The Simple Life

Were eating more, buying more and have more than we possibly need and a lot of it ends up as waste. This must-have mind-set needs to be adjusted. Behaviour changer Nicola Turner tells us how.

- Monique Mckenzie

After more than 16 years working in the corporate world and becoming an expert in consumer shopping habits, Nicola Turner began a journey that would set her on a very different path. These days she barely shops at all and she and her family of four are now almost completely waste-free – having significantly reduced their rubbish to just one wheelie bin per year.

It all began when Nicola’s husband started getting dermatitis on his hand. The couple addressed it by decreasing their chemical load, looking at the products they were using, reducing those and simplifying them. In the process, Nicola realised it was better not only for their wellbeing but also the planet. By being more conscious of what they were consuming, it was creating less waste.

Starting small

“I started going down that rabbit hole of how we could reduce waste further, and that led to looking at our relationship with stuff. We started learning about minimalism, downsizing and focusing on experiences instead of things. It’s been a journey of small changes over a relatively long time.”

Nicola is now the founder of Mainstream Green, a social enterprise that is passionate about creating consciousness around how we consume, and considers herself a “behaviour changer”. Looking back, she says her new lifestyle has never felt like dramatic change or daunting process.

“It’s been an evolution as opposed to a revolution. It’s not like overnight we said, ‘Hey, that was us and this is us now.’ Working in FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods), there came a point where I started going, ‘My personal values and career values are drifting further apart.’ After coming back from maternity leave with my second child I went, ‘I need to make a change now.’”