Compacting

Hi, Hilary here (again, Bruce will finally get round to posting something soon). I was pleased this week to discover from a friend that there's a name for what I'm doing in trying to buy nothing but essentials new. Apparently it's called 'compacting', and there are a whole lot of people out there doing it. The compact has two princples:

• don't buy new products of any kind
• do borrow, barter or buy used.

You can read an article about it in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Another friend put me on to 'no impact man', a guy in New York who is doing something similar but rather more extreme (he's even given up loo paper!). Even 'no impact man' has to eat, so he and his family are buying food, but little else. The compactors allow anything you need for health and safety reasons. I'm not sure where petrol fits into all this - it's something we don't have a choice about, living 12km from the nearest bus stop. Anyway, it's good to see that lots of other people are thinking along similar lines to us in trying to reduce their impact on the planet, and I look forward to finding time to read the websites of the compactors and 'no impact man'.

Comments

[Olivia]

If 'no impact man' wished to be even more 'extreme' he could eat only products discarded by supermarkets and the like. The ethics of 'dumpster diving' (or shopping at 'D-Mart') are explored by Peter Singer and Jim Mason in their book, "The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter". Given your detailed analysis of your food choices, I'm sure you've already read this.