What's the point?
I recently posted my 1000th image on instagram and it was a milestone that led me to reflect about this blog. Why I started it, why I continue and what I want it to become in the future. In other words, what is the point of Buy Less - Be More?
In the beginning, there was a clear point. I started this blog and the @buy_less_be_more instagram account when I committed to a year without shopping in 2018. My thinking was that talking publicly about my no shopping pledge would help me stick to it. (How embarrassing would it be to start a non-consumption blog and then start shopping again a few weeks later?!?) I also thought that blogging and microblogging about the experience of not shopping would help me to process the experience. This was all true but there were also some unexpected outcomes and side effects.
What I could not foresee, when I started Buy Less - Be More was the community of people I would meet and the number of complete strangers that would support my project. I could not have imagined the people that would want to hear about my experience of not shopping for a year. The people that would trust me to give them advice and who would believe in my ideas. The people who would invite me to speak to their events. I could never have envisaged that I would be interviewed about non-consumption for television, radio and newspapers. It became apparent that a lot of other people identified with my experiences and wanted to hear about them. So the purpose of Buy Less - Be More became to influence and inspire other people to consume less and to live more sustainably.
However, it has become clear to me that individual actions are not going to cut it when it comes to the climate emergency. We are often encouraged to think individualistically about climate solutions while the underlying, structural issues are ignored. Individuals need to consume less. Individuals need to recycle more. Individuals need to use keep cups instead of disposables. Individuals need to cycle instead of driving. And individuals need to take train holidays instead of plane holidays. Meanwhile, systemic interventions that would challenge the status quo, such as carbon taxes or subsidies to encourage train travel and discourage air travel, remain relatively uncommon. (In fact, air travel is effectively subsidised in many countries while more sustainable modes of transport are not!) If individual actions aren’t enough then what is the point of a blog that encourages people to minimise their consumption and to live more sustainably? Is Buy Less - Be More pointless?
Over the last few months, my motivation for writing blog posts and creating content has been waning. Partly because 2020 has put a lot on our plates that feels more important than preloved outfits and partly because I have been wondering if Buy Less - Be More is pointless? It is profoundly irresponsible to expect individuals to take on the burden for reversing climate change when big organisations and nations states are shirking their responsibilities. What we can realistically do, as individuals is a drop in the ocean compared to the big carbon emitters like the coal and gas industry. And, what’s more, as individuals, we often don’t have enough information or knowledge to make the best decisions. We tend to focus on the many small choices, like recycling or eating less meat, which have a small impact when compared to the less numerous, big decisions, like flying.
I understand that both systemic and individual action is necessary in flight to save the environment. It is really important that we organise to demand systemic change from our governments, local representatives and organisations. Organisations like Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion and the Global Climate Strike movement are doing a fantastic job of bringing the climate emergency to the forefront of people’s minds and influencing political decisions. And we should wholeheartedly support them (financially and physically) to help effect real change. But that doesn’t mean that our individual choices don’t matter. We do have power as consumers and the choices we make send strong signals about the kind of future we want. The individual approach cannot work alone but I don’t believe that structural changes will happen without positive individual choices either. In other words, one person eating a vegan diet doesn’t change the world but, if a lot of us make that choice, we might eventually see a shift in policy that enables rewilding of land currently used for grazing sheep and cattle, which would sequester a great deal of carbon.
Okay, so individual action is not sufficient on its own but is probably necessary in order to drive more systemic change. That leaves the question of what role I think this blog can play in changing the world. Is there still a point to Buy Less - Be More?
The world influencer is loaded with meanings that I perceive as negative and is typically associated with unnecessary over-consumption. Nevertheless, I want Buy Less - Be More to be a platform with influence. I want to share what I discover about over-consumption and the climate emergency with people who are willing and eager to understand more. I can’t change the world alone. I can’t influence you to change the world either. But I can share information. I can help others to process knowledge and to learn. I can help (in a small way) to normalise certain behaviour and to point out the absurdity of things that are currently taken for granted. I can influence people to believe that preloved things have as much value as new things, if not more. That being creative is more exciting than constantly shopping. That caring for our things and repairing them is important and worthwhile. And that spending time with the people we love is more important than spending money on them. That’s the point of it, for me. To try to normalise more sustainable choices.
Influencing people in this way might only lead to small individual actions against climate change (drops in the ocean) but those drops might create some ripples. And those ripples might eventually cause a wave. A tsunami of action that washes away the current resistance to systemic change. After all, the Corona pandemic has shown us that huge changes are possible when a threat is perceived as serious enough. And the changes needed to reverse climate change are not nearly as demanding as lockdown in a pandemic!
Photo by Jackson Hendry on Unsplash
