I have a deep seated fear of things running out. Felt tip pens have an inbuilt horror for me. I am disturbed by the onset of ageing tips, squeaky with dryness, even when they are still fresh and new. As a child I even stopped using certain pens in an attempt to preserve their life and avoid their consignment to the rubbish bin.
These days I like to justify my frugality on the basis of avoiding the embedded carbon involved in the manufacture, transport and disposal of any consumer item. But the truth is more complicated than that. At University I did not know terms like ‘embedded carbon’ and my paucity of material possessions had much more to do with genuine financial hardship, a generous mean streak and a haughty middle class disapproval of having too much.
The sad fact is that these days I have many more possessions that I used to. When I got married we had over four hundred pounds worth of spanking new, wedding list items delivered to our door by John Lewis in sturdy cardboard boxes. When we last moved not everything would fit into the van that we had hired for the occasion. I’ve gone from having no kettle to having had three in the last three years. Sometimes I wonder, and worry, about what my own personal landfill site would look like.
Some people are very good at taking care of their things, keeping them neat, clean and in good repair. My sister is one of those people. Nowadays my sister’s house is full of relics from our childhood that are still part of her life. Her children colour with crayons that we ourselves were given as children. Plastic picnic tubs from the 80s are used for leftovers or as plant stands. Even the decorated pins on the pin board have not changed for over twenty years. I have duplicates of many of these items, because of course as sisters we were given many of the same things. But my things have been lost, broken or have somehow aged much faster than hers. I hope the same will not be true of me.
So many of the older rationing generation are better with their things than I am. My Auntie melts left over bits of soap to make one big new soap. Washing yoghurt pots and reusing bits of paper is second nature to people of my parents’ generation. But whilst the babyboomers might have more respect for things they also seem to have more desire for them. My parent-in-law’s favourite shop is Lidl where they can buy handy household gadgets at knock down prices. But this dual ability for preservation and acquisition means that their house is full to bursting point with trinkets and consumer goods.
How can we become a more frugal nation? I have great hopes for the generational backlash effect. As the babyboomers have become bargain hunters against a backdrop of wartime austerity, might the younger generation shun overconsumption just to be different from their parents and grandparents? It hasn’t happened yet so my imagination falls back on nanny-statism. A tax on rubbish and a monthly waste collection? I would almost relish the inevitable outcry like a haughty schoolmarm who knows she has the moral high ground. What about ‘bring out yer dead days’ –a modern take on rag and bone men already in operation in some parts of the country. I’d like to see good second hand stalls at tips and roving electrical consultants in charity shops to mend and make safe donated items. Street ownership log posters which enable neighbours to source and borrow household items such as lawn-mowers, tools and other equipment could also reduce consumption. But none of these things would reduce landfill by as much as we need.
One suggestions is that once shipping containers have arrived in this country and been relieved of their contents they should be returned full of waste to countries such as China for sorting and recycling. Whilst this seems the moral equivalent of allowing your dog to poo in a neighbour’s garden, it might actually improve people’s lives by giving them jobs and valuable raw materials. International economic trends will have the greatest effect on our landfill sites. Worthy, environmental campaigns will be made irrelevant by the current recession as a whole generation of people, perhaps for the first time, pause at the supermarket shelf to wonder if they really need it. And as I solemnly replace the lids of my two year olds abandoned felt tip pens, my heart softly sings at the possibility that my austere habits may finally be in touch with the times.
