How Bea Johnson’s book Zero Waste Home changed the course of one Hongkonger’s life

Bea Johnson’s Zero Waste Home (2013) describes how to eliminate household rubbish with composting, recycling and reusable products. Fanny Moritz, founder and chief executive of Hong Kong online reusable products store and zero-waste platform NO!W No Waste, explains how the book changed her life.

At the end of 2015, I had just returned from a long break in France. I was lost in my job (Moritz ran her own digital agency) and looking for a new meaning to my life. I’d had a difficult summer, which made me want to move on.

I was reading some articles online when I came across a piece about a woman who managed to fit all her family’s annual waste in a jar. It was insane. The piece also mentioned her book, Zero Waste Home, which teaches people how to reduce their waste to almost zero step by step. I didn’t know what to expect from the book, but that didn’t matter to me. I had a challenge in mind – reducing my daily waste as much as possible – and that’s why I read this book.

Zero Waste Home changed more than my habits: it changed my state of mind. It took just a few days for me to see only plastic in all my purchases. I decided it was time to completely change my lifestyle.

When I was younger, my parents taught me good, eco-friendly habits: to take short showers and save water, to turn off the lights when leaving a room, to sort our waste for recycling. We also collected rainwater for use in our garden. I thought we were doing our best to help save the planet, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. In the end, we threw out trash every day.