Sunday Funnies

I love this video of a bloke who spends over £80 on beauty products which the saleswoman promised would make him feel more youthful, energised and better-looking. Two weeks later he shows "before and after" photos of himself to passers-by who all agree he looks no different. So he returns to the store and loudly demands his money back. The reactions of the staff and other shoppers are priceless.

Buy Nothing Day

Happy Buy Nothing Day 2008! According to the BND website:

It's a simple idea, which challenges consumer culture by asking us to switch off from shopping for a day. Its a global stand off from consumerism - celebrated as a holiday by some and street party for others! Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending!

As we enter the headlong rush towards Christmas, it sometimes seems like every celebration is an excuse for a huge orgy of consumption these days. So I really love the idea of a celebration specifically and solely about non-consumption. I will be observing BND 2008 by working on my home-made Christmas presents and spending time at home with my family. We might paint some Warhammer fantasy miniatures together. We might play some multi-player Wii games. If the weather is nice we might head to the park. I'll probably send some Buy Nothing Day e-cards (they're free, natch).

What are you going to do for Buy Nothing Day 2008?

Sunday Funnies

Buy Nothing Day 2008 is coming soon. If you're not sure what BND is all about or whether you want to participate, watch this short animation by Friends of the Earth

Cartoon strip by Throbgoblins. Click the panel to read the whole strip.

One Week to Buy Nothing Day

In one week's time it will be Buy Nothing Day again. It's a day where you challenge yourself to switch off from shopping and tune into life.

The rules are simple, for 24 hours you will detox from consumerism and live without shopping. Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending!

It's time to plan what you are going to do for Buy Nothing Day 2008. Check out the BND website for an event to join, such as the Food For Free Freeconomy Feast in Bristol, the Big Green Giveaway in Birmingham, or the Go Green Fair in Southampton. Or you could organise your own event in your local town, there are hints and tips on the Toolkit page at the BND website. Or you could spend some time with people you like doing something fun that doesn't involve buying stuff. How radical is that?

What are you going to do? Leave a comment and let me know.

Un-Shopping

My sister Lindsey and I went through my wardrobe and yanked out everything that doesn't fit me any more, everything too ratty to wear any more, and other things that needed de-cluttering. We also discovered some things I haven't worn for ages, and things I had forgotten I owned, and Lindsey suggested different ways of combining items into outfits I hadn't thought of before. Then she took some things from the "give to charity" pile that she wanted for herself. It was a lot of fun.

The next day she brought me some things from her own wardrobe that she didn't wear any more and thought would suit me, or would go with outfits I already had. And we hit the local charity shops and found some great bargains. We bought a few items new, too, from a shopping list we devised of "must-haves" (e.g. that brown skirt you have is fabulous but you really need a couple of matching tops and a brown belt to go with it).

So now I have a totally new wardrobe of outfits to wear, but with a minimal budget. And Lindsey and I had a great time together doing sisterly girly stuff, dressing up and trying different looks out. I get the point of retail therapy. I understand why people like to go to the shopping mall for a day as a leisure activity to cheer themselves up. I understand the pleasure of coming home with an armful of trophies from your day of 21st century hunting-and-gathering. But my green instincts rebel at the wastefulness of shopping for the sake of shopping, and treating clothes as if they were disposable. So it's nice to find ways of getting the same retail rush with a clean eco-conscience.

Yesterday's News

Steph and I went to my favourite art and craft supplies shop, Fred Aldous in Manchester. And one of the things we bought was a set of coloured pencils made from recycled Chinese newspapers. The newspapers are so tightly wrapped around the coloured lead that it feels like a normal wooden pencil, and can be sharpened with a regular pencil sharpener. But you can read the text on the outside of the pencil (if you can read Chinese). The packaging seems to be made of Chinese newspapers too. Very groovy.

You can also buy them online for £2.99 from Giftmonger.com

Farmer's Market

My sister Stephanie is visiting and we went to a Farmer's Market together last Sunday. We bought some bread, some cheese, some pate, a sticky toffee pudding, some bacon, black pudding and sausages, some mutton pies, a chicken and some chocolate with crystallised orange. I always quiz the vendors about what the ingredients are and where they are sourced. I am looking for local produce hand-made with love and passion, and I walk away if I don't get satisfactory answers.

For example we talked to a bloke who made cheeses. He had samples of cheese we could taste, but Stephanie was blown away by the fact that he kept encouraging us to try another, and another. She was more used to the attitude "You can have a taste if you have to, but if you're not going to buy anything, get lost". This cheese guy wasn't desperate for us to buy anything, but he was excited about his cheese and keen to show it off. And rightly so - he made exceptionally beautiful cheese and we bought several different ones from him.

Over the last few days as we have eaten our way through our purchases we have talked about the difference between the food we bought at the farmer's market and food you buy at supermarkets. It really drives home how utterly dire supermarket food is. Even Tesco's so-called "Finest" range. Even "This isn't just food, this is Marks and Spencer's overpriced over-hyped food". It's all nasty in comparison to the real deal. The black pudding from the farmer's market was better by a long way than any black pudding I have ever eaten before. The sausages were divine. The sticky toffee pudding was much better than anything you can buy (but about the same as making it yourself). The mutton pies were beyond compare. We haven't had a duff item yet.

The downside is that farmers' markets are more expensive than supermarkets. And there is a lot in the news at the moment about soaring food prices here in the UK, which may harm farmer's markets as more people search for cheap food rather than quality food. But food is not yet really expensive. In fact food is still really really cheap and has been for decades. In a country where many poor people are overweight, you can see that food must be very cheap.

What is the role of farmer's markets? Are they just a luxury for the middle-classes? If you are really on the breadline, you won't be able to afford farmer's market prices. But I think many people on modest incomes could probably afford to buy great quality meat and cheese from the farmer's market by eating less meat and cooking more from scratch rather than eating ready meals. Of course some families already cook everything from scratch - Bean Sprouts readers probably do this more than most. I know that many Bean Sprouts readers already eat vegetarian at least once a week, which is a great strategy for reducing your food bills and allowing you to buy better quality meat because you are buying less of it. Why not visit your local farmer's market and compare the prices there with your usual supplier. Buy something there and compare the quality with your usual purchasers. Then you can make your own mind up whether it's worth it to your household to buy some things at the farmer's market instead. I've already made my mind up with regards to my household, and I think Stephanie has made her mind up too.

Farmer's Market

Eleanor and I went to the Farmer's Market in Poynton today. We hadn't planned to go, we just dropped in on our way back from church, so I went without my proper camera (these fuzzy pictures were taken with my mobile phone) and more importantly, without my purse.

It was a great farmer's market with so many stalls that they could not all fit in the Civic Centre, so some of them were outside in the car park. The stalls were very varied. For example there were fresh fish, meat, sausages, pate, olives, honey, hand-made soap, sticky toffee puddings and more. Most importantly, they all seemed to be bona-fide small producers and they were all friendly and keen to answer my impertinent questions. They were also very generous with tasting samples and I came home quite full without even buying anything.

It's held on the first Sunday of every month from 9am - 1pm, at Poynton Civic Hall. I'll be marking the August date in my calendar and I'll remember to take my purse with me next time.

Mark Bennion of Ipstones Park Farm kindly allowed me to reproduce this recipe:

Ipstones Park Farm Meatballs in a Red Wine Sauce

Add 6 tablespoons red wine and 4-5 tablespoons double cream to a bowl together with 5 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs and leave to soak for approx 30 minutes. Heat 1oz unsalted butter in a frying pan and add a finely chopped onion. Fry until soft and golden. Once done, remove the onions from the pan and leave to cool.

In a bowl, mix the cooled onion and soaked breadcrumbs with a free range egg, 1lb Ipstones Farm minced beef, fresh herbs of your choice, and a pinch of salt and pepper. With wet hands for the mixture into meatballs. Heat 1oz butter in a frying pan and fry the meatballs until they are a dark golden colour on all sides. Once done remove them from the pan and keep them warm.

To make the red wine sauce, stir 1oz flour into the fat of the meatball frying pan and brown for a few seconds. Then stir in 9 fl. oz beef stock and 9 fl. oz red wine. Whisk lightly to combine then add 9 fl. oz fresh cream and let the sauce cook through for approx 10 minutes. Season accordingly. Add the meatballs and simmer gently for approx 45 minutes or until the sauce has thickened and the meatballs are cooked and tender.

Prepare fresh pasta and salad. Serve the dish with a sprinkling of fresh herbs and grated cheese of your choice.

You can buy Ipstones Park farm minced beef and other top quality meat from Mark Bennion at:
Ipstones Park Farm
Park Lane
Ipstones
Near Leek
Staffordshire

Telephone: 01538 266 049
Mobile: 07840 076 276 or 07808 086 234

Save the Planet - Stop Shopping

I received a nice email from a reader who said:

I get frustrated with advice that amounts to don't drive/buy a hybrid car/convert to solar power/wrap yourself in sack cloth and live in a cave.

It bugs me too that so much green advice seems to boil down to "spend a lot of money, buy all this 'green' stuff". 'Green' is not a lifestyle choice. It's not a sort of fashion that is only available to the rich. The greenest people on earth are the poorest. They don't cause as much pollution, carbon emissions etc as we do because they can't afford to. It's we in the affluent countries who are causing the problems. And the solution isn't to buy a lot of green junk, but to buy less junk.

"Save the planet - buy less junk" is a great message because it's cheap - cheaper than your present lifestyle. It's easy and achievable as long as you take it in babysteps. If you get rid of your car, your tumble drier and you try to only eat food you've grown yourself, all starting on the same day, you'll soon get overwhelmed and give it up. But if you make just one change, take time to get used to it, and then make another one, you should find it's all pretty effortless. That's the thinking behind the monthly Bean Sprouts challenges.

The only real problem with this message is that you have to break the addiction of retail therapy. We're constantly bombarded with adverts telling us we'll be happy, attractive, popular if we only buy their product. A lot of the ads are based on clever and subtle psychology and they work. It's very difficult to break the spell (one way is to avoid advertising, get rid of the TV and don't buy any magazines or newspapers, but even then you'll see ads on billboards, on the Internet, inside shops, and on people's clothes - that's what logos are after all). It's easy to end up feeling deprived and miserable because you can't buy all the things you're told you "need". But of course they don't deliver what they promise. The products don't really make you happier, more attractive, more popular etc. So people keep shopping in the search for happiness.

I think that's the main obstacle in the way of a green revolution - consumerism. The green movement can't afford an advertising budget to counteract the degree of brainwashing we've all been subjected to for years. And the adverts steal and subvert green messages into their own consumerist domain anyway. That's why now so many adverts tell you "Buy our green car, buy our green clothes, our green detergent, our green gizmo". How do you persuade people to stop buying stuff? I dunno. Bean Sprouts is just my little drop in the ocean showing that a non-consumerist lifestyle is possible, and isn't about wrapping yourself in sackcloth and living in a cave.

Waitrose 1 - Poynton 0

Not long ago the Poynton Against Tesco campaign celebrated a victory over Tesco when their planning application was rejected by the council.

But now a very similar proposal by Waitrose has been accepted, perhaps due to less vigorous opposition by residents. We know that Tesco are appealing the original decision, and now that the Waitrose development is going ahead perhaps they will be more successful next time. After all if there is to be one large supermarket in Poynton, why not two?

I think if campaigning is to continue it needs to shift its focus. I was never very happy about being anti-Tesco in the first place because I don't naturally like being anti-anything. I'd much rather be pro-something. So now I'm going to be pro-local shops. I won't say "I'll never set foot inside Waitrose or Tesco", if they do get built. But I'm going to go all out to give Poynton's local shops as much support as I can.

What's New in the Sustainable Blogosphere?

For the last two weeks I have been too busy to keep up with my emails and blogging, and now I'm catching up. Here's a few of the things that landed in my mailbox that I thought worth sharing with Bean Sprouts readers.

Earth Day

First of all, this coming Tuesday is Earth Day. Earth Day has been going since 1969, but the time is right for it to really take off. I'd love to see it become bigger than Christmas (which is a religious feast for Christians like me but tends to be just an excuse for an orgy of over-consumption and wastefulness for, well, for Christians like me and everyone else as well). Earth Day is for everyone who lives on Earth. You'd have to be living in a cave not to notice Christmas when it comes around. Earth Day should be the same. Every time you buy a calendar or a diary it should have Earth Day marked on it already. So do something. Spread the word. Send an e-card. Give gifts of LE light bulbs and organic wine. Invite friends around for a meal of local food, obviously. Blog about it. Spread the word.

Swaptree.com Donates to the Sierra Club

In honor of Earth Day this Tuesday, Swaptree.com, the website where you can trade the books, DVDs, CDs, and video games you have, for the ones you want, for free, will be donating $1 dollar for every trade made on Earth Day to The Sierra Club. Swaptree is like Ebay but cash-less. British readers of a certain age will remember Noel Edmonds' Multicoloured Swap Shop which used to be on TV on Saturday mornings. Young viewers would send requests to swap a Bay City Rollers scarf for an Action Man with eagle eyes and so on. Swaptree is much swankier - you type in the bar code of the book, CD, DVD or video game you have and the clever Swaptree software figures out 2-way, 3-way and even 4-way swaps that mean everyone gets the things they want. You don't pay Swaptree for the privilege. It doesn't cost you anything apart from postage, and Swaptree can calculate the shipping cost and print out a mailing label so you don't even have to go to the post office. You give and receive feedback so you can feel confident you won't be ripped off. There's a video tour so you can see how easy it is. But sadly it is only available in the United States at present. As soon as it comes to the UK I'll be the first to sign up.

Penguin Classics Partners with The Nature Conservancy

Staying with the topic of books, I have some news about one of my favourite publishing imprints, Penguin Classics. On April 1st, 2008, Penguin Classics began their support of The Nature Conservancy's ambitious reforestation plan to plant and restore one billion trees in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.

In bookstores everywhere, bookmarks (printed on recycled paper) featuring three of Penguin's favorite environmental classics, Rachel Carson's Under the Sea Wind, John Muir's The Mountains of California and Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature and Selected Essays, will encourage readers to visit The Nature Conservancy's website, donate a dollar and help plant a billion trees.

There's more information about this partnership here.

Downshifting Week

International Downshifting Week starts today. Yippee! Thanks to Rebecca from Sallygardens for the reminder. Last year it was just National Downshifting Week, so it's growing fast. Visit the website for ideas of how to take part, including:

• Book a half-day off work to spend entirely with someone you love, no DIY allowed


• Cook a meal from scratch, using locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, preferably organic


• Cut up a credit card

I'll have a think about what I'm going to do this year, and I'll let you know later in the week. Please leave a comment and tell me what you'll be doing for IDW.

Take Back the Filter

The indomitable Beth Terry from FakePlasticFish has started a new campaign to urge Clorox (the company that owns Brita in North America) to take responsibility for the millions of plastic Brita water filter cartridges that are disposed of each year. It's called Take Back The Filter and has its own homepage. Here in the UK we can recycle our Brita cartridges. The FAQ page of the Brita UK website says:

All components of the Brita cartridge are recyclable. Cartridges returned to Brita will be returned to our own recycling plant in Germany where the component parts are separated and processed for secondary use. For information on BRITA In-store recycling contact the BRITACare team on 0844 740 4800

And the recyclenow.com Top Tips at Home webpage says:

In line with growing consumer demand for greener living, BRITA has launched a new in store recycling scheme. Recycling bins are now situated in a range of high street stores such as Robert Dyas, Argos and Cargo. Other major retailer collection points will be following soon.

The BRITA branded bins will be located next to the existing water filter category in store. Customers can recycle any BRITA consumer product filter cartridge, including those for the new BRITA water filter taps.

So once again this is more relevant to US readers than to our home grown readers. But the Internet is an international medium and I'm glad to support Beth's campaign.

This Bill's Got No Balls

Here's one specifically for UK readers, though. 'This Bill's Got No Balls' - the new short film from I Count - follows three hilarious scenarios where the protagonist, Bill, confronts three eyewatering situations - on the football pitch, in the office and on the street - that clearly demonstrate that he's lacking a sensitive part of his anatomy. Click here to watch the film.

Viewers are encouraged to visit the I Count website, from where they can put pressure on their local MPs to vote for a Climate Change Bill with balls when the new law is voted on in the summer. The film can also be viewed on myspace and facebook so please feel free to forward it to your friends.

Mathew Horne - of BBC3's 'Gavin and Stacey' who provided the voice over for the film - said:

The Climate Change Bill needs balls if we're ever going to tackle climate change. I will be putting the squeeze on my MP to make sure we have a tough bill. You should too.

The Broke Vacationer

Sally Thompson of TravelHacker has written an article called The Broke Vacationer: 100 Ways to Get Free Stuff When Traveling. I like some of the frugal tips in this article, although I don't really want to encourage people to fly all over the world on their holidays. Have a look at the article and decide for yourself which of the tips fit your own ethical values and which you might prefer to pass.

Home Gardening Tips

Bill Stanley, author of Home Gardening Tips, got in touch to ask if he could add Bean Sprouts to his blogroll. Bill has been a home gardener for over 20 years and enjoys sharing his gardening tips with friends and family as well as the rest of the world. As well as tips on plants and gardening, Bill has recently added articles about saving the environment whilst gardening, buying flowers online and those slimy little buggers, snails. Just for the record, I'm always delighted when anyone adds Bean Sprouts to their blogroll, or links to Bean Sprouts in a blog article. You don't need to ask permission, but if you do I'll check your blog out and maybe write about it, just like this! So email me and say hi.

We Dig for Victory

Rob Burns has built a mini campaign site called We Dig for Victory. He has created a little sticker and his website says:

By using this sticker on my blog or site I'm digging for victory by...
1. Growing some of my food at home or at an allotment - however modest.
2. Eating locally and seasonally where I can and reducing food miles.
3. Buying from small, local shops where I can and supporting my local economy.

There's a bit more about the campaign on the page titled About This Site. Why not add the sticker to your own blog or website and spread the word?

Thats it, I'm all caught up with my emails now. I only wish the same were true of my laundry .

Tefal Quick Cup

I'm not normally a huge fan of eco gadgets. If anyone asked me "What should I buy to save the planet?" my answer would be "Less. Just buy less."

But my sister, Lindsey, turned up at my house this afternoon with her new green purchase - a Tefal Quick Cup. It's a sort of space age kettle that pumps the water out of a reservoir and heats it up as you need it - like a combi boiler for your hot drinks. If you just want a single cup of coffee you can have it in a few seconds rather than the few minutes it takes to boil an electric kettle.

Lindsey bought it because her husband, Andrew, has an incurable habit of boiling an entire kettle for a single cup of tea. Lindsey has tried everything to cure him of this, and the Quick Cup is her latest approach. This is it's main selling point - it's an eco kettle because you only heat the water you use. About 1/4 of your household electricity usage is for heating water, and filling up the kettle to make a single cup of tea is a terrible eco-crime.

Tefal claims that the Quick Cup uses up to 65% less energy than a standard kettle, and that this is about £30 per year for a typical household. The gadget costs around £60, so the payback time is around 2 years if Tefal's figures are correct. It can also operate as a water filter using Claris cartridges, but if you don't care about filtering your water, or if you object to the waste of disposable plastic cartridges, you can just do without these - they're optional.

There are some drawbacks to the Quick Cup. It make a really unpleasant buzzing noise (it's probably the pump) when in operation. Of course, it's only in operation for a few seconds so that's not the end of the world. It is quite quick for a single cup, but if you had to make drinks for five or six people I'd prefer to switch on a kettle and then busy myself with putting the tea bags and sugars in the cups and so on whilst it comes to the boil, rather than have to stand pressing a button all that time. And I think the noise would really be driving me mad after five or six cups.

Another problem is that the Quick Cup doesn't actually boil the water. That's one way it saves energy I suppose. But a lot of commenters on HippyShopper's review complained that their tea didn't taste right because the water wasn't hot enough, although most of them thought it made coffee well enough. The tea tastes OK to me, although I like my tea on the weak side so perhaps that's the reason. I took the temperature of a fresh cupful of water from the Quick Cup and it was about 75°, compared to about 85° for a cup freshly poured from a kettle. Why wasn't it 100° fresh from the kettle? I guess it cools down a lot when poured into a cold cup. Because water comes out cooler from the Quick Cup you can drink it faster. You might find that a bonus. On the other hand, it goes cold sooner too. So I can see that some people might love it and some might hate it, depending on their individual preferences and habits.

Finally, the Quick Cup draws energy when on standby. Most electric kettles don't draw any energy when they're not actually boiling, so I wonder if the energy savings of the Quick Cup are wiped out by the standby costs? Lindsey says she'll switch hers off at the mains when it's not in use. That's a good plan, but why not just build it so when it's off, it's off?

Lindsey likes her tea much weaker even than I drink it, so she' ll probably be happy with her new purchase if she can get used to the noise. And if it cures Andrew of his eco-crime then it's a good choice for them. But I won't be rushing out to buy one myself.

Grocery Store Wars

Our Sunday funny this week is Grocery Store Wars - a 5-minute video about buying organic, based on Star Wars. It's right up my street. Hope you enjoy it, too.

But if you don't - why not? If you'd prefer a video that's not as funny but actually contains some persuasive information and arguments about how our shopping choices affect the environment, try The Story of Stuff. Alternatively, if you'd prefer really funny videos about Star Wars set in a supermarket without the irritating environmental message, try Chad Vader.

Cartoon from Climate Cartoons. Click on the panel to read the whole strip.

New Wiggly Wigglers Catalogue

Wiggly Wigglers have a new catalogue out, and it's a bit unusual. I came across WW years ago and still think of them as "The people who sell bird seed and ladybird houses and whatnot" - but goodness how they've grown. You can still get your nest boxes and composters from them, but now you can also get seeds, tools, books, clothes, eco-cleaning products, trees, sprouters, preserving supplies and all sorts of other things. Their new catalogue is over 200 pages long, and it's like the biggest funkiest garden centre you could ever wish for.

But this new catalogue is also more than that. Heather Gorringe is an astute user of new media: the Wiggly Wigglers website, podcast, blog, Facebook group, and Heather's personal blog (subtitled "One womans journey around the World - with the aim to shake up farming using Web 2.0 and Social Media") are all testaments to that. The new catalogue blends contributions from bloggers, customers and celebrities such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in a scrap-book style. When it plopped through my door this morning I stood in the hallway to flick through it, but eventually had to go and make myself a cup of tea and get more comfy. It's not a catalogue you "flick through". It's so full of articles, features and columns it's more like a magazine. It's actually a good read.

I think what excites me most about the new Wiggly Wigglers catalogue is the beekeeping and poultry-keeping equipment. Having to track down suppliers for those sorts of things can be daunting, I know. To make them available in a catalogue such as WW which has a much broader appeal must sow a seed in lots of people's minds that they could do those things too. I think I might have taken the plunge into chicken and beekeeping much sooner if they had been presented as just normal gardening activities, alongside feeding birds and composting scraps.

What I just wrote isn't strictly true. What excites me most about the new Wiggly Wigglers catalogue is the short piece Heather asked me to write for it about growing your own salad, which is printed on page 57. I don't expect you be particularly excited about that, but I bet you'll be excited about the rest of the catalogue.

Poynton 1 - Tesco 0

Today the Macclesfield Borough Council have unanimously rejected Tesco’s application for a supermarket in Poynton during their planning meeting.

That means Tesco have three options: give up the idea of building a store in Poynton, second, appeal within the six months, or lastly, submit a new or modified scheme.



From Poynton Against Tesco website.

The bad news is Waitrose have also applied to build a supermarket in Poynton. This is receiving more of a mixed reception from Poynton residents who seem to like the idea of upmarket Waitrose more than the low-brow appeal of Tesco. But all the reasons I objected to Tesco - the risk to local traders, the influx of extra traffic, the loss of local jobs and the siphoning of money out of the village - also apply to Waitrose or any other chain supermarket. So I'll be objecting to Waitrose too.

Recycle A Book

Friends of the Earth has started selling 2nd hand environmental books in its new Bargain Basement. Starting at just £1.99, there's all sorts, from wildlife and recycling, to organics and kids' books.

You can give your used books a new lease of life by donating them for Friends of the Earth to sell in the Bargain Basement using the Freepost address:

Friends of the Earth Shop
FREEPOST
56-58 Alma St
Luton
LU1 2YZ

It sounds great - cheap books about environmental topics, a way to declutter your shelves, the chance to spread environmental ideas to new people, and support the work of Friends of the Earth, all in one place. Brilliant.

The Story of Stuff

I just watched a 20-minute online video called The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. It's part-animated (by the same people who created The Meatrix) and presented by Annie Leonard (an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues). The video describes the journey of the stuff we buy, from the extraction of materials to the incineration of garbage. But it puts the people in the picture all the way through, asking "How are people affected by this process?" Not only the people in the developing world whose natural resources the affluent West is pillaging, but also we Westerners. Does this process make us happier or are we enslaved by it as well?

And finally, it presents alternatives to the work/watch TV/shop treadmill, which allow us to have more fun as well be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. It's a great example of the new wave of environmental activism. It's positive, not gloomy. It's entertaining, but fact-based. It makes smart use of the Internet and viral marketing (no-one asked me to write this piece, I just liked the video so much I wanted to share it with you).

I tried to watch it last week but when I realised it was 20 minutes long I just didn't have the time right then. So I saved it to my favourites folder, and one leisurely Sunday morning I got myself a cup of coffee and settled down to watch it. I recommend you do the same. Save the link and watch it when you've got 20 minutes to kill. It's just as entertaining as "I'm Strictly a Celebrity's Big Brother, Joseph" but far more worthwhile.

Go to: The Story of Stuff

(Cartoon below by Climate Cartoons. Click on the panel to view the whole strip.)

Flogging A Dead Horse

In days of yore, sailors were paid in advance for their first month at sea. Most of them had usually spent all of it (or rather, drunk all of it) before they came aboard. So for their first month they were working to earn money they had already spent, and thus were not terribly motivated. Trying to get them to do anything was like flogging a dead horse, i.e. pointless. At the end of the month the sailors would make an effigy of a dead horse, beat it, then dump it overboard. This is (one version of) the origin of the phrase "flogging a dead horse".

Earlier this month I challenged you to calculate your hourly take-home pay. If you know this number, you can convert any purchase into "work-hours". So you can see that the beautiful wool coat you really want costs 30 work-hours, or the lunch at Starbucks that takes twenty minutes to eat will cost you a whole hour at work.

But what if your money is spent before you even earn it? Do your mortgage repayments, loans and credit card repayments eat up your entire paycheck? Maybe this isn't a year-round situation, but you over-extend yourself every Christmas, planning to pay it back in January. Then like the seamen, you spend the first month of every year flogging a dead horse.

It's none of my business. Maybe you like it that way. If you have thought about it and decided that a few days of mid-winter revelry are worth a January of belt-tightening, then that's your informed decision, and that's fine. But perhaps a few people reading this are thinking "No, I don't really enjoy it that much. It's just stressful and expensive. But I feel obliged."

I've sat staring at this post for a long time. I've deleted big parts of it, and then retyped some of it over again. I'm worried it sounds preachy. But honestly, I don't want to tell people how to spend their money. My main point is that no-one should tell you how to spend your money. But that's exactly what adverts do - and lots of people fall into the trap. It's not because they're stupid, it's because the ads are clever. They use sophisticated psychological techniques to make you feel that you won't be happy unless you buy their products. You won't be popular. You won't be attractive. You won't be a good parent. That's strong stuff. And they've bombarded you since your earliest years. They bombard you from all directions. And they bombard your family and friends so that if you try to break free, the people you love will accuse you of those same things they've seen in the ads. It's no joke. It's social engineering on a scale Chairman Mao could only dream of. And it works.

The point I'm trying to make is that you should decide for yourself what Christmas means to you, and you should decide for yourself how you spend your money. You can have a happy and stressless Christmas without spending lots of money. I swear it's true. Wake up. Think on. Opt out.

Christmas Quiz

Here's a quick quiz about last Christmas:
1. What did your partner give you?
2. What did you give your partner?
3. What did your parents give you?
4. What did you give them?
5. What did you give your kids?
6. How much did you spend?

I'm not really interested in the answers, I'm interested in whether you found the questions easy or hard. In a recent BBC news story:

...more than half of men have forgotten what their partner got them last year. And women were also forgetful of their gifts, with 43.2% unable to recall what they received from their partners.

Here are a few more questions:
7. What's the best Christmas gift you ever received as a child?
8. What's the best Christmas gift you ever received as an adult?
9. What's the most memorable Christmas gift you've ever given?

I bet those questions were easier to answer. Think about your answers. Can they help you choose better gifts for your loved ones this year?

Here's the last question in the quiz:
10. What do you really want this Christmas? What gift would make this the best Christmas ever?

Does anyone in your family know you want this? Maybe it's something quite inexpensive and simple but if no-one knows about it you're unlikely to find it in your stocking. Maybe it's inexpensive but would be time-consuming to organise. You need to let the person who loves you most know about it well in advance. Maybe it's expensive - but if everyone who usually gives you a gift clubbed together perhaps they could afford it between them, instead of giving you lots of CDs and chocolate that you don't really want. One year everyone gave Ed money instead of gifts on his birthday (which is at the end of November) and at Christmas. It wasn't enough for the 6" astronomical telescope he wanted, but with some money he had saved himself he was able to buy what he really wanted. Now he wouldn't swap his telescope for all the novelty socks and tins of shortbread in the world.

Why You Should Know Your Hourly Pay

I set a challenge yesterday asking you to calculate your hourly pay, after tax and other non-avoidable outgoings. What does that have to do with being green? It's all about consumerism and avoiding over-consumption. There's a letter in The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn that illustrates what I mean:

...I went into the boys' rooms and made lists of last year's gifts (those that were still around), writing down the cost of each and estimating the time each had been played with. Some (jigsaw puzzles and board games) proved to have been good buys. Unfortunately, in other cases, my estimates showed that my husband had worked more hours to pay for a toy than my children had played with it!

I love my kids to little bits. I love to give them gifts and make them happy. And I hate it when I have to tell them "No, I can't play with you/read to you/talk to you right now. I have to work" (I work from home). So it makes no sense to spend all those hours working to buy them gifts which give less pleasure than if I worked less and spent more time just being with them. I'm sure Ed feels the same.

There's another quote I'd like to share with you from an article I found via this week's Festival of Frugality. The author of the quote is describing his feelings about finally buying his dream car, a Mercedes convertible:

The good feeling doesn’t last. We get used to having the Mercedes.
It’s spectacular. It’s better than sex the first week.
It’s better than a meal at a great restaurant the second week.
It’s pretty damn good the third week.
And after that it’s just your car.

(from A Penny Closer)

If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about, if you find that your purchases give you enormous and lasting satisfaction, then I'm happy for you. But if what I've written strikes a chord then remember your hourly pay, and ask yourself before buying something - just how much pleasure is this going to give me? Is it really worth ten hours at work (or whatever)? Or could I spend this money better?