A little bit green

At the time as Radio 4's Thinking Allowed featured a book by Emily Cockayne ("Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go"), I was finishing reading an article in Clean Slate magazine by Judith Thornton. Ms Cockayne is a professor of early modern history. While the period covered by her latest book was as noted for conspicuous consumption by the well-off as is today, she details many examples from the 19th century of cast-off materials being recycled, from paper and sail-cloth to buttons and cherry-stones.

Judith Thornton's article is online here and is well worth reading in full. She sums up:

The difficulty with the environmental impact of ‘stuff’ is that it is made up of so many individual items that it is difficult to know where to start when trying to reduce its impact in our own lives. It is also the case that most of it is beyond our control; we are not in control of whether or not another country producing manufactured goods is decarbonising its energy system, for example. But in terms of what we definitely can do, the most important thing is to calculate your carbon footprint to determine whether or not ‘stuff’ is a significant part of your impacts. If it is, then you can congratulate yourself; you are in a minority. In terms of what next:

1. Buy as little as possible.
2. Avoid owning where you can – share instead
3. Prolong the life of goods wherever possible – repair and reuse things, or pass them on to other people with those skills
4. Do not buy ‘eco’ products when you didn’t need a product in the first place  
5. Buy second hand.  

I am certainly loth to buy anything apart from food and drink. I have several working personal computers which are perfectly adequate if only I could prevent software bloat (Microsoft are chief culprits) and excessive graphics downloads. It looks as if I shall soon have to upgrade when there is no good reason to. The planned obsolescence of 1960s motor and white goods manufacturers has been adopted by the computer industry. I own neither the house that I live in nor my own personal transport. However, I do regret not switching from gas to electricity for cooking and heating when I could have afforded to. I did not realise then how quickly renewable power would be viable or how efficient induction hobs would become.

And I am not eating fast enough into the mountain of stuff - mainly paper - which I have accumulated over the years.

Finally, a word of approval for those people who use social media to advertise furniture surplus to requirements which others can use.