How Little Impact Can We Have On Our Environment in 2011?

Happy New Year to you.  I hope your year has got off to a good start, although with all the coughs and colds around at the moment, perhaps, like me, you are not feeling 100%.  I had a cold the weekend before Christmas and I still have a bit of a cough and continue to be lacking in energy, although too much food and later than usual nights may have something to do with that.

So it may not be ideal timing, but I've decided to try the No Impact Man one week experiment as a way of focussing on sustainable living at the beginning of the year, and the experiment starts today.

Sunday, the first day is about looking at everything we consume and, for this week at least, only buying what we really need, such as food.  After Christmas, that shouldn't be too difficult, we probably don't even need much food this week.

However, it does raise the more serious issue of how we as individuals have become defined to some extent by what we own and that most of us consume far more than we really need.

I'm not a fan of second hand and charity shops myself, but I think it is always a good idea to consider if we really need an item and then to buy the best quality that we can afford if it is something we want to last.  If we don't want it to last, do we really need it? 

Buying things that are made as locally as possible helps us to make our purchases more sustainable and if we want to live in a better, fairer world, with less poverty, then paying a fair price, that gives the end producer a living wage will help to make that happen.

I'll let you know at the end of the week how I get on.  If you want to join me, I'd be interested to hear how you get on, too.