“We’ve got gizmos and gadgets a plenty… “

Let’s face it: We have a consumption problem.  From candles and cleaning supplies to throw blankets and kitchen gadgets, we are a culture steeped in stuff. And particularly with the holiday season approaching, advertisements for ever-more things at ever-lower prices are chasing us down the street, inundating our news feeds and e-mail inboxes, and stalking us across the world wide web to convince us to buy more and more. (And before you decide that’s dramatic, the average American sees 4,000+ advertisements per day).

“We’ve got whozits and whatzits galore… “

There’s no shortage of online resources estimating how much money the “average” individual or family spends in a given month. But money isn’t necessarily the best indication of how many physical items we actually purchase (case in point: you could buy a pair of shoes for anything from $5 to $2500, or more). And when it comes to physical possessions, there’s no reliable data to indicate just how much “stuff” we are bringing into our lives. This points to a bigger problem with data-collection about environmental issues (see Vox’s discussion of the trouble with understanding the data on fast fashion). 

Corporations and governments have little desire to convince us to operate as anything other than consumers.  Early advertisements for “Buy Nothing Day” (celebrated on Black Friday in North America and parts of Europe) were denied airtime by almost every major television network. At the time (2000), CBS issued a statement that promoting a Buy Nothing Day would be “in opposition to the current economic policy of the United States.” 

Just a year later, in the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, then-President George W. Bush addressed the American public: “We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don’t conduct business, where people don’t shop.” And in every economic crisis since– from the Great Recession of 2008 to the Covid-19 pandemic, our national response has made shopping synonymous with patriotism. In light of this pressure to shop till we drop, it makes sense that there are very few organizations willing to examine the scale of our personal ownership. 

“You want thingamabobs? I’ve got twenty!“

But, where reliable big-picture data fails, industry groups are quick to step up with a better idea of just how big our consumption problem is. For example, the Toy Association proudly estimates that 3 billion toys are sold annually in the United States alone— averaging out to 41 toys per child! And that figure doesn’t even include books, electronics, sporting equipment, or the dreaded Happy Meal toys. Similarly, market researcher Euromonitor International estimates that the average American consumer purchases 53 articles of clothing per year— so roughly one per week! 

Even without official numbers though, chances are that our homes tell the story of our excess consumption: The average American home has more televisions in it than people. Our garages and storage rooms are crammed with old textbooks, appliances, and outgrown clothing. And even within our living spaces, excess consumerism shows up in the trinkets we display because they happened to coordinate, couch cushions we trade out every few years to keep up with changing styles, and spare dishes, linens, and discarded gadgets crammed in every closet. In fact, one case study found that the average American home contains more than 300,000 things.

“But who cares! No big deal! ”

Except it is. The possessions in our lives take time, money, and emotional energy to acquire, whether we made an impulse buy or ruminated on the purchase for weeks. Once in our lives, these “things” take time and energy to maintain– to clean, store, and rearrange.

The expansion of our global consumption has caused environmental damages that have worsened the climate crisis. Our food chain and waterways are polluted by toxic forever chemicals, which we have somehow considered a small price to pay for Teflon pans and throwaway food wrappers. We have skyrocketing greenhouse gas emissions from shipping trinkets and other consumer goods halfway around the globe. Our landfills are overflowing from discarded packaging and products (in fact, up to 99% of manufactured items are discarded within 6 months of purchase!).

But we have the power to put a stop to this consumption– and we can even do it without sacrificing our quality of life.

In fact, I’ll go a step further: By making decisions that are kinder to the environment, you are also making decisions that are better for your sense of peace and for your family’s health.

By making decisions that are kinder to the environment, you are also making decisions that are better for your sense of peace and for your family’s health.

Sustain initiative

Here’s how to have a reset on our consumption:

Reduce your spending on physical items– even by 25%:

Up to 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the manufacturing and use of household goods. In other words, the key to saving our planet isn’t just taking shorter showers or switching to LED lightbulbs: It’s changing how much we buy.

It may be hard to imagine, but we actually didn’t used to buy this much “stuff”– and when we did, products were intended to last for years, if not a lifetime. In fact, the EPA examined the lifecycle of “durable goods,” which are things like appliances or kitchenware that are intended to be used for at least three years. In 2018, the average American sent more than three times the number of durable goods to landfill as they did in 1960.*

In 2018, the average American sent more than three times the number of durable goods to landfill as they did in 1960.

You could absolutely go all in on a “Nothing New” week, month, or even an entire year. But if incremental change is more your style, try reducing your consumption by 25%. If you’re like the average American, all that means is buying three clothing items instead of four in a given month. And once you start to feel the benefits of buying less, try reducing your consumption again.

The idea here isn’t deprivation or austerity. Of course, if you’re looking to meet some savings or financial goals, it may very well make sense to use the money you’ve saved to pay off debt or build an emergency fund. But if you’re comfortable with your spending level, use the money you would have spent on Target trinkets or fast fashion to treat yourself with an experience: Get a massage, go out for dinner with your friends, or plan a weekend getaway with your partner.

And if you find yourself shopping (especially online!) when you’re tired, bored, or stressed, try re-evaluating your relationship with scrolling (Here’s everything I learned about consumerism during my period of “survival-mode scrolling.”).

Embrace second-hand items

In some circles, there’s a stigma that “used” items are somehow less worthy of our hard-earned dollars. For some, it’s even a status symbol to be able to purchase an item new from the store. But by purchasing second-hand, we are reducing our environmental impact: less plastic packaging from Amazon boxes, fewer greenhouse gas emissions from the production of new goods, and fewer still-useful-and-beautiful items sent to landfill.

In practice, items often move in and out of our lives quickly. Think about the special occasion outfit your toddler wore once, the ukulele you gave up on learning, the kitchen gadget you don’t use as often as you thought you would (or, really, ever). This means that there are literally hundreds of thousands of goods that are available second-hand, many of them in like new condition. In just the last month, I’ve found everything from a J. Crew sweater to a maternity coat, a Guava Lotus travel crib, and a Lovevery toddler play kit second-hand. In making each of these purchases, I saved some serious money– and drastically reduced my environmental impact versus purchasing new.

Shift the gift-giving culture in your family or friend group

Birthdays. Easter baskets and Halloween baskets. Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa. Mother’s, Father’s, and Grandparent’s Day. Engagements, weddings, and graduations. It’s hard to go more than a few weeks without a special occasion that could be construed as an opportunity– or really, an obligation– to buy gifts.

Before you call me the Grinch, please know: I’m not anti-gift-giving. You could absolutely decide not to give gifts for certain holidays or to certain people. But there are also plenty of gifts you can give that are mindful of their environmental impact: You can gift your time by going for a hike or out to dinner. You can gift experiences, like concert tickets or museum passes. You could make a donation in a loved one’s name. Or, if you really enjoy gifting something tangible, try gifting consumables.

Certainly, there are times in one’s life where a friend or family member might benefit from physical gifts (like, for example, welcoming a new member of the family– although a baby really requires less than you might think). But in most cases, there is very little people need, and perhaps not much they even want. So perhaps it’s time to stop relying on throwaway plastic trinkets and yet another coffee mug to demonstrate our affection.

Our individual actions matter. Change your consumption habits, help change the world.

Wondering why you recognize the talk about gizmos and gadgets. a-plenty? Lyrics courtesy of The Little Mermaid‘s “Part of Your World.”

*The EPA chart specifically found that Americans as a whole were discarding 6 times the number of durable goods as they had in 1960, even though our population didn’t even double during that time– this is how, after adjusting for population change, we get to the information about Americans today discarding 3x that of the average American in 1960.