Reading time ~ 5 minutes
Until recently, our minimalism journey has been focused primarily on releasing stuff we no longer need or want. My focus shifted a little last month though after noting how many people commented on a particular topic on a professional organizer’s forum I subscribe to. The topic was Ethical Consumption. Unfortunately most of my organizing colleague’s comments related to the back end of consumption, which I’ll call ethical disposal. This encompasses recycling, reusing, donating, properly disposing of things like e-waste , etc. While ethical disposal is important, it’s my belief ethical consumption deserves more discussion than it received in that forum and more recognition than it seems to be getting overall. Google “ethical disposal” and you’ll get about 73,000,000 results. Googling “ethical consumption” however yields only around 285,000 results. If you make a practice of consuming ethically though it could result in you having a lot less to dispose of later.
How you ask?
Well to start, ethical consumption encourages you to shop with your values in mind. For example, if you’re buying a shirt, how important is it to you where and how it was produced? For some Americans it’s important their goods are “Made in the USA.” For others who are more aligned with the idea of a global economy, the concern might instead be that the shirt is not produced using sweatshop labor overseas. If your values aren’t honored it’s possible you’ll not purchase the shirt.
If you’ve shopped at Target in the past five years you’ve likely seen a number of goods identified as “Fair trade”products, especially coffee, chocolate and handcrafted items. Per Wikipedia, “Fair trade is an institutional arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries achieve better trading conditions. Members of the fair trade movement advocate the payment of higher prices to exporters, as well as improved social and environmental standards.” If you share these values you’ll likely choose these goods over goods not identified as Fair trade.
For those who value the environment, ethical consumption may mean purchasing only organic goods or goods made by companies who produce with sustainability in mind. For example, it’s important to me to purchase my electricity from a company which generates that electricity via wind turbines and my kale from a company that grows it organically.
Wanting to consume ethically might also encourage you to borrow or rent something instead of purchasing it. These days this could be something as normal as renting a car or as unusual as renting a dog.
Plastic has become much more difficult to recycle in many places because as you’ve likely heard China is no longer accepting American plastics for recycling . After pulling mylar balloons out of the Pacific Ocean some ten miles off the coast this past year and learning from the captain of our whale watching trip that this was a regular occurrence, I made a point of watching the documentary A Plastic Ocean (It’s available on Netflix and if you haven’t seen it I encourage you to do so!) Raising my level of awareness around the problems plastic is causing means I’m paying a lot more attention to product packaging. I’ve used cloth shopping bags and produce bags for years, but I’m now finding myself changing buying habits to favor products packaged in paper or cardboard. This recently translated into changing the brand of eggs I buy and reconsidering the brand of pasta I’ve bought for years.
Also on my radar screen for the past year or so is what I see as the unethical consumption of food by American consumers. Given that up to 40 percent of the food in the United States is never eaten it’s more important to me than ever to not over-purchase food and contribute to this insane statistic. If you want to learn more about what you can do as a consumer I urge you to check out SaveTheFood.com.
Whatever your values dictate, ethical consumption encourages you to pay more attention before you buy. It encourages you to ask yourself important questions, which in turn allow you to make more mindful purchases.
Overshopping guru, April Lane Benson, PhD encourages individuals working to overcome a compulsive shopping habit to pause before making a purchase and ask themselves six awareness building questions. She highlights these questions in her wonderfully helpful book To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop:
1) Why am I here?
2) How do I feel?
3) Do I need this?
4) What if I wait?
5) How will I pay for it?
6) Where will I put it?
These questions are a good start for someone wanting to become a more mindful consumer. In addition, I suggest someone wanting to practice Ethical Consumption might also ask the following:
7) Could I borrow or rent this item and forgo purchasing it?
8) Where and how was this item produced?
9) Was this item produced using means I consider to be ethical?
10) Is this something I’ll use regularly or will it likely be a “one hit wonder”?
11) How is this item packaged and how will I ethically dispose of the packaging?
12) What will become of this product when I am no longer using it? Can it be recycled? Can it be reused by someone else? What is my plan for ethically disposing of it?
This list is by no means exhaustive, but I know asking these kind of questions as of late has made a big difference in my world. I’m confident that asking these and other questions that connect with your values will likely result in you becoming a more mindful ethical consumer. This is turn will likely have a positive impact on your wallet, on your home and on our planet, which in my opinion is the most important impact of them all.