"ZERO waste… I mean, is it even possible?"
It's a loaded question of course. And it's the first question I lob at Khor Sue Yee, co-founder and executive director of Zero Waste Malaysia, a non-governmental organisation advocating and championing zero-waste lifestyle and sustainable development.
"No, it's not!" is her surprising reply. And she flashes a grin.
The slightly-built woman in front of me is the antithesis of what I was expecting. Okay, maybe I was being a little harsh in imagining a dumpster-diving, angry activist with a unibrow. All of which Khor doesn't represent or possess, thankfully.
No placards here, no long diatribe about the evils of plastic, no judgment even. Khor doesn't even flinch when I admit that I find the zero-waste lifestyle completely unachievable.
"You're not alone in thinking that way," she consoles me gently.
She leans forward and continues: "Zero is the ultimate goal actually. But no one has ever achieved 'zero' waste. People often assume that zero-waste lifestyle is an extreme lifestyle but it isn't. We're just trying to be kinder to the environment and taking steps to produce less wastage."
Sounds simple enough.
"It actually is," she insists, adding: "Small steps make a difference."
Small steps. More life coach than intense activist, Khor prescribes to the idea of making incremental changes than diving into a complete change of lifestyle.
Advises Khor: "The one thing I try to emphasise to people is to go step by step. Don't try to do everything at once. It's been a practice of mine to not get overwhelmed by it all."
CHANGING PERCEPTIONS
With the advent of the industrial revolution, in particular, our capacity to take, make and dispose has grown exponentially. In the years since, this trajectory has continued until it became a global problem.
Imagine 15 grocery bags filled with plastic trash piled up on every single square metre of shoreline in the world. That's how much land-based plastic trash ended up in the world's oceans in just one year.
The world generates at least tens of millions of metric tonnes of plastic and other solid waste each year, 10 times the amount a century ago, according to World Bank researchers.
Closer to home, Malaysia produces 38 million kilogrammes of waste daily, that's enough to fill up the Petronas Twin Towers every seven days. Worse still, Malaysia ranks No. 2 in Asia in generating the most plastic waste. Waste issue has become the second biggest contributor to global warming in Malaysia.
And yet, there are a growing number of people — often young millennial women like Khor — who are part of a zero-waste movement. These aren't wannabe hippies (Khor grins widely at the mere suggestion), but people embracing a modern minimalist lifestyle.
"I think many people are ready to cut their waste," she says. However, she doesn't want people to fixate on attempting giant strides and failing spectacularly. Zero-waste is really about trying to minimise your trash and making better choices in your life," she adds. "Just do the best you can and buy less."
It hasn't always been that way, she shares with a wry chuckle. Lifting her hands to make air quotes, she emphasises the word "normal", saying: "I come from a very normal family!"
Her "papa" worked at the wet market or pasar borong in Selayang, dealing with logistics, while her mother was a manager of an upscale boutique. The eldest of four siblings, Khor says that the concept of "zero waste" wasn't something bandied about in her household. "We never really heard of it back then!" she says, smiling.
The bookish young woman loved chemistry and decided to pursue chemical environmental engineering at the University of Nottingham. Err what? "There's a funny story there," she begins with a grin.
Khor studied at an independent vernacular school and soon found that her best subject was chemistry. "…so okay, let me take up a course that's related to chemistry, so I picked chemical environmental engineering", she continues, before adding drolly: "But I soon found out my degree course had a lot more to do with Physics, which I didn't quite like!"
TURN IN THE ROAD
Upon graduating, Khor was in the midst of job hunting and as she simply puts it: "…finding ways on how to be a better version of myself! I looked up videos on self-improvement and simply went on this search".
Her ready smile slips a little as she leans towards me, confiding: "To be honest, I was in this low phase after university."
Why? I ask. She replies quietly: "I lost one of my brothers to cancer."
She grows quiet.
Her last year at university was spent alternating between studying and spending time with her youngest brother ("He was the youngest and the sweetest," she tells me fondly) as he battled cancer. Her sister, who was studying nursing in Singapore, took a gap year to spend time with the family as well.
Her youngest brother went through bouts of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and things were picking up as he went into remission. But the cancer returned a year later, and he finally succumbed to it. "It was tough," she tells me matter-of-factly, adding: "But it was a special year for us as a family. It was a year that we learnt a lot of different values as a family."
The sense of loss profoundly impacted her life and that of her family. "My brother's death blew a hole in me and made me reconsider everything. What kind of life did I want to live? What kind of person did I want to be?" muses Khor softly.
It fell on Khor to ensure that her family's — especially her mother's — mental health was taken care of. "I watched a lot of TED talks and inspiring videos to keep myself upbeat," she recalls, adding: "I had to be positive and motivated, and not allow myself to remain in that dark space. I needed to be strong for the family."
It was a TED talk given by American environmental activist Lauren Singer that lit a spark within Khor. Singer has been living a zero-waste life since 2012 and is known for claiming to have collected all the waste she created since 2012 in a 16oz mason jar.
"Her talk just blew my mind!" exclaims Khor, eyes widening. "The way she lived out her life was so different from mine. Finally, I found something that resonated with me deeply."
Her brother's passing got Khor thinking about what really mattered in life. "I realised I wanted to make my life matter, and to make a tangible difference in the world." She had to stop living life like it was a dress rehearsal. "There's only one performance. This is it. You don't have time for fear and hesitation. You've just got to pursue what you believe in," she asserts.
Lauren's video about not loading the earth with unnecessary thrash got Khor researching on the concept of zero waste. "A lightbulb just lit!" she exclaims, shaking her head.
It got her thinking about her family holidays at various island spots and how she'd always enjoyed being out on the beach and close to nature.
"It occurred to me," shares Khor, "that nature is my thing and it was time I did something tangible to be kinder to the environment. This was where I could really make a difference".
ZERO WASTE ADVOCATE
Khor finally landed a job in Beijing as a technical engineer. "It was a good place as any to start my zero-waste journey," she says, smiling. "No one knew me in this new city. I could start afresh and adapt a zero-waste lifestyle."
Was it easy? I ask curiously.
"Well yes and no," she ventures tentatively. Being in a foreign country where no one knew her made it easy for Khor to adapt a new lifestyle. "Well, it was easy to venture out of my comfort zone. I mean, I thought it was okay if people thought I was this crazy person here because I didn't know anyone!" she adds, before adding: "The courage to tell people about my choices was something I could only do in a brand new place!"
To navigate the consumer minefield, plastic purgers like Khor develop mental maps of places where they can shop. It may take months, but they learn where to get milk in a glass bottle, or which store lets you bring your own containers to buy shampoo and toothpaste.
"I wake up and think, 'How am I going to make it through the day without using any single-use plastic?'" she says, adding: "It's a daily challenge but I think it becomes easier. It's really just learning new behaviour."
Khor documented her zero-waste journey on social media and soon found a like-minded ally in Aurora Tin, a journalist who was also in the zero-waste lifestyle. "She 'liked' one of my posts and we started a friendship soon after," she recalls.
Tin had created a Facebook group in 2016 for like-minded zero-waste champions to share their tips and tricks, and invited Khor to join the group. "We had around 10 people in the group at that time," she recalls.
When Khor returned to Malaysia in 2017, she met up with Tin for the first time and they eventually started running the community-based group together. The small community group soon became the reservoir of knowledge where zero-waste practitioners could find answers on anything — from places that allowed product refills without packaging, to ideas on how to repurpose and upcycle old items.
The duo also organised small-scale events for members to take part in plastic-free excursions to night markets and going on picnics.
While awareness was slowly picking up within the community group, there was still some resistance closer to home. "My father wasn't too happy when I insisted on composting at home!" she confides half-ruefully, adding: "He thought it would stink up the house and he was quite resistant to the idea at first. But eventually, my parents thawed and they've been quite supportive ever since."
The Zero-Waste group took off exponentially when Tin and Khor invited Bea Johnson, the founder of the global zero-waste movement, to be a guest speaker at their inaugural Zero Waste Festival in May 2017.
"When we found out that Bea was touring Asia, we contacted her team and asked if she could come to Malaysia. That was a huge coup and Bea's presence certainly brought in the crowd!" recalls Khor, eyes sparkling.
Best known for her 5R methodology — Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot (only to be practised in that order) — the "mother of zero-waste lifestyle" attracted plenty of media coverage, and the group soon saw a spike in followers.
Four years later, what began as a passion project eventually evolved into a non-profit organisation fuelled by fervent volunteers eager to spread awareness of living sustainably and creating less waste.
The NGO has grown in leaps and bounds since its humble beginnings as a community group. Boasting more than 40,000 members, Zero Waste Malaysia is now the largest community group in the country.
It has a resourceful website that includes a map locating organisations and shops nationwide providing zero-waste solutions, as well as Malaysia's first trash "encyclopaedia" that shows the recyclability of items and gives alternate zero-waste solutions.
From the depths of despair, Khor has embraced the joys of simple living that's kinder to the earth. As James Baldwin once put it, "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."
Khor smiles, nodding her head. "Maybe some people who feel privately broken as I did will read this, and they'll realise they're not alone and that it's not too late to change their life and make a difference."
For details on Zero Waste Malaysia, go to www.zerowastemalaysia.org.