Buy Consciously

Just think of the horror any decent person would feel if we were hiking together in the woods and I dropped the plastic wrapper from an energy bar I was eating on the path behind me. The reaction would be quite different if I finished eating an apple and tossed the core. Rather than horror my companion might even react with a smile, knowing that I was contributing a useful output to the forest through which we were hiking.

Without exception, everything we consume will one day become waste. If you eat a pizza, you will eventually poop it out. If you buy a TV, one day it will break and almost certainly end up in a landfill. Your clothing will tear or go out of fashion; even you and I will one day die, and our bodies will become waste.

But not all waste is created equal. The pizza, our bodies, and that apple core I might have tossed in the woods—all will become a useful output: organic waste, which is an input that little organisms and other grubs will happily eat. Perhaps the best way to go when we die is to be composted—turned back into food for deserving organisms—rather than burned or buried. If we do, our bodies will become beautiful plants much faster than they would if we slowly mummified in coffins deep underground. It also hedges against our becoming a zombie and eating our friends’ brains for supper.

The TV and the clothing (if made from synthetic material like nylon), however, will become useless outputs. The TV, especially if it’s a tube TV, will turn into a toxic mess that will poison everything near it. The clothing, while less toxic than a TV, will photodegrade into smaller and smaller poisonous molecules. Simply put, anything that is made from synthetic or complex materials will result in useless outputs. As such, when you buy stuff, first consider what will happen to it when it inevitably turns to waste—and choose products that become useful outputs.

Making this sort of lifestyle change is easier than it may seem. You can start by buying stuff with minimal packaging, or no packaging at all, and trying to avoid products made from synthetic materials. When buying a chair, buy a wooden one instead of a metal one with foam stuffing and nylon covering. When buying food, choose fresh fruits and vegetables (without using those plastic bags) instead of packaged ones. You may find yourself getting healthier and creating fewer useless outputs at the same time.