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.

This is a very good point

There's a really interesting documentary about this on Netflix, called Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy.

The pendulum is swinging towards make do and mend, which could provide skilled employment.
Resource wise, UK needs to look at food supply chains and food security, masses of waste there and the global nature of the industry brings food safety issues.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y66y40kgpo
'British' steel is apparently in trouble, but it isn't British owned, neither are many of our essential utilities. As a country we're relying on the altruism of other states, and COVID among other issues shows us that only goes so far.

I bought two little Easter ornaments from Sostrene Green recently.
A little chick and a duck.
Do I need them?
No.
Do I like them?
Yes.
I live in a rented flat so we aren't allowed to decorate how we'd like. No pictures up and no shelves up.
So I try to make my home cosy and pretty through things like small ornaments or seasonal cushions.
Also because I live in a flat I don't have a garden (or a balcony) so I can't grow my own pretty things.
There's nothing wrong with wanting your home to look pretty and cosy.
(Sostrene Green might be my new favourite shop because they have loads of really nice craft items there)

Totally agree. I have a fascination with people doing seasonal hauls and I just can’t draw my eyes away from the horror of it. So many people will do home decor and kitchen ware hauls on top of the obligatory clothes hauls. So they’ll exuberantly hold up things up to the to camera each season like a resting spoon with a bunny pic on it and then one with a witch at Halloween and one with father Xmas at Xmas! It’s unreal to think there was a time you just had one eg spoon rest maybe for your entire life! But increasingly not just this but people feel the need to redecorate to the latest colour palette every two years or so when previously you’d really live with it for a good 5 years or so or maybe until it was looking tired.

On the redecoration thing - it's the matchy matchy trend which I hate. You can't just replace your worn sofa. It has to be a new sofa, and curtains, and wall colour, and pictures, and cushions, and "accessories", and a rug and and and and... all matchy matchy to de discarded when the next trend rolls around the following year.

Hate it.

I buy most of my household things from B+M - mops, a new ironing board, kitchenware, kettle, washing up bowls, towels, replacement pillows etc.
Obviously I don't know where you live but in some places there's nowhere to buy regular ordinary household items except for B+M.

https://www.tprg.com/theo-paphitis-retail-group/2024/10/15/ryman-celebrates-collecting-over-35-million-pens-to-be-recycled-since-2019

There are many pens that you can buy refills for, this could go some way to mitigating landfill.

While I completely agree with your overall sentiment, Sostrene Grene is a really bad example of that. They sell mostly craft items and home essentials, that are decent quality for price, will not date too much and is relatively minimal on plastic. Wooden kids toys, 100% cotton knitting yarn, recycled paper notebooks etc.

The film Wall-E becomes more and more of a "fly on the wall" documentary every day. There is already a shop to "Buy & Large" in the film, it's only 1 letter away from "B&L", I await the building of the Axiom..

i love sostrene grene
they play classical music

we are a nation of consumers

i did buy some christmas decorations from sostrene grene
bit like Flying Tiger - i like both shops

Totally agree - plastic flowers especially. Destroying nature for a fake version of it.

I keep all the seasonal tat.

i have lots of it. Christmas tat, Halloween tat, Easter tat. It all goes in a cupboard and comes out at the appropriate time of year.

i don’t have summer tat because I’m too busy growing seedlings and tomatoes.

Yes - maybe this was the wrong example regarding sustainability. I haven't been before and it just struck me that it was an entire shop full of "things.

Even wood and paper comes from trees, though. Trees only grow so fast. So I go back to my thought of thinking that it would be nicer to go back to just essentials. How many wooden spoons does a person need in one life?

It would take a collosal change in society and I don't know if it's even possible now. Surely we have to start somewhere?

I suppose so long as consumerism exists, mass production will continue to as well. Rather depressing but with the shift towards being 'green', this might change in the future. We can but hope!

A solution would be for the company to have to carry the full life cycle costs of what they produce (and, by extension pass this onto cobsumers). Would encourage production of sustainable/repairable products and discourage cheap pointless rubbish.

No idea how this could be be made to happen with global trade and supply chains. Via taxes and tariffs I guess....

Meantime all we can do is our best, in an unthinking world.

Completely agree. Depressing.

Until an alternative system to neoliberalism capitalism is available, we're stuck with this.

I don't disagree, despite having run a "non-essential" independent shop myself, which folded over a year ago due to the current economic climate.

How we got here psychologically is interesting to explore. Edward Bernays is a good place to start.

Capitalism thrives on selling solutions to "problems". Once all the "problems" are solved, to sustain the system, we have to be introduced to new, invented problems and convinced that buying their solutions is a good thing.

Case in point - how many varieties of Oreo do we need? Last time I was in a big supermarket there seemed to be about half an aisle devoted to that one thing.

Last time I bought shampoo and conditioner, the dazzling array of choice left me paralysed until I just went for the biggest volume of product for the most reasonable price.

Trouble is, our whole global economy relies on the trading of widgets and services, so unpicking it without the whole house of cards collapsing it is a tricky and dangerous exercise, especially when money is God.

It's still tomorrow's landfill. Imagine not having any of it.

My (foreign - important because where she lives makes it possible) mil uses holly and fir tree branches to decorate for Christmas. She puts seasonal flowers/ cuttings in her house at other times of the year. I feel like trying to follow her example, but it's not so easy here.

The Easter plastic tat isn't just landfill, it takes energy to produce.

But these things get used over and over for years. We still have the same Christmas decorations I bought in the 1990s, likewise the vases I bought for the 'new home' flowers. Nothing expensive, ikea, BHS, Wilko or similar.

I agree that home decoration aren't essential to life but there's nothing wrong with decorating one's home. Do people really have none of these?

Totally agree. Honestly, when my partner's hair is good and he only uses 5 in 1 shampoo/ shower gel, I wonder how many products really are necessary.

The Range - whom I've heard people rave about - opening a store in my town last week and I went along to see.

I actuallt mentioned then to my DH that we seem to be in a toxic relationship with China; we buy all that plastic tat and overwrought stationery from them, and then pay them to take it away again and landfill for us.

I agree but I have ADHD and have an issue with spending. At the detriment to myself AND the environment!

But these things get used over and over for years

The point is that they very often don't get reused for years. They get chucked out when they invariably break or when the person "declutters" and/or replaced with next year's shiny new piece of tat, new colour scheme etc. A PP mentioned living in a flat - seasonal decorations will often get binned because of lack of storage. Or, things get put in boxes and shoved in the garage to be binned in 20 years' time when they declutter/move house/die.