Cory Varga is a full-time writer and, together with her photographer husband G, owns travel website You Could Travel. Their website specialises in soft adventure travel, off the beaten path destinations and culinary affairs, whilst their Instagram feed gives us serious wanderlust!.
In 2013, Cory and tech mastermind G teamed up to create their own digital agency, hoping to show others how a nomadic lifestyle can be possible for anyone. This year, the couple decided to make the switch to veganism, just in time for the launch of their new range of sustainable travel wear. We caught up with Cory to learn more …
1. Hi guys! You made the decision to vegan in Jan 2018, what encouraged you to make the switch?
Hi Sarah! It’s actually an unusual story. I must warn you, it’s actually pretty gross. Ready? We went shopping and we bought our normal things, including meat. We really wanted to have a fun movie night with chicken wings and blue cheese dip (looking back, I can see why this was unhealthy for our arteries hehe). Long story short, we opened the pack of our wings and a horrible smell came out of it. It was the smell of rotting. We checked the dates and realised that even though the product was fine and perfectly edible according to the label, it was completely off. We literally gagged. It was horrible. It was the first time something like this ever happened but I think it put things into perspective: we were about to eat … something dead! So that was the day we went vegetarian. It was November 2017. We then started looking into documentaries about vegan diets and came across What the Health. To this day, I think it’s the best documentary ever made about food. We watched it and at the end we decided there is no chance in hell we’ll ever touch anything animal product based. So we gave all our food away to those in need and started afresh. We’ve been happily powered by plants ever since.
“People assume that going vegan means you are some crazy that wants to save the cows”
2. Did your vegan transition play a part in the choices you made whilst preparing your clothing range?
A lot of people assume that going vegan means you are some crazy that wants to save the cows. But there’s so much more to it than that. Of course, not killing other earthlings is important, but in reality, once you understand how the food industry works, and what they make you eat, it gets pretty chilling. Especially because we can absolutely live in harmony with other animals and our nature. This also ties in with our environment and our need to look after our planet and ourselves. There is no need to destroy, when we have the capability to simply be ethical and sustainable. We literally have all the technology to do so, yet we allow greedy people to tell us otherwise. It’s not OK. When the opportunity arose to partner up with a sustainable company to create 100% organic cotton clothing, we said ‘YES!’ It was perfectly aligned with our views.
3. Your new fashion collection is 100% organic cotton and made in a factory which uses 100% renewable energy. With this, alongside your new vegan diet, you seem like the ultimate Eco-travel couple. Which issues are the most important to you?
We are travellers, hence we love our planet. We don’t want to see little turtles trapped in plastic, we want to keep our great barrier reef intact and healthy and we most certainly don’t want greedy corporations to destroy rain forests for palm oil or for the sake of meat industry. It’s also sad to go out and inhale pollution. All of it can be avoided.
We aren’t as Eco as we would love to be, but we are working hard on getting there. We are saving for that ultimate electric car we both want and we vouched to install solar panels once we can have our own house. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about doing the best you can, when you can. For now, we are happy we can contribute and we are incredibly excited to share our new sustainable, organic range of travel clothing with the world!
4. With so many ethical factors to consider, what was the most important part of your new project?
We are obsessed with renewable energy. Think about it, we can harness the power of our sun and wind. We have the technology to do so on a mass scale, yet people still go with the fossil fuel idea. It just doesn’t make any sense. Why would you do that? It kills us, it kills our environment. Oh, and it costs a lot of money. Solar energy is free. Like literally look up, the sun is there. Wind is free, it’s just how it is. Why not harness these? The sun is not going anywhere for another few billion years. But fossil fuel is finite. Why bother? So we wanted to show the world is possible to rely on renewable energy and bring sustainable products to the market.
5. Why should travellers care about sustainable fashion?
The world as we know it is changing. Travellers enjoy the world, enjoy our nature and love all those beautiful pristine locations. Without sustainability, there will be no more pristine beach, no rain forest, no corals to see. Fashion is a $1.2 trillion global industry. Imagine these crazy amounts of money being invested in sustainability. Travellers should care about sustainable fashion in order to stop others from destroying the environment for the sake of profits.
6. As a couple who spend all of their time travelling and living in each other’s pockets, how do you ensure personal connections don’t interfere with your work?
We are together 24/7. We’ve done this for the past 4 and a half years. It might seem crazy to some, but it’s just awesome for us. We love spending time together. It was a bit difficult to adjust at the beginning, but after a few months we worked perfectly well. When it’s work time, we both sit down in front of our computers and work work work around the clock. We then have lunch together, cook and spend some time catching up on things. After hours, we talk about how work was, and we go for long walks to reconnect. We always use our evenings for fun and creative cooking and sometimes we do a bit of Netflix. It’s never boring, but I guess being in different locations around the world helps. No two days are the same in a way.
7. What’s next on your travel list?
We are heading to The Netherlands, Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and we think we are going to cross Europe all the way to Spain during the summer. Late August we want to do a month around SE Asia, and go back to our favourite country: Japan. There are a few talks with several tourism boards but nothing set in stone yet. So at the moment, it’s quite exciting!
The You Could Travel clothing range is now live. Head over to their website or Facebook page for more details. You can also find out more about the duo’s adventures on Pinterest and Twitter.
Do you write or work for a vegan/ethical cause? We’d love to feature you! Head over to our contact page for more details.
