About Me

Hey, it’s Emma, the face behind The Simple Environmentalist.

I’ve been living an eco-friendly life ever since I moved out of my small Ohio town in 2017. I grew up in the Midwest and never saw the true impact we were having on the planet from there. We had clean water, little physical pollution, no air pollution, moderate climate. Ignorance truly is bliss.

When I was 18, I joined the US Air Force. I wanted to escape my tiny town and I did just that. I lived in West Texas for 9 months during my training and that is really when my eyes were opened to our impact on the planet. See, recycling is not mandatory in Texas. The small city I lived in did not have recycling and I was appalled. So, I started a recycling program in my dorms and personally drove the recycling and sorted it at the cities only recycling drop-off center (it gets shipped elsewhere to actually be used).

And that’s not it. I moved halfway across the world to Okinawa, Japan. I miss it every day. But there, I started to learn that recycling alone will not save the planet. I have to also reduce what I am consuming. I began educating myself on proper recycling, why so much plastic ends up in the ocean (we were in the middle of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and beach garbage was no joke), invisible pollution, and much more. I quickly realized that other people don’t know this stuff and I need to spread the word.

Thus, The Simple Environmentalist was born. My mission since day one was to make zero waste living, free, easy, fun, accessible, and real. So many of my role models I watched on YouTube (these were pre-TikTok days) were great, don’t get me wrong, but they felt so curated and that they were really leaning in to the zero-waste aesthetic. If that’s for you, fine, but I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money and time and change my whole life just to fit in with this crowd. So, I created my own crowd of every-day people who just want to do a little bit better without changing their whole lives around.

My goal is to show everyone that your one small action you take today can have a big impact. Especially if you add one more small habit on each day. You don’t need to change your whole life overnight just to be more eco-friendly. You don’t have to have a degree or look a certain way to be an environmentalist. Everyone can be an environmentalist; the only credential is that you care about the earth. We all make mistakes, and no one does zero waste perfectly.

I just separated from the Air Force this September after it also took us to Las Vegas, NV for 2 years and Spokane, WA for 6 months where I learned about more environmental issues in both regions. It has been a great stepping-stone for me into my adult life, but I simply do not align with their values morally. I am so so lucky that I can now call content creation my full-time job, so, an extra huge thank you for being here and supporting my dream.

In my free time, we (my spouse, Dan, and I) love to walk our dog, Denahi, and I enjoy crocheting, baking, reading, and playing Zelda games on our second-hand Nintendo Switch. We also have a cat, Mochi and we have become super into camping/hiking/backpacking since moving back to the US.

Thank you for following my journey as I learn more and more about living a more eco-friendly life. I hope to get to know you more here on the blog as well as in my email list (sign up below) and on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

As always, your small actions make a big difference in the long run

Emma