It is interesting how a goal of saving money and trying to limit my consumption for one year is getting me to think more about sustainability and environment.
Over the weekend, I helped my mom wash a department store-bought bicycle she got new a couple of years ago. We were washing the mud off the tires and getting the rust off the metal parts so that we could re-sell the bike online. The bike was very inexpensive and, now that it was used, we couldn’t expect to get more than 50 bucks for it.
The washing took some time and effort and my mom thought that it would have been easier to leave the bike outside for others to take for free. But I said that perhaps the point was precisely that it took some effort to dispose of the item in a thoughtful way. By washing the bicycle, pumping its tires with air, and photographing it for an online posting, we were giving it the respect it deserved. I also thought that if I made the disposing of an item difficult for me, I would be more thoughtful about how much new stuff I let into my life.
There are books and blogs about decluttering that encourage that you purge yourself of your unneeded possessions all at once. You get rid of the stuff you don’t enjoy to create room for things that matter. I know just how great purging like that feels: a kind of spring cleaning that creates more space and opens you up to new possibilities.
However, my worry is that the new possibilities more often than not translate into getting more stuff back in the space we have created. Over time, the clutter reappears, but luckily, we know how to deal with it. Garbage bags are out and we spend a whole weekend sorting and dumping so that we can feel light and open again. The cycle continues.
But what if getting rid of stuff was more difficult? If we approach the disposing of items in a more thoughtful way, perhaps we would be more reluctant letting unnecessary things into our lives in the first place. For example, it is easy to buy another polyester top from H&M when you think that because it is so cheap, it would be easy to throw it away when you no longer like it.
Disposing of the top in a more thoughtful way would include considering whether you could resell it or how damaging the product would be to the environment if it is thrown away. The polyester top will probably not look good enough after some wear to be eligible for resale at a thrift store. In addition, synthetic fabrics like polyester pollute oceans with plastic microfibres and do not biodegrade in the landfill.
When I think of this, I imagine that disposing of my synthetic clothing is quite literally equivalent to throwing it all into the ocean and letting it float there forever damaging marine life. This is also true of any plastic-based items. When I imagine that all of the synthetic and plastic items that have ever been produced face this fate, I am quite disturbed.
This consideration adds a sense of responsibility I now bring with me when I shop. Do you think about what happens to the items you get once they’ve served you? Let me know in the comments below!
