Blogs & Ecology

I know that being a frugalista is all the rage, but here is how the Diamond merchants deal with the current crisis:

Here's To Less.

Our lives are filled with things. We're overwhelmed by possessions we own but do not treasure. Stuff we buy but never love. To be thrown away in weeks rather than passed down for generations.

Perhaps it will be different now. Perhaps now is an opportunity to reassess what really matters. After all, if everything you ever bought for her disappeared overnight, what would she truly miss?

Stephen Roach writes in the New York Times:

The good news is that lines should be short for today’s “first shopping day” of the holiday season. The bad news is more daunting: rising unemployment, weakening incomes, falling home values, a declining stock market, record household debt and a horrific credit crunch. But there is a deeper, potentially positive, meaning to all this: Consumers are now abandoning the asset-dependent spending and saving strategies they embraced during the bubbles of the past dozen years and moving back to more prudent income-based lifestyles.

Warren wrote earlier today "wasn’t it rampant consumption that got us into this mess?"

Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, is asking the same question.

None of the politicians seem to want to discuss the fact that consumption is at the root of our environmental problems. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the reasons for that.

Doesn't reducing consumption make perfect sense? Why is it the elephant in the living room? Are people too selfish to consume less? How do we move towards a less consumptive society? How much would it help with the climate crisis?

"Frugal is the New Black" say the trendsetters. This isn't news to TreeHugger readers, nor is it particularly original; during the World Wars, that is how one lived. Sometimes people needed a little encouragement, so the the creatives got to work designing posters, telling people to save instead of spend, fix instead of buy new, grow instead of shop at the grocery, all messages that resonate today.

Have a look at a few of them in our inaugural slideshow of Frugal Green Living: Posters for the Movement

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Lovely photography by Leah Nash for The New York Times

The New York Times digs up the dirt on the return of root cellars.

Root cellars have long been the province of Midwestern grandmothers, back-to-the-landers and committed survivalists. But given the nation’s budding romance with locally produced food, they also appeal to the backyard gardener, who may have a fruit tree that drops a bigger bounty every year while the refrigerator remains the same size.

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We have shown the very clever billboards promoting water conservation in Denver before; They were part of a campaign that included benches, cars and just about anything Sukle Advertising and Design could come up with.

Paul over at frugal living site WiseBread thinks that it is a good allegory for life, not just water....

Printing a nice message on a piece of plastic wrap and putting it in the bin does not make it green, nor does it do much for the environment, but it does make one feel better about using it and probably sells some extra plastic. Much of recycling is like that- a feel-good way of shifting producer responsibility for their own waste to the taxpayer, who pays to have it picked up and recycled.

One of the best ways to save money is to make your own food, and this is the best time of year to do it, as the farmers markets overflow with the bounty of fall. At Planet Green, food writer Kelly Rossiter has been canning and bottling everything in sight, laying in supplies for the winter. She previously showed us how to find our dinner at the farmers market; Now she shows us what do to with it. Unless noted otherwise, all pictures by Kelly Rossiter.

Preserving the Harvest: Four Ways to Make Homemade Preserves

(Photo from Blogtorira, a great act from an ancient Kagura performance)

Frugal Green Living made some very important points here on Treehugger. The timing is perfect for change. In his interesting column, Financial Times' David Pilling talks to Chinese and Japanese finance experts, wondering if this is America’s chance to kick its Asian addiction.