How to Stop Shopping

One reporter has joined a growing movement of people who have sworn off buying new things. It’s a good read and a good introduction into how one can change their shopping habits to help our friendly planet.

Here are the ground rules: No buying anything new, with three exceptions – food, booze and health essentials, like medicine and toilet paper. Mary-Margaret suggests we could use leaves, but I think she’s joking.

Also accepted: Second-hand purchases. Value Village, Craigslist, vintage shops are all fair game, as the official point is to lighten our environmental load. We are in Planet Saving Mode, not Shopaholics Anonymous.

Borrowing is encouraged.

It’s an easy case to make after the stuff-gorging of Christmas. Torontonians, on average, throw 3.7 kilograms into the household trash each week – not including compost or recycling – according to city statistics. And for every garbage bin we pack, another 70 were filled to make the stuff we’re throwing out, according to American garbage guru Annie Leonard.

So, by boycotting new things for three months, I personally will keep more than 900 bags of garbage out of landfills or incinerators around the world. Not to mention the coal-fired electricity involved in making the stuff, the truck fumes, the mining and logging …

Read the rest of the article.

One thought on “How to Stop Shopping

  1. With the food, try buying only stuff that no one else has done anything to. There are a few things that I just can’t manage without, like ready made pasta, and my big cooking cheats, cream of mushroom and tomato soup. Other than that, we try for the “original source” foods. Less packaging there too.

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