We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melina Softa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melina below.

Melina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

When I became a vegetarian, after seeing a video about slaughterhouses, questioning myself and my habits became the norm. Animals and the environment became a priority and very important factors I took into consideration when making decisions in my personal life.

When I moved to Miami, 8 years later, I was amazed at all the plant-based and vegan options that were sold in the U.S., and I started wondering why vegans chose that lifestyle, which took me on a new research journey, and to eventually embrace the vegan lifestyle myself. Nonetheless, I was also surprised by the amount of plastic everyone used and the disposable culture that reigned. This made me jump into a sustainable journey, in which I still am, to find a way to live my life that is more respectful of the environment.

My professional background is in Communications and Marketing, and I love to write. These, together with my desire to make a difference in the world, led me to start this blog–sustainablerookie.com–in 2021. I’m a rookie in sustainability, striving to make progress in my choices instead of perfection, but by sharing through my blog my own discoveries I might help a few people make many small changes, and to me that adds up more than one single person doing everything perfectly.

Melina, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Sustainable Rookie is a sustainability blog, an online companion for people’s journeys towards conscious living. It’s a site where you can find guidance for an eco-friendly lifestyle, travel, home, sustainable fashion, and mindset, but it’s also a place where you won’t be judged by how advanced in your journey you are. This blog is for everyone, for those who have already embraced a sustainable lifestyle, as well as for anyone who doesn’t know where to start from but feels a deep sense of compromise towards our planet.

As the creator of the blog, I position myself in the same level as the reader. I’m a rookie and not an expert, but I’m constantly learning about environmentalism and sustainable living. I believe we can all make a difference in the world, and by promoting progress and small steps, instead of perfection, we can make more people join this movement towards change. This, in my opinion, is what differentiates Sustainable Rookie from other blogs, that may have a contrasting and absolutist approach (zero waste living, for instance).

With everything that I learn I write a post and include personal experience, research, and a call to action. I cover one topic at a time, but one week it could be sustainable gifts, and the next one the influence that trees have on the environment. Additionally, I have an Instagram account where I post informative or fun reels to help people become involved in sustainability.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved nature and animals. Once the reality of the animal food industry opened up to me, I understood there was more to loving animals than petting my cat, and choices that were in my power, like what I put on my plate, could be done differently to create change.

It’s a domino effect, because once you start analyzing your choices in one area, you carry that mindset to other parts of your life. Animals and the environment are intrinsically correlated, and to take care of the animals, you have to take care of the environment, and vice versa. I also understood that loving nature meant taking care of it, not just enjoying the perks it has to offer. Living in Miami, I see a lot of people enjoying the beautiful beaches, but littering and not picking up after themselves.

All these realizations converge in my mission of raising awareness about how our behaviors and decisions, both as consumers and individuals living in society, can affect these wonderful places that we like to enjoy, these incredible animals that are part of the ecosystem, and the amazing planet we live in.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media was something I had to dive into to try to reach more readers for my blog. Pinterest is the best search engine for bloggers, so everything I post on my blog, is uploaded to Pinterest so that people with interest in sustainability and vegan lifestyle can read my content. Instagram, on the other hand, works a bit differently, since its main focus is building the brand, even though it was originally conceived for driving traffic to the blog. However, it has helped me mostly to connect with sustainable brands that have reached out to me to send me their products, or to ask me to create content for them, since brands are focusing mostly on micro influencers with high engagement rate.

As reels have been pushed more than posts by Instagram, I’ve tried to focus my content creation on them. Because my blog is still quite new, I’m still on the trial and error phase, analyzing what reels work better, and which create more engagement from the community. My advice would be to take the time to understand what’s trending on Instagram, analyze your insights to know what to keep working on, and take care of the followers you have, because quality is better than quantity, and being a part of a community of like-minded people is enriching by itself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sustainablerookie.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sustainablerookie/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sustainablerookie
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/sustainablerookie/