WHO IS MELISSA

Hey there, I’m Melissa Tan, and I’m an eco-conscious girl in Malaysia pursuing a zero waste life.

I was the Recycling Kid

When I was a kid, I recycled everything that I knew to be recyclable in my house.

In my teens, I worked in coffee shops and saw the amount of cumulative waste we created. It made me very uncomfortable, so I fished plastic cups out of the trash and washed them, hauling huge bags of them to the recycling centre after my shifts. But I knew it was not enough.

Then I heard about the zero waste movement, and how we can REFUSE the creation of trash in the first place.

*click* that was my lightbulb moment. There was my solution.

I’m an animal lover

A lot of my motivation for this are the animals and people that get hurt as a result of  how the modern world works in careless disregard of the environment.

When I watched videos of an animal suffering at the slaughterhouse, and then read about how vegans eat,

*click* that was my lightbulb moment. I went #meatless.

I’ve volunteered with a local animal shelter for years, but when it came to watching videos of wildlife and marine life dying, I felt powerless.

These media had an impact on me. If I helped to create it, speak about it and get it out to more people, it may impact someone else too.

I hope to spark that lightbulb in someone else, like mine was triggered all those years ago.

There is a solution. And it begins with us.