Vyshnavi Gudivada, a graduate in B.A. Mass communication, calls herself a ‘zero waster blogger’ and is proud to be one. Says this 21- year-old Hyderabadi girl, “I decided to go minimal in 2016 after realising that I have way too many things.
Being the only child, I always got whatever I asked for and I was a huge hoarder. It came to a point where I had place to keep all the things despite living in a triple bedroom villa. And thats, when it struck me that things aren’t meant to be love or cherished but experiences, are what that matters. I started purging my closet, toiletries, books, and gave away everything I didn’t need to the needy.
I discarded things that weren’t useful at all to me. And definitely my life became less chaotic and stress free”, she says. In 2017, she came across veganism through actress Supriya Aysola during a shoot and although she was sceptical about a lifestyle like this, two months later after coming many blog posts and documentaries, she decided to give veganism a try and it stayed with her until today.
“Going vegan was the best thing I ever did for my body. I feel great mentally and physically being a vegan. In 2018, I came across zero waste living while working for a college assignment and thats when I decided to give zerowaste living a try and ever since, I haven’t looked back. It gives me immense happiness for being able to do all these good things for myself and the planet.
I believe that we have just two homes - our body and the earth and we must very efficiently take care of them without fail.I saw a video of a turtle crying when a doctor was pulling out a piece of plastic straw stuck in its nose and that video impacted me a lot. That’s when I decided to go zero waste. I didn’t know much about zero waste then so I studied & researched a lot on it.
I went through videos of Bea Johnson, Lauren Singer and made some DIYs.” In August 2019, she shared a video of a zerowaste DIY toothpaste and it went viral. “That’s when I decided to blog nonstop. There have been a lot of ups and downs but I didn’t give up. There are many people on the internet who don’t care about the environment and are ignorant to climate change.
These people always try to bring my energy down but I ignore them to the best of my abilities and continue to do my work. My parents have been extremely supportive of my Instagram blogging and they too have made many zero-wast e changes in their lives. One message that I want t o give out to all the readers is that to never try for absolute perfection. Be imperfectly perfect.
You don’t have to go fully zerowaste if you cannot, just cutting down on a little bit of plastic each day serves the purpose. We don’t need a hundred people doing zerowaste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly,” she adds. The same year, Vyshnavi started an online thrift store on Whatsapp where people can exchange, swap, borrow and resell old/unused clothes, accessories and furniture.
“Its’ a completely non-profit group. Everyone in the group is friendly as understands the value of resources,” says Vyshnavi who is pursuing my PG in psychology and working as a content writer. She actively takes part in climate crisis activism in both real life and social media. I look forward to inspiring more and more people to take action to reduce their carbon and plastic footprint and bring about more awareness on climate change. This is the need of the hour and we cannot delay this,” she says.
— Manju Latha Kalanidhi kalanidhi@newindianexpress. com @mkalanidhi