To be bothered by how much we consume as a society...

[Cakelesswonder]

Don't get me wrong I love a retail therapy session but today just felt utterly gluttonous in the amount of ads for Black Friday, the 'deals, I couldn't move for emails offering me 20% off lots of things I don't need. I'm not suggesting everyone knits their own yogurt and lives like Mormons but I really feel we don't have the resources on Earth to keep consuming, throwing and consuming like we do. Everything is disposable, straws, clothes, we buy water in bottles then throw them away polluting the oceans and planet for ourselves and future generations. I have no idea what the overall solution is but it really got to me today .

I am trying to replace clothes with secondhand/ethically made options

Same - I love a good charity shop bargain, and it's stopping new stuff being made or the old stuff ending up in landfill.

Complete agree.

I rarely shop these days and mainly use charity shops and eBay. So easy to pick things up cheaply.

I try not to think about it all too much as it just makes me feel ill.

YoloSwaggins It's interesting you say that about the Youtubers as it was actually watching a vlog by a well known vlogger/blogger that really got me thinking. I've read and watched her for years and recently I really feel like she's lost herself a bit and become totally obsessed with labels. She was showing off a haul of ten outfits (the point I know) and I couldn't help but feel how sad and empty she really looked. Thousands of pounds of clothes to be worn on a few occasions then forgotten about. Looking at it all that was the trigger that we've gone too far. No one needs that much stuff in their life...

This website looks nice I think, set up I imagine in a similar fit of feeling oversaturated with stuff.
www.elflessacts.org.uk
I love the idea of it.
An elderly friend was given one new jumper as her main present every year and said she got just so excited about it! our children probably get less stuff than most (more like we did as children- DD wanted books this year) but also get just so excited
I don’t want to be too minimalist either as good to enjoy life but I do find photos in the newspaper of people fighting for TVs really fascinating as don’t they already have one?

I recently asked a Mum pal on my whatsap chat for a loan of a Xmas jumper for a do (she has lots) and I felt like a bit of a cheapskate, however also felt there is so little borrowing from others nowaday

Yes, I remember when I was a teenager it was normal to borrow clothes off a friend or sister if you had an event and you couldn't afford to buy something. That was an actual thing people did! But when you can get a primark dress for 8 pound why would you need to now? Apparently people buy outfits with the intention of only wearing them once, to one event, and then ditching them.

It's just so crazy to me that this is really something ordinary people do now, not just the super rich. How much things have changed ... and yet I'm only 35, so this shift has occurred over just 15-20 years.

YANBU

Completely agree
Every time I buy anything it comes in a box, cling film, a bag.
What a waste of money, and it all goes straight in to the recycling bin.
If the big stores & supermarkets led the way
And became packaging free.. what amazing things could follow!!!!!
Come on Tesco, Sainsbury's et al.
Help change our world!!

Yanbu

I've been thinking about this a lot.

My ds has asked for Lego sets for Xmas this year from every relative and I feel a bit sick about all the plastic... I know it will be well loved and used but still.

Single use plastics are truly awful - I was given two straws in a drink the other day and didn't even ask for them, then saw someone carrying several plastic shopping bags and a takeaway coffee and thought, how has this become the norm? When will it become abhorrent to use plastic this way?

Ditto clothing, the cotton industry is just unbelievably damaging - we use a lot of hand me downs and charity shop stuff but not all the new stuff we buy is organic and I do feel crap about that.

Cakeless did you see the whale carrying its dead baby around on Blue Planet, the baby thought to have been poisoned by plastic toxins in its mother's milk? Heartbreaking.

I read recently (Monbiot?) That after six months only 1% of consumer items are still in use. That horrifies me.

There has been a lot more awareness about plastic pollution, I hope things change swiftly because we cannot continue the way we are.

Really glad to see all of you thinking in this way, and thank you for the good ideas and links of how to change things even a little bit.

I recently fully Kondo-ed my whole house and tried to pass things on in a responsible way - charity, selling, recycling etc. But that in itself was an eye opener.

Now I’m working on really reducing what I buy in general. But as PPs have said it’s so hard when things aren’t made to last. And everything is swathed in plastic with no options.

Cakeless did you see the whale carrying its dead baby around on Blue Planet, the baby thought to have been poisoned by plastic toxins in its mother's milk? Heartbreaking.

Yanbu. And I don't think anyone would say otherwise.
Man has, and is continuing to destroy our planet.
It's very sad.

I haven't watched Blue Planet yet but I've read several articles that talked about it. TBH I'm welling up even writing this so I don't know how I would cope with watching. The fact we've destroyed entire ecosystems, the ocean, the rainforest for convenience and profit is so so horrid. On the flip side though, it makes me even more determined to weed out all my usage of single use plastic.

I worry as well what the effect of all this plastic is doing to humans as well. I assume plastic leaches into our food/drink particularly when microwaving plastic containers etc and then that goes into our breastmilk? What the fuck are the long term consequences of that going to be?

I read recently (Monbiot?) That after six months only 1% of consumer items are still in use. That horrifies me.

Silence, I'm reading Out of the Wreckage and that rings a bell.

At Christmas you see this wreckless ridiculous consumption, stuff that is literally designed to be thrown away without being used, things like bacon soap. You get it for Christmas, laugh at it and by new year it's gone in the bin.

So what can we do? And what can we encourage Mumsnet to campaign on?
Off the top of my head: Supermarket campaigns - lobby for a zero waste aisle, paper bags for fruit and veg; straw ban campaign...The plastic bag tax has been brilliant, what else could be taxed? Get some ig #s trending to counter the whole haul culture...

Consumption is the only thing driving economies like ours. Governments encourage it; the system promotes it with cheap credit etc etc
Oh yeah and then the ‘powers that be’ claim to be the defenders of the environment by making small gestures like the 5p supermarket plastic bag. Total hypocrites.
It will take something massive to turn the tide of consumerism. YANBU. Society needs a wake up call!

Getting rid of plastic straws would be a brilliant start I think, hopefully once Wetherspoons do this other retailers will follow suit. I would love to see the day where we get rid of single use carrier bags entirely so they only option is a bag for life or bring your own.

I really think this will make a difference simply because lots of people will resent the bag for life cost. My local Sainsburys has started providing cardboard boxes to put shopping in at the checkout which is great for me as I am pathologically incapable of remembering my bags half the time and end up walking out with arms full of food It works for them as well as they don't need to worry about disposing of the boxes.

YANBU

What can we do? Recycle, reuse as much as possible. Make do and mend. Learn from the war era generation how to use everything properly - my grandparents are in their 90's and never throw any food out. Or anything out, but they've got a lot of storage space. I'm still using some of my great gran's kitchen stuff.

Use reusable bags, cups, bottles, coffee cups. Buy stuff not in packaging (no idea how). Don't use unnecessary plastic (like putting bananas un a plastic bag at supermarket.

The biggest thing would be to lobby the food industry to use less packaging.

I totally agree with you. I bought steaks the other day that had three different types of packaging (stupidly didn’t realise until I’d bought them) and it’s just such a fucking waste. I honestly try really hard - we have a compost bin, I’m so careful about recycling, food waste, toys, nappies - but it just seems so futile when supermarkets are just churning out endless, endless, endless choices, shrink-wrapped, plastic coated, disposable cheap clothing, plastic tat.

The whale and the dead calf has kept me awake at night. It’s grim, fucking humans.

Oh, I agree !!! Plastic, synthetic "stuff", be it plastic toys, cheap clothes, etc. are just so incredibly cheap to buy that as a society we buy masses of this stuff on a weekly basis and discard it.

The point about the Christmas jumper is a really good one. Last year I bought my dd a Christmas jumper for a school Christmas jumper day. She wore it twice. I was just thinking that if this comes up this year, I am not buying one unless it's second hand. It just feels so incredibly wasteful. We are drowning in stuff.

Yanbu. I’m holding my head in horror today about threads on here about what to buy to “bulk out” their kids presents, for starters. Buying random shite just to make a more impressive “pile”

And the lists on Christmas threads where people are buying each child obscene numbers of big presents. For what? Where do you put it all?

Christmas/ Black Friday seems to send people into a kind of frenzy.

But you can do something
Buy the minimum
And dare I say it, limit family size or adopt
The overpopulation problem is only going to lead to more of this!

Also a chunk of the economy is based on buying tat and service industries selling takeaway food etc etc

So wanting to reduce all this will mean fewer jobs, alongside automation, it's another reason to have fewer children.

Dint realise people were "bulking out" present piles

The pp who mentioned feeling a cheapskate had a point. I buy lots second hand - clothes, books, toys and always try to pass things on if I can. I do find most people regard this as a cheapskate thing rather than a sensible and more sustainable choice though. I am constantly amazed by how many people won't consider second hand clothes for their children or consider something like a school jumper unwearable because it has a bit of a pen stain on the sleeve.

We need to change this attitude. Not only is it better for our planet but I suspect that there are a lot of people for whom reducing costs even just a little in this way would reduce work and financial pressures on them and make for a happier and more balanced way of life.