In Other Words
The Up Side of Down
Employment rates. Retail sales. Spending. It’s all going down, down, down. It’s enough to precipitate a recession depression.
After all your investment portfolio’s been through these last few months, it’s enough to make you look to the skies and mutter, as my mother often did, “Good Lord, what did I do to deserve this?”
The first time I heard her speak these words, she was frantically unpegging laundry from the clothesline while an April drencher snapped the diapers around her ears. As she stuffed clothespins into her mouth and flung baby clothes over her shoulders, my brother and sister and I stopped toddling and sat in the mud to spectate. I thought it lovely but odd that she was so thankful in the face of adversity.
Metaphorically, we’re in a similar situation now. Thanks to a few sunny earning years, we happily hung our money out in some RRSPs, or a house or the stock market. All we had to do, we thought, was wait for the laundry to dry as it were, then reel it in and enjoy it. Instead, we got rained on (or hosed, some might say). What did we do to deserve this?
Well, we do know what we did to deserve this, don’t we? We’ve been scolded quit roundly about how our quest for material gain is at the root of all evils.
Fortunately, there is an up side to this downturn, and much of the benefit will accrue to the environment.
My mother may have cursed her luck that day, but in general her life was good, and simple. We didn’t have a lot of “stuff.” Hey, we didn’t even have running water! But we had electricity and a car, and a chicken coop. We weren’t living ‘off the grid’ so much as hanging on to the edges. Our environmental footprint was small in comparison with the shoe size my family of five has today.
Back in the day, our family had one car, one income. Today, like most of use who live in the north, our two-income household has two cars that we use a lot; distances and scheduling mean public transit is often not an option. With so much time spent behind the wheel, anything we can do to cut fuel costs is welcome. In response to higher fuel prices we bought a fuel-efficient car. It gets better mileage and fewer emissions than the one it replaced, but now, the trick is to use even less gas— so Tanya Davidson’s tips on hypermiling in this issue will come in very handy.
When we were kids, hand-me-downs were a fact of life. The seasonal trip to the thrift store was a highlight when we were little, but as a teen it was mortifying. I would buy second-hand clothes for my kids, but I’ve found that used kids’ clothes are usually very, very well used. Thankfully, my boys and their dad are the least fashion-friendly folk you could find, and when they find something they like they wear it forever out of self-defense (although they are right to fear a fashion-intervention). My daughter is likewise severely fussy so her clothing bill is also minimal. As for me, I love a bargain and nothing makes me happier than finding a previously loved Armani jacket for less than ten bucks. It frees up money for other expenses I can’t avoid like pencils and tuition. Participating in the community clothing exchange is as easy as dropping by the local thrift shops.
Composting is easy, too. It just requires a change in habits: put peelings in this can instead of that one. Then either stir ’til it’s done and dig it into the garden, or bring it to the local landfill and let them do it for you.
Plastic, tin, glass and cardboard are unfortunately not easy to recycle here in the north, due in part to the high costs of transportation and low prices for the materials.
We live in the north because we have acres and acres of nothing but nothing (‘nothing’ being ‘everything,’ of course). Let’s keep it that way by reducing our garbage and diverting as much reusable material from the landfill as possible. In addition to composting, this means buying and using local products, choosing minimal packaging, and nixing plastic bags.
With few exceptions, we could all stop buying things new and just reduce, reuse and recycle. In environmental terms, the world would be a better place. But how are we going to feel when we finally break down and decide to treat ourselves to a double decaf latté and the coffee shop just isn’t there any more? Or when we want to splurge on the beautiful dress for our niece’s wedding and the clothing shop is an empty storefront?
Merchants can’t afford to stock their shelves and wait for us to have a spending moment. If our recession depression keeps our hands in our pockets and stops us from spending on new goods entirely, the goods and services we take for granted will be gone.
Unless we miraculously adopt an ideological model to replace consumerism, the trick is to find a balance between spending wisely and saving wisely. Until then, at least the environment’s getting a bit of a breather. And don’t our kids deserve that?
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