Most shops are just landfill waiting to happen.

I will add to this - another problem is the capitalist need for year-on-year growth. If you sell "N" products for £X in year 1, to get growth you need to either sell N+P products or sell them for £(X + Y), or ideally both. But to sell mire products you need a wider audience, some of whom might not want to pay even £X. So you lower the quality a bit, not enough to put off last year's customers, but enough to attract this year's new customers. And on and on it goes until what was (say) a respected clothing retailer is now selling polyester tops and acrylic jumpers made in China, that look like rags within a year (which conveniently will make people buy more to replace the old ones), instead of organic cotton and merino wool made in the UK that will look great for years.

what i want to know is, if you are against tat and your dc has a birthday party
what are his friends meant to be buying him that meets your approval?

We are utterly fucked. Hilariously, Trump's tariff policy might actually dampen the hyper production of shite no one needs. Imagine if he was the environmental hero no-one saw coming.

Some concerns about ingesting aluminum from various sources (cooking pots, foil, deodorant - it is known to be found in neurofibrillary tangles in the brains of alzheimers patients and the incident at Camelford highlighted some issues with it's ingestion. Though I confess I haven't kept up with latest developments)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8150251/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelford_water_pollution_incident

My grandparents and parents fridges, washing machines lasted for YEARS. This was only in the 60’s, 70s and 80’s.

In my last house the boiler was 35 years old. When a component broke the gas engineer said fix it, it’s great, you will only get 10 years from a new one.

If the government really gave a crap about Net Zero they would force companies to create products that last 15 years minimum.

This has now made me think net zero is more about encouraging us buying new things than the planet. My local garage said gear boxes are binned rather than fixed. This is stupid. If we are serious about the environment - the gov should fix this issue.

My last washing machine - Bosch - lasted 5 years. This time I bought the cheapest I could find (basic very limited tech) as I imagine it will be binned in 4-5 years.

Agree With the OP.

But I don’t think it means we can’t have nice things. Buying less but better quality, and repairable items, is a sound strategy.

We’ve used Sostrene Grene for years! They sell excellently priced craft supplies for children, dolls house furniture and kitchen utensils. I have ceramic Christmas decorations from them that are 10+ years old, still in excellent condition and cost £0.97 each. The children’s toys are all wooden, I can’t think of a single thing they sell that is single use plastic!

You’d be better singling out Poundland, B&M or Home Bargins for disposable, single use items.

I'm still using the poundshop baubles I bought coming up to 20 years ago - the first and last xmas decorations I've ever bought! Some of the strings fell off so I replaced them with thread, and the top bits on a couple came off so I glued them back on. When I was growing up, most of the decorations were 25+ years old. It was like going back in time.

I like to put a few decorations up , I have a floral door wreath for Easter and a pre lit wreath for Christmas , both years old .

I have cushion covers - Christmas/ some rather creepy Halloween ones (skulls and ravens not killer clown or zombie) and my favourite which have a picture of a hare for Easter.
Re-used every year , useful and I like the .
Also helps to mark the new season even though it reminds me time is passing and my Christmases and Easters are numbered

Aww I love Sostrene Grene.
I don't object to them-lovely things and ppl like having nice things in their homes.
I do try and use charity shops and save clothes and furnishing forever.

I agree there is too much social media posting about outfits bought for a day racing or whatever and I do think social media fuels the rampant consumerism.

I feel like there are many worse culprits Sostrene Grene.

The fast fashion and the Shein, Temu, tiktok shop etc are much worse!!!

i try my hardest to buy everything I can 2nd hand , we’ve just replaced out 30 year old carpets as they had holes in them. We hate waste . I do have some Halloween stuff from home bargains but I’ve had it for 17 years and bring it out every year .
i was speaking to a colleague about this recently and he said what’s the point it’s a piss in the ocean me trying to be green and mindful. I told hi. What a terrible attitude to have. It’s all the people at my work that vape especially the disposable ones , such a huge environmental issue

Why stainless steel over aluminium out of interest? X

I keep my seasonal decs for many years though.

But I see OP's point. Even if things are used and reused and donated and reused, ultimately they're still destined for landfill. It's depressing. Or maybe it's burnt.

Why do you need an event? Why do you need anything?
Why not just sit in a cave with bread and water?

I’m with you, OP. B&M concerns me - it is just a vast store filled with pointless tat. And the fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu are extremely worrying. I don’t buy fast fashion or tat but am very aware that the majority of people do and I have no idea what the solution is. Season crap is particularly bad these days - you used to buy Christmas decorations and bring the same ones out every year, occasionally adding something new. Now people are changing their decorations all the time to new colour schemes or whatever. And then there’s valentines shit and Easter shit and Halloween shit - it’s never ending.

I remember as a uni student when my house mate told me I needed to contribute £20 to buy plastic crap we weren't going to use twice for the Halloween party we were going to have in the house. Other than spending a stupid amount on absolute shite she was a right controlling cunt that didn't allow me to invite alot of my friends.
I luckily was able to decline after alot of hostility.
I think in many households, some but not enough people are thinking about landfill and the environment and won't buy it.

Why do people buy new Christmas decorations every year? I mean tree baubles and tinsel, then throw it away and buy new next year. It never used to be something people did, as far as I'm aware. They did like I do, hang things we've had for years, including ornaments DC made at nursery. It's half the fun decorating the tree and remembering days out/holidays when we bought things.
Nothing matches but who cares? As long as the lights work I'm happy.

Is it really, though (compared to the past, i mean)? I think part of the problem is how much stuff people think they "should" be able to afford on a particular salary. People then take that a step further by buying less good quality versions so they can have even more of it.

In my mid 60s, and I am reading this wondering who buys all this tat, because it certainly is not me! Now the kids are adults I don't even buy Easter eggs, or even chocolate come to that.
Is it so unusual to buy most stuff secondhand but buy quality?

Part of the problem is how expensive compared to wages the decent stuff is. If you don’t have much money you may have to buy the cheap version of what you need knowing it’ll break and need replacing within a year but you need it now not in six months when you’ve saved up enough for the good quality one. Then the cycle repeats on all the items you need.

Yeah I'm with you on this! No one can be "perfect" and I get wanting an occasional "just because" nick nack if it's a theme you love or whatever. But it really is just everywhere.

We try and do a balance. Furniture lasts ages, we only buy tech when things die a death. We never use shein, temu or Primark - we do shop high street shops, mostly Next and Asda/George. We just try to pick a few we fully know are awful and avoid them.

We have one DS and he's ot Playmobil and Lego from when me and DH were kids that is like new and he loves it. He's also had many a Christmas gift from FB marketplace like paw patrol and happy land stuff, that we in turn sold on later on. But saying that he also got some tat from the works just this afternoon 🤦 But like I say, nobody is perfect, it's more about trying to be more mindful where you can. If everyone did that, I think it would make a big difference.

Where I live people can't even get their heads around how to use the brown recycling bins, they just shove general waste in them then of course they don't get emptied and sit there out on the pavement forever

WALL-E and the film Idocracy are feeling more prophetic all the time!

I do sometimes want a bit of new Easter or Christmas decoration and when I do, I hit the charity shops. Last year 10 baubles for £1! Also a beautiful hardly used musical carousel ornament for £4!

We could all do more.
My mum is a war baby, and never throws anything away that might one day be useful. I think she probably takes it a bit too far, but she was able to instil in us the practical skills needed to make do and mend. So making clothes, mending broken items, creating our own birthday and Christmas cards, reusing wrapping paper and ribbons, making decorations and clothes for dress-up days.
My DC always saw making their own halloween outfits as a big part of the fun.

I think schools can help children recognise what they can do that will make a difference, and help change attitudes. My own DC, and their friends, who are now adults, have a very different of view of the world compared to what was acceptable when I was young ( eg not using racist or homophobic vocabulary) and I think that is largely down to ongoing, continuous efforts put in by their schools. Most schools now do teach children about environmental issues and hopefully going forwards the younger generations will be much more aware. My DC already don't buy plastic and will always look for other options. (However that hasn't stopped them buying takeaways in plastic containers, that's our next step!)

The single use plastic bag campaign has worked really well, their use has been reduced by over 80%, I believe. We can do more along these lines. Some places are now introducing rewards for returning empty bottles ( as was standard practice 50 years ago): this is something we could easily do nationally.
We are making improvements, we just need to do it more and for everyone to feel they have a stake in the future.