SARAH: Not just thinking about my personal life, but also what impact my life choices have on other people’s lives, wildlife and nature. Seeing myself as part of a world community, and adjusting my behavior accordingly. 

SOPHIE: As Sarah said, it is a mindset of recognizing that we live on a shared planet. As global citizens I see sustainability as our collective mission, to protect our resources, not only for human health and life, but also that of other living forms and organisms. We live and are part of an ecosystem, in our approach to save it, we have to recognize its circularity. 

Oh I love how you phrased that. What is your approach to save our resources?

SOPHIE: As of 2025, I have been eating a plant-based diet for 9 years. I see this as the simplest way to protect animal lives, and reduce my impact on resources such as water and CO₂ . In addition, I strive to produce as little waste as possible, drawing inspiration from the zero waste community. 

SARAH: Just as you, I see veganism as a very powerful lifestyle to save our resources. The protection of animals always stood at the core of PLAN Y’s foundation. Also, I am a person who prefers home-vacationing, so my travel is kept to a minimum. 90% of my closet is thrifted as well. 

You mentioned that animals and their protection were a big pillar since the beginning of PLAN Y, can you go into a little bit more detail there?

SARAH: When PLAN Y started as my thesis project for university, I developed a footprint calculator to save resources through WWF, trying to save more species going extinct and saving land and their habitats. Learning about how many species already went extinct shocked me so deeply and laid the foundation for what should become my life’s mission. And it was clear that I wanted to make this my career, by making an app. We don’t have much time left, and I want to spend all of my time doing this. 

SOPHIE: That reminds me of seeing a photo exhibition by Sebastião Salgado. The way he captured animals and indigenous cultures filled me with a sense of awe, wonderment and a stern reminder that it is our role to not abuse our power as humans, but use it for good. Oh and reading novels such as The People in the Trees and The Overstory, further allowed me to recognize injustices and our forgotten connection to nature, they deepened my love for this planet, all of its inhabitants (human or not) and gave me a bigger purpose in striving to live more sustainably. 

Sophie, do you remember - during that time we watched Cowspiracy together? 

SOPHIE: Absolutely, I think we binge watched every planet-forward documentary we could find. We were on fire and at the same time, scratching our heads how we could have been so unconscious of these industries and their impacts for so long. 

SARAH: I also remember that the people in these documentaries, such as Kip Andersen, were so inspiring to me because I learned that we don’t have to delegate saving our planet to politicians, but can do so through our own lifestyle. Not much later I discovered Lauren Singer and realized how cool and fun living zero waste can be. And through these people I implemented so many new habits into my own life: bar composting, soaps, safety razors, reusable cotton pads and many more.

Was this a catalyst to make PLAN Y more community focused? 

SARAH: Yes! If one or a few inspiring people can have such a big impact on my life, I knew we wanted to replicate that effect on a larger scale to create worldwide change. That we don’t just want an app informing people or convincing them to reduce their footprint, we want to have a community app with role models leading by example - to inspire, support and lift each other up. 

SOPHIE: Exactly, this was our springboard to come up with concrete features to make this vision an actionable reality. A lot of tinkering was involved to tailor the features to the pain points involved in living more sustainably: living sustainably is hard and expensive, where do I start?

SARAH: Also “I feel alone with this” and “I don’t have an impact as a single person”. All these thoughts and doubts don't have to be true. And that’s what we want to provide through PLAN Y - information and tools to feel empowered and take action. Living sustainability doesn't have to be hard and it doesn't have to be expensive. You are not alone - there are so many people out there aspiring to this lifestyle. And You do have an impact!

SOPHIE: We absolutely do! We both love to eat and grow sprouts right? A bag of 400g of dry Mung Beans costs me something like 4 EUR and I can grow roughly 20 (or even more) batches of sprouts from it, and 4EUR is what you’d have to pay at the grocery store for 200g of sprouts, doing it at home that’s 0.2 cents per batch. This makes sprouting a very cost effective and healthy source of nutrition for me that doesn’t require many resources and especially Mung Beans are super easy to sprout and they contain 24g of protein/100g. So if you ever want to ask me where I get my protein from eating plant-based, that’s my answer. 

SARAH: Now with PLAN Y, you can put your sprouting routine in a step-by-step guide and share it with and inspire the community or invite your friends to try it out with you. On PLAN Y we cover all areas of life, there is a huge spectrum of sustainable actions we can do everyday. Everyone will find something to get excited about. Now imagine seeing dots of everyone who is taking action on your screen - there’s people close by and there’s people across the world doing the same. We are not alone!

Everyone can have an impact, with PLAN Y it will be so fun, easy and visible.