Shopping Is A National Sport

I thought I would talk about shopping today. We all like to buy new things occasionally but it does seem we've gone to extremes.

My parents have moved to rural France. When they visit us my Mum is horrified by the amount of time we all spend shopping. "Shopping is a national sport these days" she is often heard to mutter.

In rural France shops close every lunch time for 2 hours, the workers need their lunch too! Shops aren't open at all on Sundays & very often they are closed on Mondays too.

It seems we don't quite know what to do with ourselves when we have time off so we head to the shops. Every year we upgrade our mobile phones. We replace appliances that work perfectly with newer models, & we have more clothes in our wardrobes than we can possibly wear.

I wonder why we do this? It costs us money we don't need to spend. It is a huge drain on the earth's limited resources - it takes around 4,000 litres of water to make one cotton t-shirt. It also uses huge amounts of energy to make these products. The production of 1 kg of cotton clothing can release around 6.5kg carbon.

We have alternatives. I have become a charity shop junkie, almost all my clothes are from charity shops, so are my husband's & my son's. Most of our furniture is too. Not only do we save lots of money but we find amazing, original pieces. We also use freecycle & ebay. All of this means we are reusing other people's unwanted items, reducing carbon emissions & saving things from incineration or landfill.

Mostly though, we try to buy only the things we need. I don't need to upgrade my phone, CD player/ipod or any other gadget for a newer version. People always used to say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I say " if it ain't broke, don't replace it".