Thursday 7 February 2008

Enough is enough (or is it?)

What a week. Talk about dilemmas and quandries!

There I was considering my next step of The Rubbish Diet. I'd already pondered upon the problems in our household where we often buy and cook too much food, when really what I needed to do was buy enough and cook just enough.

While ruminating upon this, I followed a link from Tracey Smith's blog at the Sustained Magazine and came across a great new book by John Naish, called Enough, Breaking free from the world of more. Now this looked interesting and right up my street, so I tootled off to Waterstone's to get my copy (perhaps I should have got it from the Library, but this is one book that I am keen to pass around).

The book is interesting because it discusses how humankind has developed a sense of always striving for more, whether that be information, food, stuff, career progression or happiness and it addresses the effects of this on personal ecologies and the planet's ecology. Through this, John Naish advocates that what we need now is to develop the art of enoughness.

Having read most of the book, I agree with much of what Naish is promoting and being one who regularly suffers from Information Overload (purely voluntarily) and having in the past accumulated too much stuff, I know that I need to make some major inroads in these areas.

The problem is that before starting The Rubbish Diet I thought I had enough. However, since starting the project, I have had to put my own sense of enoughness on hold, as I continue to make progress towards my goal of Zero Waste.

Yes...this week, I have sadly been busy buying more...but even though the quandries are making my head spin, I hope to justify my actions because I hope that the following will actually really help me in my quest to slim my bin.




1. First on the list is choosing to SUPERSIZE. Instead of buying my usual 1 litre bottles of fabric conditioner and washing up liquid, I've supersized them to the 5 litre containers, which will save the number of items I have to recycle, but will also save us some money!

2. Then there is the fun item of lovely scrummy reusable cupcake cases, which come in all sorts colours which will save paper cases, encrusted with cake, being thrown away.

3. I also found a stainless steel egg-shaped soap, which claims to remove strong smells such as garlic, which will hopefully save on liquid soap and the containers that come with it.

4. I followed the tip from Mel at Beansprouts about deodorants and placed an order with Lush for a deodorant that comes in the form of a cake and also bought a bar of shampoo. I really hope these work, as it will remove the need for aerosols which can't be recycled and will save yet another plastic container.

5. The big decision though has been to invest in a wormery. I've ordered this from Wiggly Wigglers and I am getting extremely excited that this will arrive today, as it will help me reduce the amount of food waste that goes into the black bin.

So, I think that as far as this project goes, I have now bought enough. I hope so as I've decided I really don't like spending much anymore.

By the way, before you go, do take a look at John Naish's enoughness site, where he and his team are promoting the Landfill Prize, where you can vote for the most pointless, frivolous and over-complicated consumer item that gets dumped onto landfill. The worst offenders will be named and shamed in the national press sometime this month.

____________________________________________________________________

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I love the Lush products - they do a great job and they seem to last forever! I also love my worm compost bins. You're doing really well!

Almost Mrs Average said...

Hi Muppet - hooray the delivery from Lush arrived today, with my toiletries packaged in compostable popcorn. Yes you can imagine my surprise. There's a lot of discussion about the eco benefits over at the Guardian's Ethical Living blog:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/2007/08/popcorn_blog.html

Thanks for visiting and for the encouragement. Have just popped over to your growing number of blogs. Love your work ;-D

Display Name said...

"3. I also found a stainless steel egg-shaped soap"

Eh? ...It's no good. I give up. How does that work then??

Heather @ Wiggly Wigglers said...

Does anyone know of any soap that doesn't contain palm oil as I am desperately trying to avoid it?

The stainless steel thingy sounds great, but presumably it's only really for hands!

Almost Mrs Average said...

Hi Headless - you're supposed to wash your hand with the stainless steel egg just like you would soap. Haven't used it yet so can't verify how well it works. How's your waste doing by the way, or are you waiting for the big week?

Hi Karen - I don't know of any off hand but have you tried the Ecover Liquid Soap? I'm not sure what's in that. Other people might have some better ideas, so guys, if you can help please drop us a line.

Christina S said...

I love those cup cake cases!

Almost Mrs Average said...

Hi Ruby - I got them from a fab local shop and can't recommend them enough. They've been great and wash very easily too.

Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin