Conscious consumption
I wrote this essay in March 2022 for a dutch online spiritual magazine.
I do remember, in the late 80s, early 90s, as a young adolescent I was taught during Social Studies that we more and more were living in a disposable culture. Our teacher looked like a conscious hippy: baggy trousers, long hair and, above all, passionate about the climate.
Already then.
During one of the lessons, he thought we should think about how to throw away less stuff and reuse more. And he wasn't the only one. I think that's why, as a little Dutch girl, I never really had seen those free disposable plastic bags at the supermarket. For me, it is more than normal that now, suddenly, we have to pay extra for a plastic bag here in Spain. After all, I have been taking my own shopper into the shop for years.
Still, it took me quite some time to understand what actually is this disposable society my teacher was referring to. For years, I used materials and items only once without thinking: plastic bags, tetra packs, Styrofoam packaging. I think I even wore garments, which I had only worn once and actually let gather dust in my wardrobe, then, sorry, just threw them in the bin.
And even now.
I am ashamed of that bag full of single-use plastic I took to the bin yesterday, thinking about how I could have avoided it somehow.
My wake-up call on the subject of sustainable consumption came when I had my own place in Tilburg, Netherlands, for the first time after breaking up a long relationship. I had accidentally ended up in a small community of fairly conscious people. There was no cooking from packets and sachets but from scratch, shopping was done at the mall around the corner, at local businesses and at the market.
But the lesson of my old Social Studies really came back to me when a neighbour took me to a second-hand shop. When I stepped through the revolving door, a world opened up to me. This was the nicest shop I had ever been inside.
I let go of my neighbour and wandered through shelves full of old-fashioned crockery, rows of read books and, how cool, an entire corner full of furniture. I had never seen such a motley lot together and my heart leapt: we are going on an adventure. I wallowed in the great variety, let myself be surprised by what was on the next shelf and realised that every little thing here just had a story. The clothes racks made me the happiest. In department stores and clothing shops, I had mostly seen racks of the same thing over and over again in a different size, here it was a burst of colour, size and style. Not a single garment was the same and that pleased me. I revisited the store many times, wandering along the racks for hours looking for a new, but mostly original, outfit for my birthday.
But there was also another reason. I discovered that the garment industry is one of the most polluting industries around. I had been against fur for years, of course, but had never wondered where all those new garments came from and, once the there was a new season, where the unsold pieces went. (By the way, do you know?)
I was unaware of the production process and who was all part of it, until slowly through the mainstream the news seeped in about the Rana Plaza collapse and the heeps and heeps of unused clothes in the Atacama Desert in Chile, seen from space.
That should be different
From then on, I decided to consider more the often long production line required to get a product to my home and weigh up whether that is worth the cost. For me, for the producer, for the earth, but also for the product.
Do I want to contribute to an industry that makes sure the rivers in China are all the colours of the rainbow? Do I want thousands of litres of water used to produce my jeans? Do I want my cheap t-shirt to make someone else actually not earn enough to support their family? Not to mention the miles of transport and CO2 emissions that those products, especially for me, make.
And so I choose more consciously. I only buy new when I know I can't do anything else, and from a company I know I'm doing the right thing somehow: either it's made of recycled materials, or it's a local chain shop, or it's of such good quality that I can use it for years. For all other times, I buy second-hand. I can say that, outside of underwear, the number of garments I have bought new for the last 5 years can be counted on one, okay, maybe two, hands.
But second-hand shopping is not easy, especially if you are looking for something special. You have that blouse in your mind, so of course you want to find it. Second-hand shopping is then a challenge, because the search for that blouse takes time and therefore a lot of patience. And then there is also the question of quality: is it still in good condition and does it work? That is why I will give you a few tips, the things I use, to lower the threshold to the second-hand shop for you.
Put your prejudices to the test and just walk in. Second-hand shops are not as shabby as they used to be, even the clothes hanging there are much more modern and not just for grannies.
Make a game of it and don't take your style or fashion so seriously. The variety is huge, especially in the somewhat larger second-hand shops so let yourself be surprised by the selection. Try something new and who knows, you might end up with a whole new style of your own.
If you want to see if you really like something, do a clothes swap with girlfriends. I'm in a group here in the village, where we exchange our clothes a few times a year. For years, for example, there have been a few garments circulating that almost everyone has worn for at least a year.
Ans just now we started a free shop, where people can drop and pick up stuff, without the use of money.
But let's be honest, in a second-hand shop I can get quite the itch and actually buy more than I need. Therefore, when it comes to my wardrobe, I have two important rules that might help you too.
Think about why you are going to buy new clothes and ask yourself if you really need it. Often we buy something because we feel bad, we think we have to go with the 'fashion' or we go shopping at the mall because it's raining and the kids are bored.
Take a small wardrobe. I haven't had much room for storage in recent years and had to put a limit on what I bought. Therefore I have a rule that if I buy something, I also have to donate something and if I haven't touched a garment for a year I have to give it away.
The nice thing is that, without spending much and shopping with a much smaller footprint, I do have an updated collection of clothes in my closet every spring and autumn.
I've talked about clothes now, but I actually apply this to any other product I want to buy. Because just think, why would an avocado from Peru be cheaper than one from southern Spain? What makes something that comes from far away cost less while using more kilometres of transport? I then wonder: how are those few euros distributed over more steps in the production line and who am I actually secretly not paying?
What do you think?
With Love,
Daphne