When Najla Abdellatif launched a WordPress blog in 2018, she wasn’t aiming to start a regional environmental movement.
At the time, it was simply a personal space for Najla to process her growing frustration over the environmental and waste crisis she witnessed upon returning to Jerusalem from Sweden.
It was during her time at university that she developed an interest in sustainable development and ecological awareness.
“When I was younger, I became used to the visual aspects of the waste crisis,” Najla tells The New Arab. “Piles of trash, plastic bags flying in the wind, overflowing landfills. After university, I saw it through a completely different lens.”
Reflecting on this shift in perspective, Najla explains how that awareness became an emotional burden.
“I couldn’t just accept it. I needed to respond to it somehow,” she says.
That response first took shape online. In the beginning, the blog served as an outlet — a space for posting photos, thoughts, and reflections on conscious living under occupation.
As her engagement grew, the platform began to evolve, and Najla started offering practical advice on reducing personal waste, tailored to a context where formal systems for recycling or composting were minimal or non-existent.
“Over time, more people started reaching out,” she recalls. “Teachers invited me to speak at schools, and students sent questions. It turned into a community.”
That growing community eventually became Zero Waste Palestine. Today, the grassroots initiative runs workshops, awareness campaigns, and collaborative projects across the region.
“Our mission is clear,” says Najla. “We are creating space for environmental learning, sustainable action, and resilience in the face of occupation and crisis.”
Raising awareness
After building an audience online, Najla decided that the next step for Zero Waste Palestine was to meet people where they were.
“Blogs were not enough anymore,” she says. “They’re not a platform people engage with these days.”
Shifting her focus to Instagram, she began using visual content and concise captions in local languages to reach wider audiences. She posted about reducing household waste, alternative cleaning methods, and the link between environmental health and personal well-being.
Although she built a large following, Najla says it was the face-to-face workshops that had the greatest impact.
Through Zero Waste Palestine, Najla has facilitated a range of educational sessions, each one tailored to its audience.
“If I’m speaking with university students, we might focus more on systemic environmental injustices,” she explains. “If I’m working with women, we’ll start with hygiene and household products — what’s in them, how they affect your health, and how to make natural alternatives at home.”
According to Najla, this method of entry is key.
“In Palestine, people are dealing with so much. So, I don’t always lead with, ‘This is good for the planet,’” she says. “I start by talking about health, about family, about tradition. That is what makes it resonate.”
Breaking free from toxicity
To date, one of the most impactful series run by Zero Waste Palestine has focused on local women.
“In Palestine, there is a strong emphasis on cleanliness inside the home,” Najla explains. “But the products we use are often imported, chemically heavy, and harmful.”
Women attending the sessions shared similar experiences.
“They would tell me, ‘I get rashes, I can’t breathe when I clean,’” Najla recalls. “Our workshops aimed to break the myth that chemicals are necessary for hygiene. Instead, we introduced practices that encourage self-sufficiency and sustainability.”
Through education programmes, Najla taught women how to make simple, natural alternatives — like olive oil soap and other natural cleaning products.
“We show them that our grandparents cleaned with these products, and it resonated with them,” she says.
The sessions also included lessons on waste repurposing, DIY deodorants, and food storage techniques. These practices, Najla believes, help women reclaim domestic knowledge while promoting both environmental and financial resilience.
Young people have also been a key focus. Through the Zero Waste Summer School, the organisation brought together Palestinian youth for immersive learning experiences. Participants explored waste reduction, circular economies, and natural alternatives.
“The idea was to create a living classroom,” Najla explains. “We encouraged our students to reflect on their relationship with land and heritage. That way, we could be sure our practices reflected our realities, not imported models.”
Connecting to the land during occupation and crisis
While the core of Zero Waste Palestine’s work remains grounded in practical advice, its focus has increasingly expanded to environmental injustice and the wider structural causes of ecological collapse in Palestine.
Najla doesn’t shy away from naming Israeli occupation and settler colonialism as some of the root drivers of environmental degradation.
“Sustainability cannot be separated from sovereignty,” she tells The New Arab.
“We had already been talking about these things before October 2023,” she says. “However, as the crisis in Gaza intensified, Zero Waste Palestine began shifting its emphasis.”
As Najla puts it, the Environmental Justice page of the initiative outlines how the destruction of land and the local environment is a deliberate strategy within the colonial project.
“The apartheid wall, illegal settlements, and settler roads have partially destroyed native flora and fauna,” Najla explains. “Natural resources, including springs and forests, are routinely targeted or seized.”
One clear example, she says, is Israel’s control over water resources in the West Bank.
“Israel controls around 90% of water resources in the West Bank. Palestinians are forced to buy water back from their own sources that have been taken by the Israeli occupation,” she says, calling it a form of “water apartheid.”
“When you destroy access to food and water, you do not need bombs to destroy life,” she adds. “Recently in Gaza, we have seen the further targeting of water tanks, aid convoys, and food supplies to worsen the living conditions of the population further.”
“There’s this sense that talking about land or wellbeing is a luxury,” Najla also notes. “However, tackling these environmental topics can help build resilience, autonomy, and resistance.”
As part of this evolving focus, Zero Waste Palestine’s summer school has transformed into the Connection to Land retreat. It provides a space for participants to explore what it means to live in harmony with the land during a time of forced disconnection.
Sessions include discussions on indigenous farming knowledge, food sovereignty, and the idea that hyper-capitalism mirrors colonial logic by severing people from their environment.
'The land is not just soil'
Despite the depth and sensitivity of Zero Waste Palestine’s work, it has not been without critique. Some have accused Najla of applying a Western lens or failing to prioritise the immediate struggles of life under occupation.
Najla challenges this, however.
“Conscious living isn’t foreign. Our ancestors lived in tune with the land. They wasted little, healed with plants, and reused everything. We’re returning to those values, not importing them.”
To help solidify this perspective, Najla is publishing an e-book titled Zero Waste and My Palestinian Grandparents, which collects recipes and household methods from earlier generations. It serves as both a resource and a statement of cultural pride.
“Everything we do comes back to this,” she says. “The land is not just soil — it holds memories and culture. The occupiers are trying to take that away from us, but we will reclaim it.”
Amelia Dhuga is a writer who, after spending much of her life under perpetual grey skies in the east of England, started plotting her grand escape. Now she spends her time chasing the sun around Europe and the Middle East
Follow her on Instagram: @ameliadhuga