What did you not buy today?

I’ve realized recently that I pretty much have everything I need for the rest of my life, more or less. Both for backpacking and for the remainder of my working life, if I can retire when planned. Even household things, I don’t want anything. For backpacking I’ll have to replace shoes, rain jackets, socks and underwear. That’s probably it! I expect my big three – pack, tent, sleeping bag – to last the rest of my life. It would be a “good problem” if I wore them out enough to have to replace them rather than simply repair them! I still wear a pair of lightweight Patagonia long underwear from the mid 1990s. I wear them frequently. They may outlast me.

However, I also realized recently that I do have a shopping problem, when REI recently invited me to become a product advisor. Free undies! Obviously I spend too much of my paycheck there! But nothing ever goes to waste. Any used gear I no longer need I find a home for, and usually the recipient is quite grateful. I gave one old sleeping mat to a young man who needed one, another to a lady who was moving and would have to camp for a while before finding a place to live. A tent to a teenager. A camp stove to another backpacker. A pair of skis I sold cheap on a gear swap. Etc. Most gear is pretty sturdy, so it doesn’t end up in the landfill too soon but passes from person to person.

What am I not buying? Pretty much everything else. I just don’t need anything. I agree with the above poster who said social media can create this need for more. My hiking pants are baggy, not slim fit, not cute hiking tights like women wear nowadays. My hiking shirts have wear and tear. Everything doesn’t match. It shows my age. But getting sucked in to outdoor “fashion” means dedicating more paychecks to trendiness, and I want to dedicate it to retirement, asap. So I try not to buy.

My kids (early 20s) get everything used – through thrifting, Facebook marketplace, etc. Clothes, furniture, kitchen implements, everything. No reason to buy anything new, pretty much ever. My older son has found so much Patagonia in thrift stores! $30 for a really nice fleece pullover, $20 for a PG baselayer. Perfect stuff, sometimes even with tags.

And of course where I live we have not only dumpsters and recycle bins, but “re-use areas.” These are covered platforms where you put things you no longer need, but which aren’t yet trash. Others come and sort through and take home whatever they need. We have gotten slippers, bikes, chest of drawers, deck chairs, and more. We’ve left a beat up old stove (which was helped off our truck by the next owner), more furniture, clothing, pillows and blankets, and bikes. It’s a great system and should be emulated everywhere. Keep every possible thing out of the dump/landfill so that people who need can have them. Why throw things away?

I have to agree with rubmybelly that the lions share of damage is coming from big industry. They promote small ways each of us can change to take the attention away from them.  This is briefly described in the book Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe which I would highly recommend,

That said, it makes sense for use to do whatever we can. One big thing for me is minimizing spend on car. We had a single car for 3-4 adults who could drive and keeping cars (and repairing them) rather than replacing. This worked because my commute for the last 40 years (except for 3 that I took the train) was biking, jogging, or walking. While far from perfect, I have tried to embrace a simple lifestyle.  Once I found something I was happy with, avoiding the temptation to upgrade. One of the most effective tools for me has been a shopping diet.  I defer all purchases until the next diet break. I have found a cooling off period has stopped me from purchasing many things I was tempted to buy.

A few musings, after reading everyone’s postings and thinking on them…

If anyone wants to see exactly how much waste they are generating, I suggest the following activity: find a discarded five-gallon (23L) bucket and turn it into a trash can…and then see how long it takes you to fill it up.  Use no other waste receptacles.  Recycle if you like, compost if you wish, but live your life as you normally do and put all of your trash into that one container.  You will likely be surprised at the results, and you will begin to understand why “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is ordered as it is: it’s a system of priority.

If you would like to see how many of your possessions are actually useful to you, look around your house/apartment/condo/townhome/van/yurt/caravan/shack and make a list of everything that you’ve used in the past month.  Next, make a list of everything that isn’t on the first list.  Compare lists and reflect upon your life choices.  Correct as necessary.

I wish I could claim this third little tidbit, but I can’t: it was given me by a friend that was much wiser than I will be.  “If you would like to understand the faults in a society, begin by investigating your own involvement and participation in those faults…and don’t assume that you aren’t part of the problem.”

The first two were fun activities when I did them; the third, not so much…but it’s the most helpful, whenever I go through it.

No illusions here that buying/not buying a new tent or backpack is going to have next to zero effect on “Saving the Earth”. It has more to do with constantly wanting, which is not a race I want to run or win. I’ve got enough wisdom at this point in my life to understand that once the basics have been covered (and there is nothing wrong with having them covered well with quality goods), new gear and upgrades have almost no effect on the quality and quantity of my outdoor experiences.

Of course, it’s the whole economic system we rely on/live under (which Craig has mentioned before) combined with an excessive population which ensures, IMO, that trying to solve one problem creates others. What if we convinced everyone in the US to truly live simply and stop all wasteful spending? That certainly reduces our individual excesses, but leads to lots of businesses going out of business and lots of people without jobs. A whole lot of people’s livelihoods depend on a consumerist society. Drastically less individual environmental footprint, it seems to me, would lead to much more homelessness, etc. No easy answers. But perhaps I’m overstating what would happen, I’ve been known to do that.

I recently read “The Day the world stops shopping.” I don’t know whether anything the author claims is true or not; I looked at it as more of an idea. We may have gotten a small hint of what could happen at the beginning of the pandemic. But now, people are buying more than ever, even despite lags in the supply chain.

Americans are not used to doing without. People where i live are constantly complaining of empty store shelves, when to my eye there is plenty of food. They just don’t want the stuff that’s there. They don’t want to have to adapt. Blueberries in January? Eggplant? I had to explain to my kids that when I was a child, the produce aisle was only an aisle, and was pretty empty all winter long. That was normal! And we survived. It’s not normal any more.

I wish I could get up the energy to commute by bike all year; some do here. This morning it is minus 22F and even getting out of bed is effort. Getting on a bike would mean buying so much more gear and clothing… and then putting it all on, in the right order. Just getting dressed for an ordinary day requires layers. Combined with ungroomed trails, deep snow, icy roads without shoulders, and hungry, ornery moose, it’s not gonna happen.

Are fewer people commuting though? And working from home? I was in San Francisco last August for a medical procedure, and was amazed at the lack of traffic. It was easy driving, in and out of the city and up Hwy 101. Easy! I hope that’s still the case, but I suspect not. We could all commute less, work less, have less, and do more.

Like fellow Alaskan Karen, I like the re-use areas at our garbage drop-off spots.  Stuff too good to throw away but that you now longer need you can just leave to the side and it’s often picked up by someone else before you drive away.

I agree with Monte that your choice of vehicle and house effect your energy/resource consumption vastly more than buying a lighter set of trekking poles or cuben tarp.  Living in a McMansion while carefully rinsing out tin cans and placing them in the recycling bin does not mean you’re living lightly on the planet.  It’s one of many empty feel-good activities like driving a long ways to pick up 4 apples and a lamb chop grown locally instead of going to the closest grocery store where things are delivered efficiently in 40,000-pound truckloads.

@Karen, I drove into San Francisco the past two days for music work (first time in a long while), and was surprised at how little traffic there was.  But my more usual commute going down towards San Jose from the East Bay the past several months, I’ve experienced worse traffic than before, pretty much all times of day.

I like the shopping diet idea.  I’ve noticed that if I sit on my overwhelming urges for a new toy for several days, they generally go away unless it it’s something I actually have a need for.  Well, need being a relative term, of course, since other than groceries, shoes, and underwear (maybe a new car someday) I’m probably okay for the rest of my days living off what I have.

Economy of scale…thank you for mentioning this David.

On the re-use side on things (backpacking and otherwise) freecycle.org is pretty effective. There was a great podcast (which I can’t find now, Hidden Brain, Freakanomics, Adam Grant, something like that) which looked at the dynamics which makes it effective.  In my neighborhood there is a common practice of putting things out in front of the house that is no longer needed.  There is also a mini food bank (modeled after the little free library) where people share consumables, Most things find a new home in a day or so.  Sometimes it’s inexpensive things like extra cables, but sometimes there are fairly valuable things: newish backpacks, yeti cooler, etc.

“where people share consumables”

I’ve passed around commercial-sized containers of baking powderalum, activated carbon and such among friends – top off your own small container and then pass it on.  Some items are SO much cheaper in bulk.

Then there’s the informal tool-lending library.  When my 1/2″ impact wrench isn’t on my tool rack, I know fishing-buddy Tony is changing over to winter tires.  I have lots of nice chainsaws to lend while I can borrow whatever gun I need (a tool one uses for only a few days per year!)  I aspire to be the guy you most want to bring on a fishing trip (because I cut bait, fillet fish, bring lunch and buy all the fuel) so there’s not a boat (nor pickup truck) parked in my driveway.  Several of you have used my informal Turo fleet of Toyotas and avoided $500/week summer rental car rates in Alaska.

Collectively, that’s $10,000s of money not spent, stuff never manufactured, metals not mined, plastics not made, and fuels unburned.

Maybe it’s a small town thing, but you leave the door unlocked while you’re off in Hawaii in case the neighbor needs a cup of sugar.  And there have been years when people knew I’d been skunked fishing and the Salmon Fairy would deliver 8-10 frozen vac-packed sockeye to the chest freezer in my (unlocked) garage.  And since I have 13 acres of spruce but no wood stove, sometimes a load of cordwood shows up in your driveway.

Our local freecycle site is very efficient, and I’ve used it a number of times to re-home things. Unfortunately I’m often suspicious that I’m dealing with hoarders.  :-|

Maybe it’s a small town thing, but you leave the door unlocked while you’re off in Hawaii in case the neighbor needs a cup of sugar.  And there have been years when people knew I’d been skunked fishing and the Salmon Fairy would deliver 8-10 frozen vac-packed sockeye to the chest freezer in my (unlocked) garage.  And since I have 13 acres of spruce but no wood stove, sometimes a load of cordwood shows up in your driveway.

Yep, that’s a small-town thing of a sort…but it’s more of a reality-check/tribal thing, in my view.  When people both know and see need amongst those that mutually support each other, stronger communal bonds form.  I live in a small town, and I can’t leave the door unlocked without concern for theft…but amongst people that I trust: they know where the keys are, and they know to call if they have to borrow a vehicle or equipment or something else.  That’s as close as we can get, here.

And now that you’ve mentioned it: my life could really use a Salmon Fairy.

“my life could really use a Salmon Fairy.”

I was walking out of the commissary yesterday and back toward my car when a couple, standing at the back of a pickup truck, yelled ‘free salmon for veterans!’ I walked over and got two nice big salmon fillets. They didn’t smell much at all, which I assume (but don’t know) meant they were pretty fresh. Lots of salmon fairies wandering around.

Ah… it wasn’t a podcast, was the Adam Grant book Give and Take which looks at freecycle’s origin story and examine why it continues to be effective.  Also touches on why you don’t need to worry too much about hoarders or others who are taking advantage of the community.

I agree that leaving door unlock is a small town thing… or in some cases a safe neighborhood thing: we left our doors unlocked for almost 30 years (started locking a couple of years ago) without incident while living in the heart of Silicon Valley.  As Bonzo noted, there is the small scale sharing of people knowing where your key is, or in our case the electronic door code. I love dave’s example of a large staple being shared eliminated the need for wasteful individual package.

I’ve got an order in for a new hybrid Maverick, but I’m also pretty happy with my absolutely beat up 2004 Toyota Matrix. And this thread is really encouraging me to just keep the paid for beat up Matrix. Tough calculus for me but a vehicle is one of those things that makes a difference to my impact.

Decisions…

I feel you on that one.  Our vehicles are paid for and running; they’re old, not very fuel-efficient and not ideal for our polar bear of a dog, but it’s hard to think about getting something else while these still work…and it’s hard to keep them when we know that we could get something more efficient.  15mpg starts to hurt in more than one way, after a while…but so does $40K and new production.

Also, I wish that we were in a place where we could do a communal freezer; we take hundreds of pounds of venison from our property every year, but if we left that supply out for people to use as needed, it would be gone overnight and likely sold for profit.  Thus, it gets shared out amongst those that help to gather it…and that’s okay.

The original matrix gets great mileage and is fun and easy to work on. But also, bigger, safer, truck bed. But 4000 lbs of refined materials I do not actually need before we even talk about the money.

It may or may not be more thread drift – but there’s already plenty here anyway… I did buy something new, not for backpacking. A new coffee maker, with plenty of glass and of course electronics. It came with almost NO plastic packaging or shipping material. There was life before clamshell plastic! There can be life after it too. I think when we do buy new stuff, we should be pushing manufacturers to use recyclable shipping materials, especially outfits like REI who should do better. There’s just no good reason to use stuff that has to go to the landfill, just to be used once in shipping one thing. Yes, the things themselves will often contain plastics and for reasons that make the item more useful. But the packaging could be recyclable.

…especially outfits like REI who should do better.

There are many, many, many reasons that I don’t buy from them…but you just hit one of the big ones.  There’s a lot of greenwashing going on, there.