Posts tagged “consumerism”

The Power of Less – from Good Energy

Posted on December 18, 2020

The Power or Less – a video from Good Energy I’ve been a customer of Good Energy for about 5 years now and I have to say they appear to be a good, responsible, renewable energy company. I don’t have any affiliation with them at all, and I’m receiving nothing from them for writing this article (they have no idea I’m writing it). When I saw that they had recently released this short, one-minute video, “The Power of Less”, and that its message was so closely aligned with the sentiment of “Use 10 Percent Less“, I just had to post the video here. It’s only one minute long – please take a look.

Tagged: consumerism, environment, overconsumption, renewable energy, solar, sustainability

Fairphone – a better phone option?

Posted on October 11, 2020

A couple of years ago, I read an article about Fairphone in an edition of “The Big Issue” and I was fascinated. The first thing that caught my notice was that when Fairphone’s founder, Bas van Abel, first wanted to create a fair mobile phone, one of the first things he needed to do was pay a bribe in Africa to access a mine. I’d heard that the mines in Africa can be run in terrible ways for the local people (who are basically desperate for any money they can get) and this was, and still is, a major concern for me. Just because it’s in Africa and out of my sight, doesn’t mean I can just put this out of my mind and…

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Categories: Less Pollution, Less Waste, Recycling

Tagged: consumerism, sustainability

Extinction of convenience

Posted on May 14, 2020

The human race today, even in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, is addicted to convenience. It’s this addiction that is bringing us down and, with all likelihood, be the main cause of our extinction. Due to our desire for extreme convenience, we use the resources of the world with gay abandon and create enormous amounts of pollution everywhere. In response to this, the world’s environment has been changing rapidly in recent decades, as if the world is preparing for the extinction of convenience, which includes us. Our only hope is to create an “extinction of convenience” of our own, and eliminate our insatiable desire for endless convenience. During the current coronavirus pandemic, I see a persistent desire to get back to the…

Tagged: air travel, consumerism, economy, packaging, planes, plastic, sustainability

They need us more than we need them

Posted on April 13, 2020

I was surprised a few days ago to find a quote that was advocating one of the Use 10 Percent Less themes, namely “all things must change when the consumer does“. When I found the following quote in the April/May 2020 edition of the “Resurgence & Ecologist” magazine and saw “they need us more than we need them“, I was very interested. “The corporate world will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I…

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Categories: Societal Change

Tagged: Arundhati Roy, consumerism, economy, sustainability

Just don’t waste – Sir David Attenborough

Posted on January 29, 2020

The amazing Sir David Attenborough gave us the very simple message of “Just don’t waste!” a couple of months ago at the BBC launch of the series “Seven Worlds, One Planet”. Here is what he said. …the best motto to think about is not waste things. Don’t waste electricity, don’t waste paper, don’t waste food. Live the way you want to live but just don’t waste. Look after the natural world, and the animals in it, and the plants in it too. This is their planet as well as ours. Don’t waste them. It’s such a beautiful summary of the sentiment behind the Use 10 Percent Less initiative. Modern life is very wasteful and we have been getting more and more wasteful, and more…

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Categories: Less Waste

Tagged: consumerism, environment, sustainability

Our choices can release CO2 – choose wisely

Posted on October 30, 2019

Did you know that the apparently simple choices that we make every day can be leading to increased CO2 emissions? In simple terms, our choices can release CO2. It’s not all about the “big bad fossil fuel companies” as really the whole system relies on our choices, and it’s easy to see this is true. A new smartphone When we desire that new smartphone, especially when our current phone is still working, we’re actually releasing CO2. It takes a lot of energy (not to mention raw, natural ingredients) to create a smartphone and over half of the world’s energy is currently coming from oil and gas. So we release CO2 when we get that new smartphone. And don’t forget that using a mobile requires…

Tagged: air travel, CO2, consumerism