shopping 101
Here are a few sensible Consumer Basics we can live by:
- Buy less - "Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, Do Without"
- Buy in bulk - it's cheaper, conserves resources, and cuts down on mountains of packaging waste.
- Buy local - support your local homegrown economy. Shipping food and products around the globe generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions, and will become less and less feasible as oil supplies diminish.
- Buy smart - research your purchases, and buy well-made items that are long lasting, durable and repairable. You might spend a little more to purchase good quality products, but you won't need to replace them as often.
- Buy reusable products: disposable products generate more waste than reusable products, such as: cloth diapers, cloth napkins and towels, rechargeable batteries, and returnable beverage bottles.
- Buy products or packages made from recycled materials: Purchasing recycled content products helps support the recycling industry by providing a demand for the materials we place in our recycling bins.
- Buy secondhand - There are enough recyclable consumer goods out there to last us well into the foreseeable future.
- Buy seasonal, organic produce. No harmful synthetic chemicals, pesticides or genetically modified organisms are used. Seasonal produce is usually plentiful, cheaper, and fewer resources have gone into growing it. Plus it tastes great and has a higher nutritional value.
- Buy whole, unprocessed foods that are low on the food chain. It takes way more energy to raise cattle and pigs, than grain, beans and produce. Reducing your meat intake is one of the most powerful things you can do to reduce your impact on the environment. Methane emissions from animal grazing, is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
- Barter for the goods and services that you need and want. (with help from "Living Simply With Children" by Marie Sherlock)
Honestly, it takes some serious re-education to disentangle ourselves from the message that's woven into every fiber of our culture
It was not so very long ago, that we had an economic system based primarily on meeting 0ur basic, everyday needs. And then back in the 1920's, industrial consultants created the "gospel of consumption" - "the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn't enough." (Jeffrey Kaplan - Orion May 2008)
Here and now, in the post-modern world, we've left necessity and thrift behind with the horse and buggy. We inhabit a world where luxury, excess and waste are the everyday norm. We're part of a system that's based on constant growth and profit, and in order to keep expanding, it has spread it's tentacles throughout the world, and now threatens the natural world that we rely on.
Companies hire experts to observe our behaviors, and analyze our likes and dislikes, in hopes of creating lifetime "cradle-to-grave" marketing strategies that appeal to childhood nostalgia. But hey, we're smarter than all that, aren't we? We're savvy & educated - not subject to the manipulation, right ? Let's sure hope so - because the planet can't take this advanced stage of decadent materialism.
Corporations intentionally gear their advertising to grab children's attention at younger and younger ages. It's easy to do these days, with the typical American child watching "an estimated 40,000 commercials annually, that's over 100 a day." The amount of money spent in this conscious effort to groom us and brand us - to turn us into good little shoppers - is "estimated at over $15 billion annually—about 2.5 times more than what it was in 1992. " And that's roughly 150 times the amount marketers spent in 1983!
"The aim of most childrens' advertising is straight forward: Get kids to nag their parents and nag them well." It's referred to as "pester power" in the industry. Eric Schlosser : Fast Food Nation
"American children aged 12 to 17 will ask their parents for products they have seen advertised an average of nine times until the parents finally give in." (from The Center for a New American Dream)
Advertising leads us to believe that we'll be happier with more income and possessions.
To a modest extent, yes, rich people are happier. Especially in poor countries, such as India, being relatively well-off does make for greater well-being. We need food, rest, shelter, and some sense of control over our lives.
But in affluent countries, the link between wealth and self-reported well-being is “surprisingly weak,” notes researcher Ronald Inglehart. Once able to afford life’s necessities, more and more money provides diminishing additional returns.
Compared to 1957, today’s America is the doubly affluent society—with doubled real incomes (thanks partly to the doubling of married women’s employment) and double what money buys. Americans today own about twice as many cars per person, eat out more than twice as often, and commonly enjoy big screen color TVs, microwave ovens, home computers, air conditioning, etc. Materially, these are the best of times.
However ... having seen our affluence ratchet upward little by little over four decades, are we now happier?
We are not. Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are “very happy” has declined slightly, from 35 to 30 percent. We are twice as rich and no happier. Meanwhile, the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has more than doubled, and increasingly our teens and young adults are plagued by depression.
I have called this soaring wealth and shrinking spirit “the American paradox.”
In an age of plenty, we are feeling spiritual hunger.
The good life springs less from earning one’s first million than from loving and being loved, from developing the traits that mark happy lives, from finding connection and meaningful hope in faith communities, and from experiencing “flow” in work and recreation.
Ronald Inglehart has discerned the beginnings of a subsiding of materialism and signs of a new generation maturing with increasing concern for personal relationships, the integrity of nature, and the meaning of life.
All this is good news. Those things that make for the genuinely good life—close relationships, a hope-filled faith, positive traits, engaging activity—are enduringly sustainable.
Fulfilling a new vision of an American dream need not romanticize poverty or destroy our market economy. But it will require our seasoning prosperity with purpose, capital with compassion, and enterprise with equity. Such a transformation in consciousness has happened before; today’s thinking about race, gender, and the environment are radically changed from a half century ago. And it could happen again.
Hope College social psychologist David Myers is author of The Pursuit of Happiness (Avon) and The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty (Yale). excerpts sourced from:

"Plentitude" by Juliet Schor (Author and Boston College sociology professor Juliet Schor finds links between immersion in consumer culture and depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and conflicts with parents. )
"American Mania"(When More is Not Enough) by Peter C. Whybrow
"Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic" by John de Graaf, David Wann & Thomas H. Naylor
"Natural Capitalism" by Amory Lovins & Paul Hawkins
contentment comes from within
We can't shop our way out of our problems, but surely we can make better choices.
"If we all begin to shop green and demand environmentally friendly products and services, the companies of the world will keep delivering them at more and more affordable prices."
Just imagine ... all around the world, everyone of us can become mindless shoppers ... regardless of race, creed, or country of origin!!!
"First graders get an average of 70 new toys a year, or roughly one every five days, according to the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood."
"Rising levels of childhood obesity track an explosion of junk food ads in recent years."
"The astounding material success of the human endeavor hasn't brought happiness, wisdom or enlightenment; instead there's a profound disturbance in our collective psyche."
Richard Bruce Anderson "Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind"
Enduring & loving values
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/ "The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the Stuff in your life forever."