Pledges to consume less are consuming me. Everywhere I look, someone’s giving up buying clothes for a year, shopping at the Evil Empire for a month, or buying anything ever. I feel like I want to do a little experiment of my own and blog about it. Why do I feel this need? Honestly, the amount of waste produced in this country makes me a little ill. When customers at the restaurant ask for 2 Styrofoam boxes so that they can keep their small amounts of food separate, the waste makes me cringe. I schlep reusable bags to the grocery store, and I only bag wet, leafy produce. I stood alone in a grocery store aisle, and I looked at all the prepackaged food and realized that all the containers were landfill-bound, and I felt a little ill and panicky. I want to do a little more to waste a little less.
Beyond the material waste that ends up in the landfill, I am bothered by the spend-work-spend-work-spend rat race we seem to find ourselves in. I’m not a big shopper, except when it comes to books. I went to a big chain bookstore to purchase Taking Charge of Your Fertility yesterday, and I tortured myself by walking up and down the aisles looking at wonderful books that I’d love to own. Maybe that’s how other people feel when they shoe shop?
From a selfish, purely monetary standpoint, I’m interested to see how much money I can save if I purposefully shop less. I should be starting grad school in the summer, and I won’t be able to work much, if at all, for about a year. I don’t like to be stressed about money, and sometimes I bring little money crunches on myself by spending too much.
I’ve found some guidelines in The Compact. A movement that began in San Francisco in 2006, the Compact is a pledge to purchase very little for one year, though some Compacters may continue these spending patterns indefinitely. According to the GOOD article linked in this paragraph, “The premise was simple: barter, borrow, or buy secondhand for a year-food, drink, health, and safety necessities excluded.”
So, the brakes I bought this year – fine, I needed them to keep other drivers and myself safe. The secondhand jogging clothes from the thrift store – alright, it was secondhand, so no new waste was created. The ingredients to make tamales – no problem, it’s food. The book I bought yesterday? Not so much. I suppose I might argue that it was a health necessity, but that would be a pretty big stretch.
I will be an unofficial Compacter starting January 1st, 2011. I will also write a little more in-depth about the nuances of the Compact and its aims.
The book waste was something I only ended up involved with because of college. But, since (re)discovering the library and graduating college, I haven’t purchased a book in many years. Though it helps to have a great library or 3.
As for the car waste, I said good bye to car waste when I gave up the car. It was so damned awkward to glare judgmentally at everyone polluting our streets and air as I was driving in a car myself.
I hate anything that interferes with my judgmental glare! I need to drive less, that’s certain.