A Conversation with Kychele Boone, Black Woman Owner of Wasteupso, a Zero-Waste Shop in South Korea

Today we chat with Kychele Boone, the Black woman owner of Wasteupso, a zero waste store in Seoul, South Korea. In this episode, we discuss her zero-waste journey, how others can get started, and her experience with being a business owner abroad.

Follow Wasteupso on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wasteupso_thezerowasteshop/

Check out the Wasteupso website: https://www.wasteupso.com/

LISTEN HERE: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play

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Transcription:

Ariel:

Hello, and welcome back to The Sustainable Brown Girl Podcast. This show exists to connect black, brown and indigenous women who are interested in sustainability. Our goal is to inspire and encourage and educate each other. From gardening to thrifting, to minimalism, to veganism and everywhere in between. We're all on a journey to taking care of our bodies and our planet. I'm your host. Ariel Green.

Zero waste has been a trendy topic over the past few years. As we've seen some people able to fit a year's worth of trash in a single jar. Zero waste is the practice of eliminating or greatly reducing the amount of trash that is sent to the landfill. To achieve this, zero wasters, first refuse any items that may produce unnecessary waste, then opt to reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot, or compost, everything else. While this may not be feasible for everyone, I've come across quite a few sustainable brown girls who are making it work. One of whom is today's guest Kychele Boone, the owner of WasteUpSo, a zero waste shop in South Korea. And this episode we've talked about her zero waste journey, how others can get started and her experience with being a business owner abroad. 

Thanks so much for joining us today. Kychele.

Kychele:

Yes. Thank you.

Ariel:

My first question, I just want to jump right into it. Please tell me, where are you from and what brought you to South Korea?

Kychele:

Well, I'm from the United States. I'm originally from Maryland about 30 minutes or so outside of DC. I went to school down in Atlanta, I went to Spelman College and after college I just was kind of like anyone else and got a job and I really just did not like my job. I was working as a paralegal and I just wasn't into corporate life. I wanted to just experience the world and see what else was out there. And a woman that I worked with, we shared an office, she told me about teaching abroad. And so, I just did some research and South Korea paid the most money. I came here and I think it was probably the best decision I've made in my life.

Ariel:

Wow, that's awesome! I recently had another Spelman graduate on here on the podcast talking about packaging engineering. She's actually my cousin. I'm from Atlanta as well, so that's awesome. So how have you been in South Korea now?

Kychele:

Now? I think it's coming up on about 16 years. Yeah.

Ariel:

Wow! Oh my gosh, that's crazy! How long did you teach and what kind of got you to...? well tell me the whole… because 16 years is a long time, I'm sure a lot happened and you know, within that time period. What happened between you teaching and starting the shop?

Kychele:

Yeah. I was teaching off and on. When I first came, I got a job. I was not a teacher by trade at all. I was a poli sci major, my plan was to go to law school. My original plan was to be here for the year, have fun travel around Asia and then just go back to my life, continue on. But it's really hard, I found it very, very difficult to go back to my hometown and live life after being in Korea for a year. In fact, I was here for a year and a half before I decided to go back to the States and just that transition was incredibly difficult. I ended up just staying for about a summer, I guess, and then ended up coming back to Korea. Did a year, still the same, partying it up, traveling around, having a good time teaching and then I went to Europe for a little bit, and then I went back to the States and it was the same thing, it wasn't what I remembered and it just wasn't me anymore. I feel like I had changed so much and seen so much that going back to a typical nine to five just was not in the cards for me. I ended up coming back to Korea again. I came and went many times, but then I was here I think about five years and I decided, well, "Okay, you have to stop partying now, you have to consider your life." And so, I decided to get my master's degree and here in South Korea, as a foreigner, especially a Western foreigner, American foreigner, you can get your degree pretty much for free.

I applied to Seoul National University with their public administration program master's program and I got in. Had to take an English test to make sure that I speak English and I got into the program. It was great. I did my two years, wrote my thesis on multicultural education, focusing on human capital development. And from there, it just kind of exposed me to all of my privileges I had as being an American, but more than that, just like being in a position where, you know, I have access to things and not even just as American but being here in Korea, having access to things and what people just don't have access to. We have a lot of food deserts in the United States, especially in major cities, we have a lot of food deserts where your only Avenue for sustenance is your corner store with a bunch of prepackaged foods and high salt whatever.

In Korea, at least where I was living, it’s just not the same. I have access to probably like five different grocery stores, like proper grocery stores in walking distance from my home or being able to go to huge big box stores, and those kinds of things you just don't have access to. And the transportation system here is so great that even if you need to go outside of your immediate neighborhood, it's just that easy to do so. So just like learning about what I have access to here that perhaps many people don't have access to, even in the United States. And so, from there, I just kind of grew my interest in sustainable instability and just understanding my privileges, in the most basic sense. And from there I finished my master's. I applied for a PhD program where I wanted to go further into the concept of human capital development by way of just access to food and insistence. During that time, I hated my program. I ended up leaving the program, literally, after taking it. I really hated it. I'm not an econ person, it's not for me. I ended up leaving the program after taking an entrepreneurship class, and just seeing how many business ideas that I had without even realizing that I had them. Just kind of going back to my teaching days and how creative I ended up being, I didn't even know I could be that creative of a teacher or even as a teacher in general.

 I'm figuring out how to make business models and seeing if they're even feasible and realizing like, "Hey, like this is a good idea." And I just doing research on it and learning more and more about sustainability and finding out about all these zero waste shops that people were growing in the UK, especially. But all throughout your house [ Inaudible 08:15] this big thing. And so, I figured, why not try something like that here? I mean, it's already an agrarian society. Like why not try something like that? And so, when I left the program, I actually moved back to Seoul. It was a wholly different feeling now because now I'm not partying anymore. I'm not in school anymore. I was actually living in my home, not just sleeping so I just realized how much trash was just all around me and how much of a food desert my area actually was. Where I moved to or moved back to whether it was at the top of [inaudible] mountain and there's no grocery stores where I live. There are only two convenience stores. You can get healthy things. Like that's not the issue. You can get bananas; you can get all types of stuff. That's fine. It's just, everything is wrapped in plastic. And sometimes two to three times over, you'll get a single banana and it might be wrapped twice. The way Korea handles their trash here is incredibly meticulous if you're thinking about it, like compared to the United States. You have to separate everything, have to wash out everything. They're quite picky about it. The Ajumma or Ahjussi on the street will tell you, you need to separate your stuff properly. They'll yell at you if you don't. I'm just noticing how much trash I was building up and having to sit it out on the street and seeing it every day, just like the eye level of it all just kind of really got to me.

Then I started getting sick. Like I said I've been here 16 years, so, I can't eat burgers like I used to, I can't drink, like I used to, so my body is changing. And I started moving toward a more vegetarian, vegan plant-based lifestyle. And so, with all the plastic and packaging that I was getting, it was just ridiculous. Like how much trash I was actually accumulating compared to before. So just all of those things kind of compiled together, kind of that got me into it and because there was nothing around me and at the time there's only one zero waste shop and it was far from my house. It just wasn't really feasible to make that my everyday market. I just figured I'll just do it myself, I just did it myself.

Ariel:

That's awesome. Wow! What was it like wanting to start your own zero waste shop?

Kychele:

At first, it was just really exciting, doing something different, doing something new but incredibly difficult to do here in Korea.

Kychele:

Obviously, I speak English, so I'm coming from a totally different culture from totally different backgrounds, totally different perspective. You're trying to get people on board with something that is not only a foreign concept, but just an unknown concept, even though people do it anyway, like they don't put it necessarily in those same terms. So just fighting against those things was incredibly difficult but seeing all of the positive reception I got in the very beginning was very exciting and so just that kind of just fueled me to keep going.

Ariel:

Yeah. Right. That was my next question. You said that there was already a zero waste shop in Seoul, although it was far from you, what is the overall reception or people's thoughts on zero waste in South Korea?

Kychele:

I have to say at least three years ago it was pretty nonexistent. Whether you were speaking in Korean or in English, it was pretty nonexistent then with the millennium development goals coming out, everybody was just so into stability. Everybody, like every contest, we're changing their description boxes to put in like the MDGs and everything like that. So that kind of helped things move on, but no, it was pretty nonexistent. And honestly, if people were quiet, I would have to say against it for the most part, just like completely no. Here not everywhere, but here in Korea, they associate zero waste with veganism and not everywhere does that.

Ariel:

Interesting

Kychele:

Yeah. So like veganism itself three years ago, no one's going to do that because Korea is a total like meat eating country, you think black people like chicken? Come to Korea, no way! Chicken places everywhere, meat places everywhere. I mean, Korean barbecue is legit. It's hard for people on a mass scale to be like, "no, I'm not going to eat meat anymore. I want to go completely vegan." It was such a foreign people were just angry about it, but now I would have to say, it's, it's really quite exploded, the whole vegan concept, there's vegan festivals. This year, we're working with three different conventions. vegan fair, vegan festa and a vegan festival, there's so many now. So many vegan bakeries are coming out. They did restaurants, so like those things are picking up. And so, with that, the zero waste movement has kind of piggybacked on veganism and just like this whole concept of reducing your meat intake in order to help save the planet, bring your own container to help save the planet. Those kinds of things are going together here. Because of the veganism movement, exploding zero waste has really come up as well.

Ariel:

Yeah. That's really interesting. I like that the zero waste and veganism are kind of tied together because there definitely are correlations between the two. Tell me about your shop, what do you sell and who are your typical customers?

Kychele:

Well, in our shop, we sell mainly zero waste products. We've got your soap, your loofahs, your toothbrushes, pretty much the staples that you would need for zero waste home. But we also do dry goods as well. A lot of times nuts and seeds can be pricey here and you can only buy them in certain increments, like very large or incredibly small increments. We sell pumpkin seeds, cashews, raw almonds, roasted almonds, rice, brown rice, those kinds of things, coffees, teas. So pretty much anything that you need in your home or cleaning, living, eating, we sell. Our typical customer? It's been really growing actually before it was really just foreigners cause I'm a boarder. Those were my networks and that's where I focused on because I wanted to get really honest feedback and I wanted to just see what people's price books were. So that's kind of where I was with that. And so, we started with foreigners and then it kind of just... with word of mouth, obviously, people have Korean friendships, relationships, coworkers, so like, it kind of rolled out from there. And then also, because we do so many vegan, festivals and events, we've gained more and more traffic among Koreans as well, but mostly females.

Ariel:

Yeah. That's what I would assume as well. Like even just looking through Instagram for zero waste hashtag it's 99% females.

Kychele:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ariel:

Let's say it's someone's first time learning about zero waste or your zero waste shop. How would you describe it?

Kychele:

If it's their first time learning about zero waste, I would just describe it as a question. I don't even know if I would be able to describe someone that doesn't really know what the movement is about. I would just pose the question. Where do you see the most trash in your home or just in your life in general? Like I remember when I was in the United States, you're from Atlanta. I went to college in Atlanta. You live out of your car a lot of the time, everything's so far apart and the transportation isn't that great. I have like ... especially my guy friends and myself included because I was in college at the time. It was just like, the amount of trash in my car was just absurd and so it's like going through your trash, like seeing like where are you getting this from? Where's this coming from? Why do you have it? And so, thinking about it from that perspective, or what’s the place in your house do you hate cleaning the most? Because there's so much trash or you don't go there enough or whatever the case may be. It's kind of like that pain point. I try to focus on it because that's how I started. Because I hated cleaning my kitchen. I don't know what it is about my kitchen. I don't like cleaning kitchens. With all the trash that would come up, I just really.... even now they still have some recycling. I'm not 100% zero waste myself. It's almost impossible right now. But like recycling day was just like the bane of my existence. I hated it so much. Like, "okay, I have to put this one here and then like getting all these guys going down the elevator." It's just frustrating, it's annoying. I hate it. It's like those kinds of things. I started just looking at it from that perspective and saying "okay, I buy this a lot. Let me see if I can get this zero waste." Just starting from there and getting people's kind of creativity and thoughts together about what their purchasing power is like and then trying to make those transitions, you know, starting small.

Ariel:

Yeah, definitely. With that, what tips can you offer to someone who is interested in zero waste, but doesn't know where to start?

Kychele:

Oh, go through your trash. It sounds gross, but totally go through your trash. I think that's like the best thing to do because I realized it too and I started making my own ginger ale because again, I've lived here for a long time. And so, when you find something from home that you haven't had in 10 years, you start to just go crazy and stockpile it. I used to really love Schweppes Ginger Ale, Schweppes Ginger Ale was my jam, I loved it so much. Maybe seven or eight years ago, they started selling it here in Korea. It was kind of a one-off. And then I learned that Schweppes Ginger Ale wasn't actually ginger ale. Then like my life just kind of like.... I don't know, I was constantly buying it. Did you know that?

Ariel:

No.

Kychele:

I did not know that it wasn't actually ginger ale until I went to this, vegan spot and the guy was like, "Hey, we make our own ginger ale" and I drank it. I'm like, "that's not ginger ale" and it was totally like mind blowing. So I started making it myself, but then when I was going through my trash, I realized how many cans of ginger ale, because like they don't... you can't get the same size can, well u can, but it's not as popular like the same size can of Cola that you would get in the States it's not the same size here. Like here they have like bullet size. It's a significantly smaller portion size than the States. I would buy a flat of 30 cans and just have it in the back room and put them in the fridge as I needed them. That's how much I was drinking ginger ale, it was absurd, completely unhealthy. And putting the recycling together and it's like, "dude, you've got like, 40 cans of ginger ale it's not good." Those kinds of things, like realizing what you're actually buying and making an active choice, just not to buy so much and try and make it yourself, because you didn't have it for 10 years you probably really don't need it. But it's like why do you have it now, you still don't really need to buy it? Making it yourself, it made it cheaper. It obviously reduces my trash considerably. And then on top of that, it's just healthier as well to know what's going into it. And ginger here is like everywhere. So being able to make it it's just easier. It just makes sense.

Ariel:

When I was first getting into the sustainability movement, I did a trash audit and yeah, I totally agree that that's one of the first things you should do, because you can see where a lot of your trash is coming from. And then also where you're spending a lot of money and those two go hand in hand. It's like, if you're spending a lot of money, on take out, like I was, or if you're spending a lot of money buying new clothes and stuff, then that's usually where you can cut back the most and reduce your waste.

Kychele:

Absolutely! Yeah. Especially here, because there's so many food delivery apps here and before like 10, 15 years ago, like when I first came here, food delivery was quite normal obviously, but when you bought Korean food or Chinese food, you would get it as a take back situation, they would bring it over to your home or office on a tray and they just kind of cover it with newspaper. You have your metal bowl and your regular spoon knife that you would have anywhere else. And then you sit it right back outside the door and somebody will come pick it up, it was already like a very zero waste style.

Ariel:

Wow!

Kychele:

Yeah, In Korea that has since changed. Where I live now, I don't see that anymore in Kangnam it might still be like that when I used to live in Kangnam, but where I live now in Seoul it's not like that anymore. It's really kind of sad because I really love that. Because at the time, I didn't think about it as zero waste. I thought about it as, "Oh, I don't have to clean anything." That's dope. I can just send it right back outside and be about my life. But now, like there's so many delivery systems that there's so much more trash than before because now you really don't have to go anywhere. Because now you can get your food from anywhere. Not just the Korean spot down the street on Chinese, flat around the corner, you can literally get it from every single restaurant. So now trash is doubled or tripled, it's quite a problem with delivery, takeout specifically.

Ariel:

Yeah. You mentioned earlier that they've started doing a lot of sustainability initiatives. So since then, within the past three to five years, have you noticed in the grocery stores, for example, where you said there was a lot of plastic utilization, have you noticed that that's been reduced any or is it something they're still working on?

Kychele:

Yes and no. Korea in the last five years, they've done a lot by way of making themselves out to be globally better than other countries. I don't know what another better way to say it. You know how countries do that right? They'll put these initiatives out there to make themselves morally conscionable and stuff like that. But they have passed a lot of plastic laws here, like those plastic bags that you would use to put your fish in or your meats or like I use for produce, those little single-use plastic bags, they banned those in big box stores.

Ariel:

Ok.

Kychele:

You still can use them if you need meat and things like wet things, you can still use them. But for like every day, your bell peppers and cucumbers, you can't use those anymore. However, there's been a huge shift demographically in Korea in terms of single and two dweller households. A lot of people don't live with their family as much as they used to. The nuclear family used to be a huge deal here. You would see like three generations living together in a single home. But now a lot of people are leaving their hometowns and coming to school or wherever else to find jobs. And so that, in turn, makes for a lot of single and two dweller households. And with that portion sizes for food purchasing has changed. Before you would have to buy like 12 onions at a time in a bag because typically people were buying for the whole household. But now, because that's changed. I think before when I did a... I think it was like 53% of households are now single or two dwellers. It's significant the way things have changed. So obviously marketing has changed. And so, you can go to your local big-box store if you're a big grocery store and you can buy single purchases, like single onions and single this and that. So then imagine that all of that individually wrapped in plastic. It's kind of like, "Oh, we're banning plastic bags. Great. But we're going to put this single onion and like that really super thick, heavy-duty sealed back in seal packaging. We're going to do that a million times over." It's like it's yes and no. It might be, but still, you know, it's progress.

Ariel:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It'd be progress. So, going back to your shop, when you were saying that you sell the seeds and the nuts and stuff, where do you get your supply from?

Kychele:

Oh, I buy local as much as possible, as much as possible. This is why it's so interesting how the zero waste movement is taking so long in Korea because they already do it on the regular. It's fascinating to me how people just don't see that. Like I said, Korea is incredibly agrarian, so they still have their marketplaces the way they used to be a hundred years ago. Literally in the same places. In an area, like for example, Dongdaemun, Dongdaemun is a huge marketplace. You can pretty much buy anything you need in Dongdaemun from clothes to shoes, to fabrics, to walnuts, to ham hocks, to record play. You can literally buy anything in this area.

Ariel:

Wow!

Kychele:

You can just go down to the local vendors and get a kilogram of this, three kilograms of that. You can get all of that in this area. Obviously, there are different markets, it's sectioned off, you know, but yeah, you can pretty much get anything. There are tons of farmers that are looking to sell their stuff in bulk, that I would pay more than an E-Mart or something like that. Because when I'm buying a smaller amount, I'm more than likely going to sell it faster because I'm buying a smaller amount. There are loads of options on how to get stuff with resources, loads of options.

Ariel:

That's awesome. At the time that you were building your business, what, if any, challenges did you face being a black woman business owner in South Korea?

Kychele:

The usual, Korea is still on planet earth, you're going have a lot of the same issues that you have almost anywhere else. Luckily, I think at least in this industry, this whole like vegan zero waste, loving the planet kind of industry. Everybody's super nice. When I first had the idea to have the shop, I just started it as a Facebook group. Just getting people like [Inaudible 29:49] people together and seeing what they had to say about it, what they were interested in. If I was on the right track with any of it, the Facebook group grew really, really fast. And then, like I said, there was one zero waste shop in Seoul and I went and I talked to them and they were super cool, it was a married couple they're dope. They gave me a lot of great information, they're incredibly supportive, that was awesome. And then another one popped up, a month or so later after I actually talked to them face to face, they were super cool. I met with her and everything was dope, as far as like the people within the industry, it's awesome. It doesn't feel like competition. It feels like we support each other in what we do at an event. I show up and I tell my members about it and I encourage people to support them and vice versa. We've been at markets at the same time too, and there's never been that kind of like, "Oh, what does she have? Let me look. " And it's never been like that. It's always been love within the industry; it's been awesome. And I've been very fortunate for that. When it comes to funding and, and incubators and accelerators and all of that, it's like a joke. It's a joke. I would have to say the amount of...because like I told you, everyone, not everybody, but you know, the MDG is kind of like boost this whole thing because they get funding from governments or whatever to do these kinds of sustainability contests, pitch sessions, blah, blah, blah. They get money for that. But when you see who wins the competition, you're like, "Word, like that's not... Really? Okay." It's interesting. When I talk to like mentors and things like that they are avidly, actively against what I'm doing.

Ariel:

Wow!

Kychele:

I've been on stage doing my pitch. And one of the judges to my face on the microphone says, "Koreans, they're too lazy, they'll never do this."

Ariel:

Oh my gosh!

Kychele:

Yeah. And so it's that kind of stuff where you want to get funding, you want to do more and you've proven that you've had a track record and you've proven that this stuff is legit and not even just that, but it makes money. I mean, it's a store that in the day it's still retail. And yet there's this hard push against it, it's like those kinds of things and I don't think that has anything to do with me being black. It's just me doing something that isn't what they're into or what they don't feel like it's not going to be incredibly lucrative or immediately in the short term lucrative. And then you have the people who just steal your ideas.

Ariel:

Oh no!

Kychele:

I don't think any of this has to do with the fact that I'm black, but I think it's just people are people and it is going to be what it is. I think more than me being black is me being female. And this is still very much a patriarchal society. You still have that to deal with. That's a pain, but as far as me being black, I mean, I had more pushback when I was a PhD student trying to get a job or a master's student trying to get a job at a research Institute and then telling me to my face that I'm not going to hire you because you're black. I had more of that being a student at Seoul National University than I had in my own entrepreneurship endeavors.

Ariel:

That's really interesting.

Kychele:

Yeah. But I mean, I worked for myself, so I don't need them.

Ariel:

Exactly. Right. I saw that you went through Europe touring various zero waste shops. I'm not sure how familiar you are with zero waste in the US but is there a way that you can compare zero waste in Europe, the US and South Korea?

Kychele:

No, only, because zero waste here is so new and there's so many laws that are antithetical to what [ Inaudible 34:31] Like, for example, say you want to make soap, like cold press, it's quite simple. I mean, it's not simple. I mean, you shouldn't know what you're doing, they're chemicals, but for the most part, it's a fairly simple process like tons of people do it, not a big deal. The problem is in Korea, the size of your workspace determines what type of business you can have. It's very strange. And the size of your workspace depends on the denominations or the sizes of the product you can make. So even when you're talking about just soap, like a soap that literally takes like a couple of buckets and a mould, it's like those kinds of things kind of prohibit things to happen.

Ariel:

Right.

Kychele:

I don't believe they're the same issues in the States or throughout Europe, I don't believe that they have the same issues.

Ariel:

Okay.

Kychele:

I don't know, but I don't believe that's true. So it's like, those kinds of little things are a problem here in Korea and then like things change and they don't tell you, or like beeswax wraps, for example, that in itself, like the actual wax, like the beeswax is classified differently here than say the UK or the United States. It's classified here as some kind of like harmful kind of like deadly chemical for some reason.

Ariel:

Oh, wow!

Kychele:

That has to change. And the policy behind that has to change in order for scalability to be able to happen with something as simple as a Beeswax, it's like those kinds of things we can't sell Beeswax wraps that have prints on them, if you're going use it for food, it has to be completely plain, no pattern kind of thing, because they feel that it's unsanitary or unsafe, those kinds of things, it's hard to compare.

Ariel:

That's very interesting.

Kychele:

Yeah. And like that could change in a second and no one [inaudible 36:59]. Those kinds of things where it's like, I feel like in the UK, Canada, the US and all of the countries that I think I went to like six or seven different countries in Europe, they don't have those kind problems. A lot of things seem to be a lot more open and experimental and in my opinion, more common sense than here, because it's such a foreign concept here. Like here, you can't even sell soap without wrapping, whereas in the UK and all those countries that I went to in Europe. You would go into a shop and you see opens up all the time. They have different laws here. Because like, if you go to Lush, Lush is here and all of their stuff is open practice. Like there's no issue, but if you make it here and you sell it here, there are different rules for you, but I can import stuff from France and [ Inaudible 37:57] it's hard to compare when you're dealing with that kind of stuff.

Ariel:

I see. Yeah, definitely. It sounds like there's a lot of a law thing that needs to be figured out before it can go much further. That's very interesting. What's next for WasteUpSo? Do you want to make more stores? Do you think you'll have a store in the US? What's your next move?

Kychele:

I shouldn't say too much. But I'm looking into product development now.

Ariel: 

oh okay

Kychele: 

To me, especially here, it's incredibly difficult to have a brick and mortar, the price for a single location is just so expensive. So for me, I'm thinking more on the lines of my own product development and having that sold worldwide, as opposed to just focusing on a store, I think changing people's ideas about simple products and how to use them, I think is probably the better way to go and have more longevity in the store or as a business in general.

Ariel:

That's awesome. Sounds exciting.

Kychele:  

I am, I'm very excited about it. We're testing out a product now with some people and really good reviews, we'll see what happens with that.

Ariel:

 Okay. Yeah. Cool. We'll definitely be on the lookout for that. Now one of my last questions is what is one thing that anyone can do to be more sustainable?

Kychele:

To be more sustainable? It might be, I don't know, to me it might be simple, but just to be more sustainable, educate yourself. I mean, it sounds incredibly simple, but it's really just that. I think that myself included, I think that’s we're so used to, depending on others for our sustainability, like, "Oh, I'm just going to go to the store and grab some food or, Oh, I'm just going to go pick this up from wherever." And I think educating yourself on how you can be your own sustainable resource, I think is the best route and has the most longevity. When I learned how to make bread, my life changed like," Oh, I can actually do this. Like, it's really just that simple." Oh, that's all it is. Like, you know, like you see how simple things can be. Like, of course, you can make things more intricate and whatever, but I'm not a chef. You know, I really just want to be able to feed myself. And that has been such a rewarding experience. And that just came from reading and following different blogs or, you know, looking at different YouTube channels and just trying to think, "Oh, this is totally doable." So yeah, I think if your mission or your interest is to be more sustainable, educate yourself and just stay informed because your life will change when you realize just how simple and easy things were. When I found out, I'm not a peanut butter person, when I found out how easy it is to make peanut butter, people are out here paying $8 a jar for peanut butter, you're out of your mind. I was so pissed off. It's expensive out here. You're out of your mind, people will pay $15 for a jar of peanut butter.

Ariel:

Oh no.

Kychele:

Girl, you can go down to the market, get you a bag of peanuts, throw that in the blender and let that stuff go. Peanut butter for days, $15 just like that. Educate yourself and when they say education is everything right?

Ariel:  

Yes.

Kychele: 

Yes. knowledge is power, so educate yourself.

Ariel:

Yes, totally agreeing. My last question is Kychele, where can everyone find you? How can we stay in touch or stay up to date with what you're working on?

Kychele:

Yeah. Our website is wasteupso.com. We're on Instagram, we're on Facebook. We have our website. So hopefully we'll be expanding into the United States and UK we'll see what this Rona has in store. But, right now you can find us on Facebook and our website.

Ariel:

Awesome. Yes, please go follow her. We're so excited to see what else you're going to do in the future. Thanks so much for joining us today, Kychele. I really learned a lot from you and your journey has been really inspiring and hopefully, our listeners can use your tips on their journey to reduce their waste. Thanks so much for being here on the podcast.

Kychele:

Yeah. Thank you so much.

Ariel Green:

Thank you so much for listening to The Sustainable Brown Girl Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share it if you loved it and leave a review. You can find us on Instagram @sustainablebrowngirl and check out our Facebook community, we would love to have you there. Until next time, let's continue to make healthy choices for the health of our planet and the health of our bodies. Thanks for listening.