It's really important that all of Us pass this little video on.
I just have to make an Upgrade for my cell phone. Actually, me and my husband. We need to go for the smart phones. I just got my cell phone 1 year ago. Now I don't know where to dispose it. Crazy world. Really good and helpfull video.
During her year of buying almost nothing new, Amber Westfall permitted herself some secondhand purchases, including her teapot and cosy-wrapped mug.Photograph by: Christopher Pike, The Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa CitizenIt's not that she's a collector of teapots or that it was a priceless antique find. The reason for Westfall's enthusiasm was that the discovery came four months after she had sworn not to buy anything new for a whole year-- nothing new, except for necessities, with some used items allowed.
Since she couldn't just walk into a regular store and buy the teapot and cast-iron frying pan she needed, she'd been combing second-hand stores for the items. Finding them was a discovery chronicled on her blog.
"They became meaningful in a way that you don't get when you just rush out to IKEA," Westfall, 32, explains almost eight months later.
Her "Buy Nothing New Year" ends tomorrow, and she says one of the unexpected consequences of the experiment to curb consumption, which she dubbed "unstuffing," was, well, a new appreciation for stuff. "There was a newfound sense of -- I guess it sounds silly or cheesy -- gratitude for the stuff that I had."
Westfall, an office manager at Sunrise Health Centre, had already been thinking for several years about the effect the cycle of production, mass consumption and waste of goods was having on the environment. "I wanted to take myself out of that cycle," she explains.
She devised a challenge for herself, resolving to go a year without buying anything new, and to spend that time educating herself about environmental issues. She also decided to start a blog, called "Unstuffed," to record her successes and failures.
"It's been really amazing. People ask me if there's anything I miss and I can't say that there's been anything at all."
Obvious exceptions to the "buy nothing new" rule would be everyday, necessary items like food.
"At the start, I was still buying toiletries like deodorant and shampoo and soap and things like that, and toward the end of the year I replaced those things with baking soda." Now she's down to essentially laundry detergent, dish soap and bus tickets.
She would also let herself buy some second-hand things, reasoning that buying used was not part of the cycle of production and waste she was trying to avoid.
"Also, I didn't want to be super-hard on myself," Westfall says. "Some people think that being 'green' means depriving yourself, living this ascetic lifestyle -- freezing in the dark and eating root vegetables. I wanted to show you can buy less and have it be rich and satisfying."
In fact, she found the attempt to educate herself to be more difficult than the "unstuffing." As she began reading about issues such as resource depletion and energy scarcity, she found her optimism lagging.
"A lot of it was worse than I thought. Because for the first few months I read and read -- websites, articles, books -- I overwhelmed myself with information, and there was a period where things got dark."
She chronicled her doubts and hopes on her blog.
While Westfall initially doubted her web reports would be read by anyone she didn't know, she soon found herself sharing intimate details with strangers. She posted pictures, tallies of daily purchases, thoughts and feelings, even explaining how she gave up buying toilet paper (she used a combination of water, soap and reusable cloth cut from an old T-shirt instead).
"Putting myself out there has been difficult because I think of myself as a shy, reserved person ... but I'm so passionate about these things that it was more important to do it."
The blog also allowed her to connect with a community of like-minded people online, which made her feel less alone, especially because her project was sometimes met with skepticism by those she knew. "Not everyone understands what I'm doing or why."
To illustrate, Westfall tells the story about going to a potluck. As part of her attempt to inform herself about environmental issues, she had researched the agricultural industry, and as a result, decided to start buying local food.
"This means I don't buy some things anymore. On my way to the potluck, I called to see if they needed me to pick anything up, and they said limes. Well, I had to explain that I can't buy limes."
For people trying to curb the amount they buy, the consumerist extravaganza that is Christmas in North America might have posed a challenge. While some enviro-bloggers advocate giving up presents altogether, Westfall decided to do the traditional gift exchange.
"I actually started Christmas shopping in January because I knew it would take extra time to do it the unstuffed way," she says. That meant trying to shop as ethically as possible by combing through charity Christmas bazaars.
Of course, with the economy now lagging, the logic of buying less, while making sense at an individual level, doesn't exactly hold up when it comes to the wider picture.
"I hear that line all the time and part of me understands," Westfall admits. "If we're not consuming, retail takes a hit, then manufacturing ... I understand that."
But in the long run, she argues, the current economic system, and the constant growth that is expected of it, is environmentally unsound.
"It's not possible to continue with business as usual, but that's not to say that we can't have a thriving alternative economy. It's about consuming in sustainable ways to support sustainable economies."
The choices consumers make while shopping can shape the kind of economy -- and society -- we have, Westfall believes.
"When I buy non-fair trade coffee and get it to go in a disposable cup, I am voting for one kind of world. When I buy it fair-trade, from a locally owned coffee shop known for its sustainable practices, and get the coffee to go in my reusable travel mug, that's a (highly visible and very public) vote for a different kind of world."
One of the side benefits to her experiment was that she saved a lot of money, although she did not keep track.
"One of the ways it showed up was that before I started the year, I often lived paycheque to paycheque and I would have to budget. Sometimes I would have to make $40 stretch for a week before I got paid again. One of the first things I noticed was that I had so much money left in my wallet (when payday came around again).
"Also, I took out a line of credit to pay for a yoga course and I budgeted two years to pay it off, but I had it paid off in eight months. So those are the two main indicators of how much money I saved."
As her experiment comes to an end, Westfall doesn't think much will change next year. While she's not sure whether she will continue blogging, she plans to keep her "unstuffed" habits much the same.
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Amber Westfall's Unstuffed Christmas
1. Saved paper from boxes of supplements sent to the clinic where she works and used it as wrapping paper.
2. Decorated paper with cutouts from old Christmas cards.
3. Fastened gifts with used ribbon and string, not tape.
4. Purchased all gifts at church bazaars, secondhand stores or made them herself.
5. Helped her mom buy a local, organic, free-range turkey.
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