Most shops are just landfill waiting to happen.

[SummerDaytoNight]

I mean, all are to a point, but I’m talking about the non essential ones.

Our society is engineering its own collapse. We only need food, health, house basics and clothing. And I suppose, technology.

Fast fashion could go. Housing should just be the essentials.

My friend took me into a shop called sostrene grene. It was lovely, but nothing was essential. Most shops are like that.

The horse has bolted, but I wish we could limit the unnecessarily stuff and just have the basics. Im not talking Amish level, but there’s no need for all this waste. It would be so much better if only the essentials were produced.

At the point of production, it’s already basically landfill.

Totally agree @SummerDaytoNight, So much of what we consume, like rats on a treadmill, is destined for landfill in a fairly short period of time. We have built a landfill economy which is depressing. Things are clearly changing thought. Many changes will be very tough but perhaps this may be one positive thing that may change. I agree with the poster just above @ShockedandStunnedRepeatedly that the government and banks have absolutely encouraged this to prop up falling real GDP.

Most kids toys come under this category I feel. My two get so much plastic crap as gifts, they play with once and it's just left never to be touched again 😩 I try and give what I can to charity but I can't give away kinder egg toys or McDonald's plastic happy meal toys can I 🤯 hate it

I think the "buy good buy once" method is a positive one when it comes to clothing but doesn't really apply in many situations.

A better message would be around not treating fashion as disposable. That the idea is you wear something until it has fallen apart so much that it just can't be repaired. That your old misshapen t-shirts can be worn for painting or gardening, old leggings which have lost their stretch as pyjama bottoms, or cut up to use as cleaning cloths. Children at school are not taught to sew on a button or repair a split seam and their parents don't have the skills to teach them either. Repairing clothing takes time, so you just chuck it away. People have also skewed ideas about how much clothes they actually NEED - 15 pairs of jeans, 30 smart tops, 30 casual tops, 15 winter jumpers, 20 dresses etc etc etc. And don't get me started on the themed clothing tat for every "special" occasion imaginable.

Also nobody is saying that you should have nothing in your house at all which is not purely functional. As someone said upthread, we've been decorating our homes since our homes were caves. What we don't need though is a constant stream of influencers telling us that mustard is in and sage green is out or whatever, and the expectation of changing everything annually. Fuck that.

If your Easter is not complete without a "dancing drumming bunny" https://www.therange.co.uk/occasions-and-themes/easter/easter-toys/dancing-drumming-bunny#405124 or a set of disposable bunny window stickers https://www.therange.co.uk/occasions-and-themes/easter/easter-decorations/easter-bunny-window-sticker-decorations#1874132 then you have serious issues. Utter tat.

And as for "well I don't care, I am going to keep consuming and buying tat" - disgusting.

Except you can buy or swap second hand for better quality at a lower price. Even shoes.

I also judge people who go shopping as a hobby and talk/post about their "hauls" as utterly shallow and thick.

We all need to be more mindful of the shit we buy and then they would stop producing it. I was happiest and my house much tidier living minimalist. But, much harder to do now with 3 kids……

Sorry, I should maybe have said VAT. Not 100% sure how it works, I concede.

I agree..it's mostly tat... But people still buy it.

And as for "well I don't care, I am going to keep consuming and buying tat" - disgusting.

Quite. And I think we can all have a pretty good guess at what those same people will have to say in future decades about mass immigration from places loke SE Asia fuelled by climate change. And the irony will be lost on them...

I agree - but recycle should only be done when you can't reduce or reuse. So many people think it's fine to keep filling their lives with tat, as long as they have the vague idea that they will recycle it.

B and M seems to be looked down on MN but people ignore that (at a guess) at least half the stuff in there is essentials - food, cleaning materials, toiletries, san pro, etc
I bought loads of stuff in there for DD going to uni (bathroom stuff, storage, bath mats etc)
When DC were younger I bought toys

Completely agee. I watched the Netflix ‘Buy Now’ documentary and couldn’t stop imagining the tat, (it was Halloween stuff in the shops at the time) that would end up in landfill (often a poor country’s landfill).

Let’s not forget “The Recycling Industry” - a lot of people’s careers are livelihoods now depend on this being A Thing. A bit like “The Poverty Industry”. No incentive for them to put themselves out of a job. Look at the big picture.

You're right that there's a snobbish disdain for B&M on this forum. I remember all the snooty posts during Covid about 'idiots buying plastic tat in B&M'.

I guess buying the same plastic tat for 3 times the price in Sostrene Grene is fine.

No need to apologize! (And I'm no expert on this stuff either!). I get your point entirely and some of the blame definitely lies with policymakers/lobbyists. So much of this stuff us bad for the environment AND the economy 😞

I am mid 50’s and was clothes mad as soon as I could get my hands on some cash. There was just far less to choose from - you had High Street stores or your mum’s catalogue.
Once the choice widened and more designer items appeared I did get sucked in - but I wore things over and over. Many I still have but so many have been passed down to friends’ daughters. I certainly never wore something once and got rid of it. We hardly ever took photographs so it wasn’t as though that was an issue.
With fast fashion, you buy, you wear, you chuck.
And please don’t get me started on Shein.
There are so many trends and fads - does a whole family need new Christmas pyjamas? Do girls of 6 or 7 need to wake up on Valentine’s Day to bundles of gifts?
When my dad passed away, after my mum, I had to
sort their house out. So much stuff. You really can’t take it with you.
And back in the day stores got in new collections four times a year, with a few extra items. Now it’s a constant. It never ends.

I think social media has a lot to blame. All the encouragement of changing every single plate and bowl for spring, summer, autumn, winter, Xmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day etc. it’s just constant overconsumption of junk and crap that’s peddled all the time.
The “viral” cups and water bottles. It’s all pointless shit.

The OP literally used Sostene Green as her example of shit that isn’t needed! Not B&M. It’s the existence of non-needed tat that’s the problem, not where people are getting it. Honestly, people on here…

Yes I remember that - it was all the people in B and M spreading covid, presumably Waitrose filtered out germs 🙄

Who even shops in these ghastly places and buys the tat? Where is all of this landfill? In people’s houses. I’m just amazed anyone would like it enough to spend their money on this stuff.

The very first post on the thread is about sostrene green.

Yes but read the comments. All about how tatty B&M is, whereas Sostrene Grene is class.

As I said above, the comments are all about B&M, not Sostrene Grene.

And what's 'non needed'? A lot of the stuff sold in B&M is needed. Crockery, washing powder, shampoo, even basic foods. Whereas it's hard to think of anything from Sostrene Grene which is actually 'needed'. It's mostly relatively pricey tat.

I've seen maybe a couple of comments along those lines out of the entire thread. TBH I've never even heard of Sostrene Grene though so it's probably fair to say that their impact on the environment in terms of tat consumption is vastly lower than B&M.

Eclectic.

Yeah, me too.