Author: Yu Qing'er Editor: Jia Fangfang
Produced by: Marriage and Family Magazine
Toothpaste made of natural materials, toothbrushes made of metal leather, shopping bags to the market to buy fresh food, most of the clothes come from second-hand platforms, do not consume paper a year, and have raised more than 300 vermicomposts...
I believe many people will find it incredible to see such a lifestyle. However, this 24-year-old girl has become an internet celebrity environmental blogger with her "traceless life", and has lived a trivial life into an ideal type in the eyes of everyone.
01
Explore, environmental protection should be a pleasant and happy
"Hello, everyone, I am a bag, today I will share my environmental protection daily life again. You can be a hot girl without buying new clothes..." The cheerful voice and sweet smile suddenly brought the distance between me and netizens. The girl in the video of
is Su Yige, the owner of B station UP. She is only 24 years old and is already a well-known environmental blogger. Every once in a while, she will share her sustainable minimalist life on the platform.
Plant milk, detergent, laundry detergent, etc., she can easily make it by hand, and even the used leather bag can be turned into a retro storage table. She and her concept of life without traces quickly became popular on the Internet and gained a large number of fans.
Su Yige was born in an ordinary family in Shandong. His parents are both traditional and economical people. The used pickles bottles and snack boxes will be reused, and they will be filled with beans or stored in some small items. When I was a child, my parents were busy with work and when I didn’t have time to cook, they would take their own small pot to the cafeteria to order food, and then take it home, never using the disposable plastic bags provided in the store.
Under the influence of his eyes, Su Yige also developed the good habit of being frugal: he does not waste and never buy things with excessive packaging. When she was in high school, she went abroad to study and began to sort garbage according to local customs. One day, Su Yige accidentally watched the film "Plastic Kingdom" and was deeply hurt. In the
screen, the child sometimes plays with the medical equipment picked up from the garbage mountain, sometimes sniffs the burning plastic bag, and then quickly sorts. Seeing these, Su Yige felt very uncomfortable. She couldn't help but ask herself: Will there be a piece of this garbage in the documentary come from me who is studying abroad? Maybe if I open a pack of cookies now, a girl will overdraw her young life in the garbage mountain; maybe a piece of plastic can destroy an marine animal , maybe... she dare not think about it anymore.
After trying to calm down her emotions, she typed out keywords such as "garbage" and "environmental protection" and began to search for relevant information online. It turns out that garbage sorting is not the best choice for environmentally friendly life, but a guarantee option, and you can do better. In order to further obtain information, Su Yige joined the local environmental protection community. When she saw that the "gods" in the group only produced a can of garbage a year, she couldn't help but admire it.
During that time, she learned a new term "zero waste" life: minimize her own domestic waste as much as possible. So, she tried to go to the environmental supermarket to buy naked packaging items, and carried her small bucket to wash shampoo and laundry detergent. Although it is far behind the great gods, Su Yige feels very accomplished when he sees the garbage he produces less and less.
However, as time goes by, the execution of zero waste has made Su Yige more and more annoyed. Once she went to the library to check information and happened to meet a friend who had a good relationship. The other party thoughtfully brought her a cup of hot coffee. Looking at this cup of lovely coffee, she hesitated: "If I drink this cup of coffee, I will not be able to complete the task of zero garbage this month, but if I don't drink it, I will let down my friend's kindness." After thinking about it over and over again, she barely squeezed out a smile and took over this cup of "hot" coffee.
In fact, such embarrassing things happen from time to time in life, which also triggered Su Yige's further thinking: Is environmental protection and normal social life necessarily contradictory? Does less garbage necessarily mean environmental protection?
Once, the suitcase wheel broke. She thought to herself: If you just want to avoid the packaging waste generated by purchasing new wheels online, then sending the suitcase to the scrap recycling bin is the easiest and feasible method. You can buy a new wheel and you can use the suitcase again. Isn’t this a better solution? After thinking about it, she thought the concept of "zero waste" was too extreme, and most importantly, she knew very well that this lifestyle was not happy to implement.
The environmentally friendly life that Su Yige likes is relaxed, natural, pleasant and healthy, rather than a life framed by concepts. Therefore, she proposed "traced life" in reference to the concept of "traced mountains and forests": try to live without traces, try to make the best use of things, and be a user of earth resources, not a plunder.
02
Practice, make "traceless life" into a career
In April 2020, Su Yige registered an account "A bag" on Bilibili. This name is homophonic with the word "one grid", and it also reminds fans to explore more sustainable lifestyles from the household item of environmentally friendly bags. Unlike traditional preaching content, her videos are particularly interesting, not only with second-hand clothes to transform fashionable clothes, but also with some DIY daily necessities tutorials.
At first, Su Yige was a little nervous, afraid that he would be scolded for being "too pretended". However, the feedback from the comment section and private messages was very friendly, and some netizens even encouraged her to expand more communication channels. Immediately afterwards, she created the topic of "'Secretless Life', Sustainable, Minimalist " on Douban to facilitate everyone's communication.
plastic wrap is a common garbage in daily life, but plastic products are difficult to degrade and are very unfriendly to the environment. To this end, Su Yige wants to make an environmentally friendly plastic wrap and share it with fans.
She searched for information online and after repeated trials, she successfully made beeswax plastic wrap. Then, she took the production steps into a video to share with everyone: first melt and stir beeswax, rosin and jojoba oil , then pour it onto fabrics made of natural materials such as cotton and linen, and then bake and shape it in the oven at high temperature. This plastic wrap is buried in the soil after use, and it can be completely degraded naturally.
Su Yige's home appliances are almost all made of environmentally friendly materials such as bamboo , stainless steel and glass; dried loofah pulp is used instead of the large-sweet cleaning cloth, and Wuwanzi picked up by the roadside instead of laundry detergent; except for underwear and swimsuits, most of the clothes come from second-hand trading platforms; usually they will bring their own glass cup when buying milk tea. Her low-carbon behavior is encouraged by many stores, and she often raises a large cup for free.
Practicing "traceless life" not only brought Su Yige a steady stream of happiness, but also made her bid farewell to the consumption habit of "buy, buy, buy, buy", and her wallet is getting more and more bulging.
One day, looking at the gray lipstick and eyeshadow palette at home, Su Yige couldn't help but fall into deep thought: "Are these things the merchants want to buy or what I really need?" It's obvious that the answer is not the latter. So, she began to adhere to the principle of "use everything for the best of everything". Whether it is powder or eye shadow, it must be completely used up before it can be replaced. If you really don’t like it, you will also get it to the forum to exchange with others. In her heart, she had silently distinguished "consumption" from "pastics".
She also has more connections with the land under her feet and the lovely people through "Secret Life". Every once in a while, Su Yige would sort out his and his friends' idle items, clean them up, put them in large cartons and put them at the door of his house for those in need to take them at will.
Idle clothes are given to welfare homes, and those that are not suitable for giving away people will also be made into rags.In addition to putting the plant residues produced by eating, they are also used for composting, and the nutrients in the food are returned to the soil, and the composted soil is then used to grow vegetables and grow flowers. Isn’t this a gentle dialogue with nature?
Under Su Yige's leadership, many friends began to participate in sustainable offline activities and visit second-hand markets together, moving towards "sealless life". Some fans also sent her private messages: "I made environmentally friendly small items in art classrooms, which are very popular among students." Seeing more and more people joining the environmental protection team through their own sharing, Su Yige is happier than anyone else.
However, some people have raised questions: "Aren't you also using disposable egg trays?" "Don't you throw away that pair of jeans too?" In fact, she has used the disposable plastic trays repeatedly for more than a year, and has worn the jeans for 8 years, and the signs have been ground to transparent. At first, she was sad because of other people's misunderstandings, but now she has long been relieved. Just stick to what she thinks is right, and time is the best proof.
Now, Su Yige has regarded sharing "Secretless Life" as a career. In addition to sharing videos, he also actively participates in 5 to 6 offline related concept activities every week and draws children's picture books. In June, she moved from a high-rise building to a small yard in Shanghai, preparing to plant some vegetables and have a close contact with nature.
Doing environmental protection is not to be an "ascetic monk" or pursue "high-end", but to work hard to do what you can in life and enjoy the whole process happily.
As Su Yige said: "'Secretless Life' has brought me closer to nature. In the future, I will continue to practice and promote it, hoping to bring this happiness and joy to more people."
