The Soap Dispensary’s shelves are stocked with packaging-free versions of all your day-to-day products.
like menstrual products, one thing is certain: waste is everywhere. So where does one start? “Do a waste audit,” recommends Linh Truong, the owner and operator of The Soap Dispensary on Main Street in Vancouver. The Soap Dispensary is a packaging-free store that offers a multitude of products including groceries, soap and essential oils. The company’s mission is to reduce single-use plastic and packaging waste to support the community of zero wasters in the Greater Vancouver area. A waste audit, Truong explains, consists of monitoring one’s waste for a set period of time. Whether that’s a week or a month, you won’t dispose of any waste. “If you go to cafés, that coffee cup? You don’t throw
it out. That bag your apples were in? You don’t throw it out.” Truong explains that any waste—garbage, compostables and recyclables—will pile up in one single space. This will enable you to record what you are throwing out and how much (by weight or by the number of pieces) of it you are generating. “This will give you a baseline of your consumer habits,” Truong says as she repositions her cat-eye frames. This audit gives a visual representation of the waste you produce. Seeing how much and what you’re producing also gives a starting point to discover where the biggest problems are. If you notice multiple plastic produce bags, switch over to reusable ones. If there are dozens of single-use coffee cups, purchase
a reusable tumbler. Hundreds of menstrual pads or tampons? Adopt a diva cup or menstrual underwear. “A good starting point is awareness because it motivates you,” says Truong. Dupré herself “feels a lot of guilt when [she] thinks of how much garbage [she] produces.” The emotions she felt after her own waste audit pushed her to commit to changing her lifestyle. After auditing and pinpointing the areas where you’d like to make changes, it’s key to look into where the trash is coming from. For example, the wrapper from your candy bar isn’t the only waste produced because of your sweet treat. That candy bar’s production line generates greenhouse gases, plastic and compostable waste. “Meat was my ‘Aha!’ MAY 2021 march 29