Tag: Sustainable book club

Sustainable Book Club is a great initiative from Zoe Morrison of Eco Thrifty Living, where environmentally-minded people can come together on Twitter and Facebook to chat over our chosen reading material. My suggestion was This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein (non-Amazon shopping link – no affiliation). I chose this book because rarely have I experienced a non-fiction book that brought me so close to tears, that made me so angry, and so inspired me into action.

Lots of us take personal action on a daily basis against environmental destruction by consuming less, making better and more local food choices, rejecting excess packaging, reusing, mending and so on. All great things, but this book isn’t really about that. Instead, this book starts at the very top of society, looking at the destruction and selling off of our environment by governments and corporations. It calls for a complete overhaul of how countries and businesses conduct themselves, treat their citizens and looks at reinventing the entire global capitalist society. It is quite simply, huge. Continue reading “Sustainable Book Club: This Changes Everything” →

I recently joined Sustainable Book Club, run by Zoe Morrison of one of my favourite blogs, EcoThriftyLiving. We have just read and discussed Stuffocation by James Wallman.

Stuffocation is about the idea that materialism and our materialist culture is bad for our health and wellbeing, our society and the environment and suggests that the way forward is ‘experientialism’ – a way of living and creating a social order based on what we do, not what we have.

I loved parts of the book, but others I found frustrating in equal measure. The chapter ‘The Original Mad Men and the job of Creating Desire’ was a fascinating interpretation of history looking at the decision of advertisers and manufacturers moving towards trying to guide people into a lifestyle of wanting more, rather than making the decision to manufacture less. I found myself imagining a life where we had moved to a society with less stuff and more leisure time, and felt really rather sad at where we have ended up instead!

Some of the other parts of the book grated on me a little. Continue reading “Sustainable Book Club: Stuffocation” →