Meet the Plastic Free Mermaid

This blog is all about introducing a woman who tirelessly advocates for a world without plastic. A world where we all take the time to find the alternatives & stick to them to create and sustain powerful change.

Kate Nelson aka The Plastic Free Mermaid, creator of I QUIT PLASTICS & now author of the beautiful book I Quit Plastics book, see here!) is a woman who knows her stuff! She pours so much time & effort into lowering her carbon emissions, cleaning up our oceans to revive marine life and ecosystems, promoting good health using environmentally friendly products (most of which are home made!), supporting local communities & simply saving our planet in general.

I caught up with the Plastic Free Mermaid to hear how her name came about, what are the 5 things she can’t live without and what she thinks we all need to do more of. Read her thoughts below.

I hope everyone is remaining healthy & happy during this tough time. Thinking of you all & sending wishes of wellness & peace.

Elyse x

1. You are so well known as the iconic Plastic Free Mermaid ... when & how did this wonderful profile come about? 

Thank you! I have always been a mermaid, but it wasn't until I learned that plastic never biodegrades that I had to really step up my environmental activism and set a strict ethical boundary against plastics. About 11 years ago I was volunteering for a scientist when I was in college in California and she taught me plastic doesn't break down, but that it breaks up into millions of tiny microscopic bits. I was so distraught because I was using plastic constantly like everyone around me and I had no idea I was contributing to ocean pollution. So I quit using plastics and had to teach myself how to make everything I needed at home! It's been a really empowering and often hilarious journey as I navigated becoming such a big DIY gal!

2. Can you give us an insight into your home-sweet-home! What 5 things could you simply not live without in the way that you do? 
Could not live without aloe vera--the base of all my beauty products! I have a lot of this plant in and around my home sweet home. 

Could not live without coconut oil--the base of all of my bath products! I make heaps of concoctions with coco oil including moisturizers, cleansers, exfoliants, conditioners, solid perfumes, balms, etc plus I use it in the kitchen just as much!
Could not live without bicarb!--the staple for cleaning my home.

Could not live without glass jars! I buy things packaged in glass jars, like pickles and nut butters, and then I repurpose them to store food like spices and rices and pastas and nuts. I also repurpose jars for my bath and beauty products, storing leftovers, for my compost bin. They are so handy and glass is very safe to eat from! 

Could not live without the loofah. It is how I clean my body and my shower and my dishes. It's a big long zucchini like plant that you let die on the vine and inside is the rough spongy, scrubby bit that when left to try becomes a course sponge. It's an amazing plant and I find it so useful around the house.

There are so many things that I value that have become so a part of my routine and so essential to my plastic-free lifestyle. I have learned so much to take care of things so that they last and to keep it simple. Less is more.

3. For those reading who need a little more information about climate change in order to get their head around it, what exactly does climate change mean for us in this lifetime?

There is heaps of science proving that our planet has never warmed like this before, never before at this pace and because of this the planet is experiencing unprecedented changes on a massive irreversible scale! (Here is a resource I created). And each effect of global warming has infinite repercussions we cannot even anticipate, but we certainly can see many already occurring such as the warming of our oceans which is killing the coral reefs and acidifying the waters and disrupting the migratory patterns and leading to more tropical storms and preventing kelp from being able to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and the glaciers are melting and the sea levels are rising and the island nations are slowly flooding and heaps more consequences because--after all--we in fact are not separate, we are all a part of an interconnected global ecosystem, and what we do has impact. In our lifetime we will see tons of animal species go extinct. We will watch as millions of regular people become refugees due to natural disasters ruining their homes. We will notice changes in the temperature and climate and weather differing year to year. Even in Australia the past few years have been the driest and hottest ever recorded in history. And consecutively! And the weather won't just heat up, it will get more volatile. So less frequent but much more intense weather events. Months and months of drought leading to raging fires, followed by huge downpours and flooding.

4. We have KeepCups, metal straws, glass containers etc etc ... are there any  new hidden gems you've recently come across? Tell us what we all need to get our hands on!
I keep it pretty simple to be honest, but I have discovered a few radical hacks in my journey worth sharing. Beeswax wraps are so handy for storing food and keeping it fresh. I have a bendy headed safety razor, called the LeafShave razor which is amazing and will last a lifetime. I love my reusable padded period undies, they absorb all the blood so I don't have to use tampons--which are a blend of plastic and bleached cotton. I make oat milk each week and I squeeze it through my nut milk bag, which is cotton mesh bag that also doubles as produce bags. Love when things can serve more than one purpose!

5. Back to plastic! You collect so much waste from the beaches you visit ... What do you do with it? When there is no bin in sight, then what?

I always sort out the various resources and dispose of them as responsibly as possible. It's so important to record the data of what is collected in cleans, so I submit the data to Tangaroa Blue and Break Free From Plastid Brand Audit. When there is no bin in sight? Oh, I have struggled with this for over a decade! On my Fiji Sailing Mermaid Retreat we would fill our catamaran with trash collected on remote islands, but when we would get to a main island where we would try to give to a resort or somewhere that seemed to have waste management systems--they would just burn it! Which has actually led to the resurgence of many serious lung diseases in the tropics! So once the boat cavities were at capacity (much to our local captain's dismay!) we ended up hiking the trash to the highest ground to at least concentrate it safe from the tides. It is so disappointing. But when you clean up heaps of plastic waste from a remote beach in paradise for hours, it is incredibly motivating to never use plastics again.