The Cretan Bull

Shopping is one of the trickiest and most complicated areas to look at when we try to to reduce carbon emissions. Over the past 70 years we have come to believe that ‘we are what we buy’ and virtually the whole world aspires to a consumer lifestyle. Shopping’s apparent ability to make us feel good has even caused it to become known as ‘retail therapy’.

There are schemes to bring in carbon labelling to help consumers reduce carbon emissions through choice but the complexity in calculating how much carbon is emitted in the making and selling of an individual item means that widespread use will be slow.

The purpose of the book is not to moralise about whether shopping is right or wrong. There is no singular formula to determine what life’s pleasures are, nor should there be one. The relationship between shopping and the rest of one’s life is a complex one. The money which we use to facilitate our civilisation only has value when it is moving, and buying things is the easiest way to make it move (of course, the real complications have emerged in the past few years after people were very much encouraged to buy things with money they did not have, but that is another story)

If you want to minimise your impact with the things you buy, buy second-hand, favour services over things, buy stuff that is made as locally as possible and support ethical trade whether it is FairTrade, Rainforest Alliance or even just your local Coop.