Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
Going Beyond Your Own Zero Waste
Get others to join your zero-waste bandwagon!
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A collection of things I sometimes write about. Comments? Questions? Get in touch.
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Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 8 min
10 Zero Waste Principles To Keep In Mind in an Extremely Wasteful World
Moving beyond specific categories, here are overarching principles when attempting to go zero waste in any part of your life. I’ve been writing about how to go zero waste for specific categories (see them all here), and if you have been following, you will notice certain themes or principles coming up in each and every one of them. (If you’re not sure why we need to obsess about waste in the first place, just know that our trash is overwhelmingly large and is EVERYWHERE, and
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 7 min
Zero Waste Parties
Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing our waste from the parties we throw for fun and human interaction. I’ll be honest, I’m not much of a host, and being increasingly anti-social the older I get, I hardly ever put on a party, not even small intimate ones. So I am probably not one to write about this. However, I did throw a surprise party with a couple of friends recently, and it got me thinking about ways to do this in a better way. So while I may have zero tips on how t
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 5 min
Zero Waste Gift-Giving
Eliminating, substituting, and/or reducing our waste from giving gifts to our loved ones. Aaah, the joy of receiving and unwrapping gifts! We love it so much that a whole new business has popped up: subscription boxes, in which we buy ourselves (or other people) gifts that get mailed in a nice box every month or every quarter. While I have my reservations about the wastefulness of such subscriptions, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to give ourselves or each oth
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 5 min
DIY Multifunctional Sofa for the Meraki Tiny House
Putting together a custom Do-It-Yourself sofa because why not make life hard for yourself. My initial hopes and dreams were to DIY most of the interior of my tiny house, having participated in the building of the structure and exterior. In preparation, I must have watched thousands of YouTube videos on how to DIY everything from doors to shelves to dining tables. The people in the video made it look so easy, surely I can do this too? Well, turns out, no, I can’t. While YouTub
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 10 min
Zero Waste Crafting
Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing the waste from our artistic and crafty endeavours. As a kid, I enjoyed arts and crafts. The earliest piece of artwork I recall making was in kindergarten, and it is the most Malaysian thing ever: a drawing of a durian, covered with glitter. Something like this, but smothered in lots and lots of unnecessary glitter I continue to enjoy working with my hands well into adulthood, and have branched into many other areas of craft: painting,
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 6 min
Zero Waste Home Improvement
Eliminating, substituting, and/or reducing the waste from our home improvement and DIY projects. I have been continuously, if sporadically, working on the self-sustaining tiny home that we built two years ago, and am swaddled with all sorts of home improvement bits and bobs, from paints to cabinet doors to nails and screws scattered all over the place. The house that gets bombarded with my home improvement schemes Looking at all the mess, I find it difficult to imagine a zero
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 6 min
Zero Waste Travel
Eliminating, substituting, and/or reducing the waste from our around-the-world gallivanting Once upon a time, someone once asked me: “If you had to choose between Prince Charming and travel, which would you go for?”, and a much younger me had answered without a shadow of a doubt: “Duh, travel of course.” You see, I enjoy travel in roughly the same way Malaysians enjoy food. This cat must be Malaysian! One foreign colleague who visited Malaysia had this for an observation: “Yo
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 5 min
Zero Waste Clothes
Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing our waste from one too many obsessive, compulsive and impulsive clothing shopping sprees. Source I used to be a fan of cheap clothes. The cheaper the clothes, the more I could buy, and the less I cared when I threw them away when they turned out to be a horrible fit. After all, I could easily buy more next month without feeling too much of a dent in my wallet. My ignorant bliss was interrupted when I found out more about the horrible
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 5 min
Zero Waste Gadgets
Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing our waste from the never-ending obsession around the latest gadgets that we can't live without. In my teens, my gift requests saw a pronounced shift from toys to gadgets - it started with a cell phone (the ever reliable and indestructible NOKIA, woot woot!), and progressed to digital cameras and mp3 players and laptops. These were often granted to me after a particular achievement (getting good grades, getting into college, getting a
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 3 min
Zero Waste Laundry
Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing the waste from handling our dirty linens. We have come a long way from the days when our great grandmothers had to carry dirty clothes to the river and scrub each one on a washing board. Now, all I need to do is dump everything into the washer, push some buttons and leave for an hour before returning to fresh-smelling, clean clothes - which is nice, and definitely waaaaay easier. What's not so nice is the (literal) scum that comes out
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 4 min
Zero Waste Cleaning
Eliminating, substituting and reducing the waste from keeping our homes and surroundings sparkling clean (or just clean enough!) Cleaning, for one reason or another, has become far more complicated that it really is. We’ve been convinced that different parts of the house require different products, hence the need to buy a floor cleaner which is different from the wall cleaner which is different from the glass cleaner which is different from…etc All shapes and sizes (and price
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 8 min
Why You Should Go Snowboarding
Life lessons from throwing myself down snowy mountains while strapped to a piece of board. Snowboarding, like skiing, looks really cool, but is not all fun and games. It can be expensive to access, requiring a trip to the mountains, and may even necessitate flying to faraway places in search of snow, if you live in very hot, non-snowy places like I do. It involves quite a bit of pain, from being outdoors in the freezing cold for hours at a time, to falling a million times on
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 7 min
Zero Waste Personal Hygiene & Beauty
Eliminating, substituting and reducing the waste from our daily hygiene, body-care and beauty-enhancing activities. While walking through the supermarket aisles, one can actually get overwhelmed seeing the confusing array of shower and beauty products, all promising to make your hair shiny, your skin smooth, and your armpits fragrant. There are products specifically for the oily hair or skin, which is different from the one for dry hair or skin, which is also different from t
![Zero Waste Feminine Hygiene [+ GIVEAWAY]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/21e065_724813337a5745f9966be2466b366a50~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_292,h_165,fp_0.50_0.50,q_95,enc_auto/21e065_724813337a5745f9966be2466b366a50~mv2.png)
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 5 min
Zero Waste Feminine Hygiene [+ GIVEAWAY]
Eliminating, substituting and reducing the waste from our monthly, female-only, menstrual ordeals. Source [This topic concerns only the prettier half of the human population who have survived puberty, but the men can read and enjoy the pictures too, if they want.] My first ever attempt at waste elimination was to tackle the type of waste that appears on a predictable monthly cycle: menstrual pads. This was way back in 2008-2009. Despite using disposable menstrual pads for hal
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 10 min
Cover Your A** (With Insurance)
For those rainy, thunderstorm-y, hurricane-y days that lie ahead. Insurance is one of those things that nobody really wants to think about, because it conjures up negative vibes of doomsday and (at least for me) pushy insurance agents trying to sell you something you don’t even think you need. Except you do. Need insurance, that is. "Insurance? Wazzat?" Insurance is basically an Emergency Back-Up for when shitty things happen to you from out of nowhere - when your car get hit
![Zero Waste Shopping & Dining Out [+GIVEAWAY]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/21e065_e6c2f72671f74664a1446ac55b9767b5~mv2_d_3000_2054_s_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_292,h_165,fp_0.50_0.50,q_90,enc_auto/21e065_e6c2f72671f74664a1446ac55b9767b5~mv2_d_3000_2054_s_2.jpg)
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 7 min
Zero Waste Shopping & Dining Out [+GIVEAWAY]
Eliminating, substituting, reducing and/or recycling the waste from our shopping and dining trips. While I like to think that, as an adult, I have left behind the awful habits of mindless shopping and endless eating out that I did a lot of in my teens and twenties, the truth is I still very much enjoy strolling through a mall for hours and eating food that I didn’t cook myself. These activities, however, can generate a significant amount of trash - especially if you have a ha
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 7 min
Dealing with Debt
The best way to deal with debt is to have none of it. In a world where loan opportunities and credit cards are offered every time you so much as sneeze, and where borrowing money is made incredibly easy and normal, it’s difficult to not be in debt. After all, who wouldn’t take up the offer of using someone else’s money to buy cool things and only having to pay just ~10-20 bucks a month for it? Free Money The sad truth is this: Free money is never free. And when something is t
![Zero Waste Stationery [+GIVEAWAY]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/21e065_67c58a9c7f204161b32ffe307a0b0a21~mv2.jpeg/v1/fill/w_292,h_165,fp_0.50_0.50,q_90,enc_auto/21e065_67c58a9c7f204161b32ffe307a0b0a21~mv2.jpeg)
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 7 min
Zero Waste Stationery [+GIVEAWAY]
Eliminating, substituting, reducing and/or recycling the waste from our stationery drawers. At this stage of my life, I have less need for stationery than say, my teenage days. Thanks to technology, almost 90% of my work happens on a computer or an iPad, which requires zero stationery whatsoever. However, I do keep some stationery with me because I do a bit of arts & crafts, and also enjoy keeping a physical, paper-based notebook for my to-do lists and bullet journaling (alth
Atiqah Nadiah Zailani
- 5 min
Create Your Own Personal Finance System
Not all of us are accountants, but all of us, whether we like it or not, need to manage our money - here's how. Previously, we discussed how to allocate your paycheque into certain percentages to suit your priorities and lifestyle. If you haven't done this already, this article won't make much sense, so go do that first. My own allocation consists of 6 different categories (and even subcategories within those categories, just to make life more exciting), but for the purpose o
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