My Week As A Micro-Protester

Could you live a totally sustainable life for seven days? Charlotte Philby joins the new wave of eco-warriors using daily protests to push for lasting change

- Charlotte Philby

‘You need to begin by doing a bin audit, so have a rifle through to see where most of your waste comes from,’ says Bettina Maidment, aka @plasticfreehackney. And she should know. Part of a new movement of eco campaigners who are making a big impact with their ‘microlevel protests’, Maidment decided to go plastic-free 18 months ago. In the process, the east London-based mother-of-two has so profoundly reduced the amount of waste her family produces across the board that they only take their rubbish out once every three months. It’s a seriously impressive achievement and one that has inspired me to follow suit.

The ‘micro-protest’ favours personal and corporate responsibility on a daily basis over large-scale stunts. In the past, group actions like those of Greenpeace’s Kingsnorth Six – a group of eco-warriors who famously scaled the Kingsnorth Tower in Kent in 2007 to protest against coal-fired power (for which they were arrested and later acquitted) – relied on making a noise in order to propel change. In contrast, the latest (and more accessible) trend focusses on small-scale individuals to make manageable, easy to mirror changes, which they often record online to galvanise others. Think of Antoine Repessé’s four-year project in which he saved all his recyclable rubbish then photographed it in surreal ways to highlight issues around waste; or the Kin Project, which suggests one monthly change you can make – from planting a tree to eating less meat– and then invites you to discuss your experiences in a ‘safe space’, a closed Facebook group; or the group of mothers from north London who clubbed together a week’s worth of plastic and returned it en masse to their local supermarket.