Eco audit: to buy or not to buy

However strongly we feel about the environment, it’s hard to ignore the fact that society is making things easier for us – as well as harder.

Among all the encouragements to spend are the ones in the grey area: the spending that’s ‘OK because the products are environmentally friendly’.

As the analogy goes: we all still need to buy…[X: loo roll, shoes, whatever else] – so let’s make positive buying choices.

In my teens, I think there was little of that.  I know that there was recycled paper – yes.  I bought it.  The other main choices you seemed to be able to make at that time were to buy lead-free petrol, and aerosols without CFC propellants.

Avoiding animal testing for cosmetics. Not buying fur. That’s about all I can come up with from the early 90s, for now.

Well.  I think it’s fair to say I would be astonished by all the eco-buys that are now out there:

– household cleaning products (non-petrochemical based; ones that biodegrade naturally)

– toilet roll, kitchen roll (recycled products)

– toiletries and cosmetics (including non-synthetic ingredients, and limiting packaging)

– clothing (choosing natural materials but ones that don’t involve lots of bleaching or dyeing)

– food (local, organic, supporting growers over supermarkets etc)

– home decorating (where your wood comes from; whether your paint has low VOC content)

– wind up or solar power or rechargeable items (radios, phone chargers, fans…)

…and that’s just a few categories for now.  There are of course plenty more.

It’s interesting as a psychology.  We are no longer in the place of that cartoon of a mass of penguins, all crying out ‘But I’m only an individual – what can I do?’  There’s plenty we can do.  But the challenging part is around the buying.

If you’ve been following my train of thought this month, you’ll see that reducing and simplifying are some of the most challenging parts of the environmental mindset. And yet, for many of us, the immediate way we can show our green credentials is…to buy things.

In fact, despite my teenage self not having lots of eco-buying choices, I realise there were still some other principles going on, which brought an environmental perspective to life at the time.  (These are also ones that are mentioned in today’s advice on green lifestyles.)

I came across another useful maxim in the last few weeks, which has also helped me think about my eco activities:

‘Use it up, wear it out

Make do or do without.’

I’m guessing this is where the wartime ‘make do and mend‘ came from – or if not, the sentiment is the same.  The one above is evidently from the days of the Great Depression in the US.

Just as Britain has rallied around other wartime sayings (Keep Calm and Carry On – and all its subsequent variants), bloggers in the US are looking to what the nation knew during the Great Depression, and how to use that earlier wisdom.

So in the spirit of use it up…etc, I thought I would see what buying choices I made in my teens that are still going strong.

1) Buy something that will last: it helps you reduce (because you don’t have to keep replacing it). Case in point: rucksack bought before I first went off to Poland.  Some bits of it have disappeared (part of the waist strap), but much of it is fine.

Can I still lug things around in it, 20 years on? Yes. Do I need to replace it? No.  I’m hoping to get many more years, or use-it-ups, out of it.

2) Buy something that will be flexible: it helps you reduce (you don’t need to keep buying more) and to reuse, in a sense (because you get more uses out of it). Example: items of clothing (or shoes) that will go with lots of other things. If it still looks OK, if it still works with other clothes, if it still fits, do I keep it? Yes.

So three cheers for a few items that have survived since my teens (court shoes for occasional smarter occasions, a batik blouse), and others that have at least a decade on them. Wear it out? The onus is on me to take better care of them in the meantime, perhaps, and to be wise about what really does need replaced.

3) Buy something that does the job (with a little TLC): there’s a certain bookcase that has done me nearly three decades. OK, I didn’t buy it myself, but as soon as I had a place I could furnish, out it came. It’s wooden, it’s simple to put together, and to take apart.

Sometimes, the taking apart is easier than the putting together. At one stage, I lost the screws for it, and had to prevail upon a more practically minded friend to replace them, and the metal lugs that hold up the shelves.  But it is still going strong.

These days, said bookcase needs a little support.  Another bookcase to lean on, to be precise.  Being attached to the wall, so that it doesn’t sway sideways.  It doesn’t fit with the other bookshelves, but on the grand scale of making do, it does the job just fine.

4) Resist the siren song that says you must have a certain thing. In fact, looking back only a couple of decades reminds you that you did just fine without…a mobile phone.  A car. And plenty more.

Part of me might quite like a big food mixer – and part of me knows that my granny’s hand mixer, handed down, does me just fine for most recipes.  And for others? I’ll get round – or do without that recipe being part of my repertoire.

Given that we have more and more choice as shoppers, it’s no bad thing to have a few ideas about to guide your purchases.  They may not be eco products – but the spirit is still eco, as is the emphasis on not getting more and more things.

We are fortunate in this day and age.  We may make do in some areas, do without in others – but so many things are within our reach, far cheaper, than was ever the case for earlier generations.

It can feel like an academic exercise to avoid buying – until you try it. And realise how much of your energy, time, emotion and so on can be diverted into thinking about The Next Purchase.

So here’s to a balance of wise purchases – when we really do need to buy – and a spirit of ‘that’ll do me just fine’ for the rest.