About Sustainable Shopping 1: Why?

 I've always been fairly careful about the environmental impact of what I buy. My electricity and gas come from a 'green' supplier, I got in early with solar panels, I use Ecover cleaning products – and so on. But now I have decided to up my game. Which products can I keep on my shopping list because they are OK? Which should I strike off it?

If you have read my post about assholes you'll know that I think assholes are an ever present nuisance. That being so, I expect to find them working an angle in eco-friendly products just as much as anywhere else. In fact the term 'greenwash' has been coined to describe just that sort of behaviour.

Aside from them there are others to watch out for - the well meaning but wrong, who by the law of unintended consequences do more harm than good, and the enthusiastic exaggerators, bigging up marginal benefits as world savers.

In the field of sustainable products we should look out for all of them, as they bandy the eco-syllable about. Which is not to say I'm pessimistic about sustainable suppliers as a whole. I think they are helping us towards a better future and we should support them. Environmental damage is the result of the accumulated behaviours of a multitude of individuals. As one of those individuals I want to resign my contribution to the damage – as far as is possible at this time.

I'm obviously not equipped to mount a systematic survey of the whole retail sector – I'm just a shopper. Rather, I will write up a product as I come to it in my shopping.

We can be overwhelmed by the complexity of all the interacting issues around our purchases. So much so that we end up doing nothing for fear that we will just be doing harm in a different way. But we don't have to give up because we can't construct a complete remedy right now. There are simple things we can do straight away to make a beginning and to influence the manufacturers.

The easy, instant, thing I can do is to avoid the nonsensical items that have crept into our lives over recent decades. Like the bath soap which is now jellified and put into a throwaway plastic squirty bottle. Like the single use plastic carrier that replaced the shopping bag. Like bottled water – even in places where the tap water is better than bottled. And so on – I'm not going to attempt an exhaustive list because it would take a lot of time and would be stating the obvious.

But otherwise it's not that easy, which is why I have resolved to sort my head out about stuff and record my progress as I go.

Oh – one other thing. Sometimes sustainable products cost a bit more than the unsustainable ones. Well, the principle with cars and phones is that a product, expensive at first, gets going because of early uptakers, people who have enough money to afford it at that price. I'm not rich. But I am old and no longer have to support a family. I have a decent pension which covers my expenses with some to spare. So I'll be an early uptaker of sustainable stuff, which might not have been an option for me back when I was a single parent with a household to run on a tight budget. When enough of us get on board, economies of scale become possible and prices come down, and can be afforded by people like I was back then.

This is why it is very necessary that I satisfy myself about the credentials of what's on offer before I buy. I want my limited resources to go on products which are good for me and for the environment – not for greenwashers and delusionists.

The first product I tackle is 'Bamboo'. I began with the idea that I could just knock out a few recommendations before moving on to another subject. But I was soon disabused of that. It's a subject full of technical stuff stirred up with large helpings of ambiguity and misdirection. So it turned out to be a much bigger job than I imagined. See what I discovered here .