Latest Eco Trend: Buy Less, Live More

Planet Green:

There is a whole sub-culture within the personal finance world that is dedicated to frugal living (reducing your living expenses), and a lot of what we talk about here on Planet Green fits within that tradition. One frugal guru is Amy Dacyczyn, author of the Tightwad Gazette, a newslatter that ran for 6 years during the early 1990s. In one of these, she wrote about her realization that frugality and ecology overlapped in many ways, and that a lot of the things that she had been doing to save money were also green. Below is an insightful excerpt of what she wrote on the subject in an article titled "Thrift and the Environment":

"I realized that economy and ecology are like two circles that overlap about 90%. The remaining 10% is the area where doing the right thing for the environment costs more. [Also], sometimes doing the right thing economically is not good for the environment. For example, the use of coupons and rebates can make an overly packaged product less expensive than its equivalent prepared from scratch."

Read the whole story: Planet Green

Comments

[Cathexis]

04:41 PM on 06/06/2008

A great philosophy, although I was surprised to see the article appear to encompass little mor ethan the exhortion to refrain from mindless consumerism.

I found myself downsizing a lot ... asking myself if I really needed whatever it was that caught my eye/attention. 80% of the time, the answer turned out to be "No." Just like the habit of grabbing some cheap, chemical-laden "pastry" wrapped in cellophane at a convenience store -- if you want a nibble ... do you REALLY want to waste your calorie allotment on *that*?!?

I buy less and I pay more attention to how much packaging things are wrapped in. And, I find I don't feel deprived at all. Most of what I had been buying was crap I really didn't need, once I had it. Prioritizing is a great habit. I get fewer things, but the things I do buy ar ethings I enjoy/need more.

[noneIn2008]

01:23 PM on 06/04/2008

A more relevant starting point. The culture is built around measuring your worth by the size of your house and expense of your car. Seriously, why does Al Gore need multiple enormous houses. The true environmentalist is a minimalist. Keep the home simple and small. Don't buy into the consumerism being force fed over the media.