sustainability — Hannah Elise Schultz

Adventures in
Serendipity

— Hannah Schultz (biographical name): a Kentuckian, traveler, PhD student, hiker, environmentalist, and Great Pyrenees enthusiast

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

Our (Mostly) Secondhand, Low-Waste Nursery

One of the things I’ll emphasize throughout this post is how much money you will save by going the more sustainable route (hint: it’s A LOT), but it is by no means the only positive outcome. By being a conscious consumer, you’re creating less waste, making a more stress-free environment for both you and baby, choosing materials and ingredients that are best for baby’s health and development, and more. Babies don’t actually need that much stuff and while we’re by no means minimalists, one of the first sustainable choices we made was to forgo a lot of the extraneous baby things that our consumerist society tells you that you need (even though you really don’t).

LifeHannah SchultzMarch 5, 2025Nursery, secondhand, low-waste, sustainability, newbornComment

Simple Changes Towards an Environmentally Conscious Lifestyle

However, post-undergrad, I moved into an apartment alone for the first time, and I was forced to confront a difficult question: did my consumption reflect my environmentalist views? This was around the time zero-waste living (producing no plastic waste) was going viral, and it provided a new lens within which to examine one’s environmental commitment. So many of us grew up with that adage, “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” but how many of us actually paid attention to reducing—both consumption and waste—and reusing what we already have?

Life, Thoughts on: [Things]Hannah SchultzSeptember 13, 2019environmentalism, sustainability, waste, zero waste, reduce, consumerism, reuse, recycle, paper towels, landfill, pads, tampons, menstrual cup, plastic bags, pollution, meat, vegan, vegetarian, amazon fires, clothes, fast fashion, thrift, poshmark Comments

Adventures inSerendipity

— Hannah Schultz (biographical name): a Kentuckian, traveler, PhD student, hiker, environmentalist, and Great Pyrenees enthusiast

Adventures in
Serendipity