A Day In the Life of a Conscious Consumer (2/2)
In the previous installment, we met Asha, a working lady who strives to achieve balance in her personal and professional lives. She takes excellent care of her body, mind and environment while also being driven to bring her best version to her workplace every day. Let’s continue with her daily efforts of being a ‘conscious’ consumer post her journey back home after a productive day at office.
Workout prep
After driving back from work, the health-conscious Asha never misses her gym routine. But before going to the gym, she needs her pre-workout drinks & supplements to boost her energy levels. She tries to keep her intake as natural as possible such as pea protein, brown rice protein with natural flavoring, 100% organic or natural ingredients like natural caffeine, electrolytes without any chemicals or additives. Amazing Grass Green Superfood provides her with just the products she needs. Not to forget, she also uses shakers from Eco Shake which are 100% biodegradable. The brand uses starch, and food grade poly plastic, which is BPA free & non-toxic to prepare the shaker bottle.
Aiming for a healthy lifestyle, Asha is committed to spend time dedicatedly for physical exercising. Stretchery helps her achieve this goal by providing durable and allergy free active wear which provides her the comfort and fluidity she needs for strenuous physical movements. Produced by Chetna organics with sustainable methods, Strethcery uses eco-friendly dyes to help alleviate fashion industry puts on the environment. By utilizing fair trade practices and donating for farmer education, Stretchery also serves to address social and ethical concerns that Asha associates with, thus helping serve her ‘consciousness’.
The gym routine
Asha works on her fitness through a targeted gym routine that is customized to her physical needs based on her daily life activities. Taking into account her work profile, food consumption, sleeping and daily physical activities, Asha goes through a regime which focuses on supporting her lifestyle by healthy calorie consumption, balanced nutrition and converting the intake into stamina and strength to her energized throughout the day.
For her fitness journey, Asha has chosen an ecologically supportive gym which houses refurbished, pre-loved equipment that has been re-designed to consume less energy. Equipped with Sports Art EDO-PWR technology, the gym is committed to help the nature by harnessing the human power generated via working out through the equipment into electricity to run the facility. The gym further utilizes greywater recycling and low-flow shower heads which minimizes the water consumption without compromising on gym hygiene while focusing on water conservation and reuse. Asha also gets the motivation for achieving her physical fitness goals as the gym’s partnership with Burn and Earn helps her convert her fitness points to monetary rewards for donating to social causes.
Shower and menstrual hygiene
Asha uses the Flo app which helps her track her period and keeps her ready. During her shower, she invests time in her menstrual hygiene if she is on her period. She uses medical grade silicone-based menstrual cups from Boondh which provides chemical free, reusable, and fuss-free sterilization options- safe for her body and for the environment. Boondh is made in India and supports the spread of menstrual literacy. Sometimes when her flow is heavy, Asha likes to use Lavos’ anti-microbial, organic plant-based period panties that are washable and reusable and are a sustainable alternative to sanitary pads.
She showers with an organic soap and a bath mitt from the same brand- both promoting exfoliation and a rich bathing experience. After her shower, she uses a body lotion that help deep moisturize and even out her skin complexion.
Dinner outing
Post sweating it out in the gym, Asha likes to visit restaurants for her dinner. She either goes walking or uses bike rental services like Yulu or cab services. She joins the cause of combating pollution by using BluSmart EV cabs that also provide her with the details of the carbon footprint saved after every ride.
Rarely, when she cannot book a cab, she opts for a fuel-efficient CNG/Electric bus service, preferably with women drivers. Being conscious of her safety, she always travels with personal safety devices like pepper spray, a stun gun flashlight, personal alarms from SABRE.
Asha’s visits restaurants/cafes with online menus that offer fresh, chemical-free food. Artisan Lab Café is her go-to restaurant where they use only locally sourced ingredients, organic fruits and vegetables, homegrown herbs, and use A2 grade lactose-free milk.
As mentioned earlier, Asha would opt for sustainable modes of payment as always!
House Chores
Once back at home, before retiring to bed, Asha likes to complete her household chores like cleaning the utensils.
She handwashes her utensils with a fragrance-free and chemical-free, biodegradable, and plant-based dish soap from Sacred Earth India or Indian Retailer. When her utensil load is big, she uses her Energy Star certified, Samsung Stormwash dishwasher which is energy & water efficient with auto-release doors to quickly dry dishes.
Post dealing with the dirty dishes, Asha takes care of her small garden and indoor plants. Strategically placed to get optimal sunlight, she has a collection of functional house plants which serve both functionalities of air purification and supporting her cooking with herbs and seasonings. With the help of Ugaoo, Asha has assorted her small garden with the principle of companion planting, a polyculture practice to grow different varieties of plants together for the benefit and healthier growth of plants. Asha has further utilized a service which helps her house plants continue and grow beyond pots. Instead of pruning and confining plants to limited sized pots, the service facilitates replanting of the growing buds to flourish naturally in open public areas and supporting until the plant is able to sustain on its own. This also helps Asha in utilizing seasonality of plants and support in making the future greener, one plant at a time.
One of the last activities of Asha’s daily chores is waste disposal. With 30–70 million tons of methane being emitted from landfills each year globally, Asha believes that there is an alarming need for the adoption of compost pits in homes or in societies. Asha had started her waste disposal practice with the basic segregation of waste, use of biodegradable garbage bags & covered dustbins. Today, she also utilizes garbage to fill her home composter that requires her to mix an organic powder with daily waste in a bucket. The compost is ready in 25–30 days to be further used for gardening. Daily Dump provides her with a smell-free bucket & compost kit along with manuals. Asha’s next milestone is to convince her society to install the Daily Dump community composters for people who cannot afford home composters.
Nighttime skincare routine
Her nighttime routine comprises of double cleansing and a night cream. She removes her makeup with organic Rosehip oil after which she cleanses with a clean beauty cleanser from Juicy Chemistry, a brand that offers freshly made, cruelty free, GMO free, organic and COSMOS certified products. Then she likes to use a mild but nourishing night cream to keep her skin supple and hydrated.
Retiring to bed
Before bed, she gives herself ample time to get away from her phone and laptop and reads her “book of the week”. To prevent wastage of paper, she opts to read e-books from her Kindle with a blue light filter to prevent any strain on her eyes and to avoid disruption of her Circadian cycle. She has applied an auto shut-off feature to conserve energy when she falls asleep while reading.
Asha also likes to read physical books that she has borrowed from the local library or her friends. One of her favorite trends in green publishing is the use of recycled paper printed with vegetable-based inks. She discovered Happy Pineapple Publishers UK via her friend abroad, and has been looking for a local alternative who can also offer waste-free publishing and incorporate methods to make use of plastic waste for something more sustainable, like making Eco-bricks as done by Happy Pineapple. This publisher records the bricks in Brickchain and generates Brickcoins which is a digital currency. They also donate 10% to charity.
Knowing how her choices make her healthier, kinder, and non-toxic to Earth, Asha gets a full 8 hours of sleep, well-earned and relaxed, grateful for yet another fulfilling day and looking forward to her next daily adventure.
After a hectic week of adulting, Asha likes to unwind on the weekends and bring back her equilibrium through social activities and get emotional and intellectual enlightenment by connecting with her friends and giving back to the society. Lets have a look at what Asha does ‘consciously’ on her ___ weekends…
Reconnecting with friends
During the weekends, Asha gets the opportunity to reconnect with her friends for social and intellectual growth. Thus, Asha and her friends like to explore Depot Cinemas, which runs on thermal energy captured through ground source heat pumps. The cinema hosts a combination of screenings of movies and workshops which address various viewer needs from entertainment to social enlightenment. Asha’s group always follow up the media consumption with a healthy debate and discussion on the topics addressed through the screening or workshop, for which they utilize the open garden space at the rooftop of the cinema. The rooftop garden also provides a fresh dining experience to Asha and her friends with healthy snacking options by restaurants committed to no plastic usage. Asha dedicates this time with her friends for detoxing and replenishing her social battery by bonding with her friends from different spectrums of age and gender.
Giving back to society
Asha has committed to contribute to the betterment of the society and empower the under privileged. Towards this end, she has registered as a part-time Fellow at an organization like Teach For India, the Indian counterpart of the successful American initiative. Touching lives of 50 million children across India, Asha and the Fellowship along with the Alumni strive to build opportunities through education, school transformations and policy channels through the low-income or government schools. Working towards educational equity, the Fellowship has been a rewarding and life-changing experience for Asha that has enabled her to acknowledge her privileges and realize her potential for social evolution.
Clothes Box Foundation, another social venture, also enables Asha to give back to the society. The service allows her to drop off clothes for donation on the way to her weekly Fellowship connect by selecting a drop-off site and slot as per her convenience. She can further track through the service where her proceedings have gone and whom all she is able to aid through her donations.
Weekends are also the time for Asha for prepping for the next week and getting recharged by self-care and therapeutic cleaning to tackle the coming week with renewed gusto.
Refueling
Asha also wants to plan for her future vehicle, where she would want to refuel it every weekend. After research, she would like to visit Repsol fuel stations which already offer electric vehicle charging points. They are also planning to create fuel stations for the future where the customers will be able to recharge or refuel with all types of energy sources (biofuels, renewable hydrogen etc.) that work to reduce emissions. They are also planning to adopt IoT technology which contributes to making service stations more sustainable and efficient, by generating 10 to 15% in energy savings. The next step is also to turn service stations into solar communities.
Hair wash
In the weekends, she likes to wash her hair- having a weekly hair wash routine has helped her scalp better regulate her natural oils thus becoming less oily, also reducing the water and products needed to keep her hair clean. She washes her hair with an organic, plant-based shampoo bar from Himalayan Origins India, which is plastic-free, eco-friendly and has sustainable packaging. Another brand she uses is Faith and Patience which has recyclable and refillable shampoo bottles, and which is heavily involved in the Camel Conservatory project, a project close to her heart as her favorite animal as a child was the camel after reading Rudyard Kipling’s short story.
In the weekdays, she occasionally uses a dry shampoo from Juicy Chemistry when needed. She brushes her hair with a wooden-bristled, bamboo paddle brush for optimum scalp stimulation and distribution of hair oils. All hair products are organic and non-toxic with no added artificial colors or fragrances that leave her hair and scalp well-nourished, clean and healthy.
Water treatment and usage
Asha is cognizant of the harmful effects of Magnesium and Calcium deposits on her hair, skin, clothes, and bathroom hardware. Hence, she uses a water softener from the brand Kent to prevent these effects. Furthermore, to decrease her water wastage, she has a system set up to utilize her bathwater for flushing the toilet. Mymove’s smart toilet system lets her achieve that goal.
These conscious choices along with her healthy diet give Asha glowing and bouncy skin and hair while also minimizing the effects of her consumption on the environment.
Laundry and deep cleaning
As an end-of-the-weekend activity, Asha likes to complete her weekly chores like doing her laundry and deep cleaning the kitchen and bathroom. For her laundry, she uses a detergent from Sacred Earth India that gives longer life to her clothes. These are products that are suitable for sensitive skin, eco-friendly and are not harmful to aquatic lifeforms.
To clean her home, Asha uses floor cleansers from Vooki India that are fume-free and made of eco-friendly Type 1 Eco label certified by GEN ingredients. She cleans unreachable spots and objects with a rechargeable lithium battery-powered, portable UV-C light cleaner which is the most effective for microbial destruction.
So that’s all from Asha, the belief-driven millennial who makes informed choices to take care of herself, the society and the planet. Even though her journey has come to a closure, we hope her determination and constant efforts of being a responsible person, inspire you to re-evaluate your contribution to cleaner living and sustainable future, and for businesses to re-think their strategy of addressing the needs of future ‘conscious’ consumers.
Co-authored by Ruchi Lathoria & Gloryna Dilbung
Avantika (IIMC ‘22), Ruchi (IIMA ’21) & Gloryna (IIMB ’20) are Business Consultants under the Strategic Leadership Program (SLP) for Tata Consultancy Services.
