of self-educating, downsizing and declutteri­ng, Nic has also changed her career.

In the past three years, the founder of Mainstream Green has worked with more than a thousand people to help them to make changes like she has.

The determined greenie also works alongside local councils and businesses, and runs tours through her home to display exactly how her family lives.

So what’s her advice to people wanting to ditch the waste? “It’s about having that micro-pause while you’re out shopping to think, ‘Do I really need this? Do I really want it? Is there an alternativ­e that’s not creating so much waste?’”

She concludes, “It’s easy to get overwhelme­d by the changes you need to make. But it’s about focusing on doing one thing at a time and then you can make other changes.”

 ??  ?? No hoarding here! Nic conducts tours through her home to show people how they too can live minimally.Nic and Mike focus on giving kids Asha (left) and Makhi experience­s instead of things.
No hoarding here! Nic conducts tours through her home to show people how they too can live minimally.Nic and Mike focus on giving kids Asha (left) and Makhi experience­s instead of things.
 ??  ?? In Nic’s house, a year of rubbish can fit in the palm of her hand!
In Nic’s house, a year of rubbish can fit in the palm of her hand!

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