Marie Claire UK - 10.2019

110

Future Shapers

The SuStainability

innovator

Tara Button, 37, is the founder of BuyMeOnce,

thesustainability website designed to

help the world ‘throw away its throwaway

culture’.Set up in 2016, the site went viral

after launching, with everyone from Ashton

Kutcherto Caitlin Moran singing its praises,

and now sells 2,000 different sustainable

products.Button’s debut book,A Life Less

Throwaway, was released last year.

A light-bulb moment can happen anytime.The

idea for BuyMeOnce came from a Le Creuset pot

• strange, but true. I was working in advertising and had
  been given it for my 30th birthday. I then realised most
  ofthe things I had bought up to that point were short-
  termrubbish. From then on, I wanted to buy the Le
  Creuset ofeverything. I looked for a website that sold the
  longest lasting products, but it didn’t exist. Over time,
  I found out about the environmental benefits of long-
  termbuying and knew this was a solution to climate
  change.I built a website and, months later with only
  100 products, it went viral and changed everything.
  Chaseconnections.Humans live to connect,
  but we’re bombarded with messages from consumer
  culture about glorifying the individual, which
  makes us self-obsessed, anxious and lonely.
  The quickest cure for this is to imagine how others
  are feeling – it’s helped me immeasurably.
  Guard your mind. When it comes to saying no to
  things we don’t need, we have to do that consciously.
  We receive millions of messages every day in
  advertising alone. My role now is to give people
  information, so that they can help make the best
  future possible, for themselves and the planet.
  Drawa line.One of the most freeing things to know
  is that at any stage, you can draw a line in the sand
  and decide that life will be better or different
  from now on. Absolving yourself from past
  disappointmentsand moving forward with
  new vigour is transformative.■

STYLED BY JODIE NELLIST. HAIR BY DINO PEREIRA USING MONAT, AND CHRISTOPHER LONG USING COLOR WOW.MAKE-UP BY ANNELIE BYSTROM TURNER AT HOUSE OF JUBA USING NARS, AND AIMEE ADAMS USING BARE MINERALS.SET DESIGN BY VICENTE BEN. DRESS, ISABELLE FOX; NECKLACE, MONICA VINADER; SHOES, BUTTON’S OWN