Welcome, readers, to the wonderfully informative Q&A with Adelaide’s own EcoLateral!
Earlier this month I was lucky enough to sit down with EcoLateral’s owner, Jamie Stott and talk to her about her business.
Jamie’s store is an eco-alternative dream, with a wide variety of products ranging from baby stuff to kitchen supplies, shower soaps to period care, bedroom to bathroom, and everything in-between, EcoLateral is a growing utopia for all your sustainable needs.
Although Jamie only took over the store in September of 2018, throughout the store her passion for the planet is plain to see.
With her rich knowledge on sustainable and eco-living, I sat down with Jamie to chat about her business, her passions, and what she believes needs to be done to combat climate change.
To access the audio Q&A, follow this link, read the transcript below, or do both!
Hope you all enjoy!
Transcript
A: What drove you to take over EcoLateral?
J: We realised the more places that were at in Adelaide, the more were able to reach a large percentage of the population. So we can then teach and educate people about living sustainably.
A: What needs does your store cater for as a sustainable, eco-store?
J: Different people have different ideas as to what living sustainable and environmentally-friendly lives are. So were trying to be a one-stop-shop to various different interests. As much as we can, were not a zero-waste store, were a sustainability store, and we try as much as possible to provide a broad range of eco-friendly products to a brand range of customers with very diverse interests.
A: How do you keep up-to-date and in stock of all the latest sustainable and eco-products?
J: Lots and lots and lots of reading. And I think the biggest source of learning that we have is our customers.
A: What are some of the issues concerning peoples knowledge of everyday products they use and the impact these have on the environment?
J: There’s two big issues; one is toxic products. We’re putting toxic products in our body and using toxic products on our body, then that promotes an environment that is not particularly healthy for us. The other big issue is our consumption and our use of toxins, and general lack of awareness, and I’m talking general population I’m not talking about us or our customers, but general populations lack of awareness or lack of caring for the environment, obviously is going to have a very serious ongoing issues. And there’s two big topics in the media at the moment, one is climate change and the other is plastics, and we’d like to think that our community is enlightened and they’ve kind of woken up to these issues, and they’re doing their best to make changes, but we have a little way to go before the general population, kind of, catches on and starts to make changes in their households.
A: What is the most important thing you want people to know about choosing sustainable and eco-alternatives?
J: Thats a great question. I think sometimes people know they need to make a change, but don’t know where to start. And they walk in, looking a bit like a deer in the headlights, like ‘we know we need to do something, but we don’t know where to start’, and it all seems so overwhelming. And my advice to them is that you don’t need to change everything at once. It’s a matter of focusing on one thing, nailing that, doing that right for a month, embed that as a habit and then look to make a change with something else.
A: How important do you think these eco-conscious changes in people’s everyday lives are?
J: If we don’t make sweeping changes we’re in all sorts of problems. What we know is that, levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have spiked dramatically in the last thirty to forty years, and when you get, you know, a thousand plus scientists put their name to a paper that says, ‘look, unless we take drastic action now to reduce our output of greenhouse gasses then were going to reach tipping point that’s going to take us over, and its going to create all sorts of problems, not only for us as a species but for the rest of the planet.
A: What do you believe needs to happen around the world in order to combat climate change?
J: We don’t need a handful of people going zero-waste, what we need is millions of millions of people making a couple of changes, and when there’s a groundswell of the population, we kind of reach the tipping point, where its cool to do that and you know we’re not teased or ridiculed for being green, you know when the general population wakes up then we’ve got a chance. If that doesn’t happen, we’re in all sorts of problems.
A: And where can people buy your products?
J: So we have two stores in Adelaide, soon to be three. Our current stores are EcoLateral at Magill, and EcoLateral at Blackwood. And then we do sell online as well at goecolateral.com.au, people can see a selection of our products, offering free click and collect in Adelaide from either of our stores, $6 delivery for anywhere in metro-Adelaide, and then fixed delivery fees to the rest of Australia.
All The Small Things 