Hello and welcome to Think Before Buying.
If you don’t know me already, I’m Frankie, 23 and living in London. I just finished a geography degree and now face a future filled with hope and a healthy dose of environmental and climate anxiety. Like a lot of people, I’ve long been aware of the looming threat of climate change and when the pandemic hit, I found myself stuck in a bedroom full of stuff that I hadn’t touched for years. It got me thinking about my experience in politics and my studies in environmental issues, and especially about the absence of any mention of culture in those experiences. I have heard plenty about consumption, but not much about the cultural influences affecting what and how we buy. I wanted to delve into the ideas that underpin our consumption patterns and so I took the leap and consequently, this newsletter emerged.
Think Before Buying wants to make you think twice before you click ‘checkout’ or pick up that item that you know you probably don’t need. Culture is about music and art museums and the Oscars, but it’s also about Instagram, ‘retail therapy’ and how we conceive of what and where we will be in 2100. To look at consumption removed from culture is to fundamentally misunderstand consumption as everything we buy and use is influenced by who, what, where, why and how - bringing to mind the infamous belt scene from the Devil Wears Prada. If we want to be able to reflect back on 2021 in 2100, we need a lot of change, starting with how we treat this planet and how we consume whilst living on it.
In my weekly emails I will try to address many of the discussions within the sustainability and environmental world and will certainly be linking back frequently to the individual actions vs system change debate. The aim of the newsletter is not to make you feel guilty, but is to make you feel empowered to speak up and act differently. None of us can act better without knowing better so hopefully this newsletter can go a little way towards knowing better.
The newsletter is based on the idea that many of the best solutions start with confronting our thought processes. If we are aware of how we think about the material items surrounding us and why we interact with certain items and not others, we can start to change our thinking and change our actions. Once we have understood how to think and act differently, we can use the two powers that every one of us has: the power to spend and the power to speak. We can use our platforms (of all sizes) to get others to understand the viewpoint and hopefully come to agree with us. Use your platform - whether that’s your friends, family, community, politicians or your 120 twitter followers - and use your words and actions to encourage others to make the right choice for the planet and our collective future.
Whilst we will not consume and spend our way out of the crisis, we have the power to influence others with our choices. That may be going plastic free in the supermarket or not buying a car and speaking up about the service of public transport on your area. We need to tell anyone who will listen (but especially politicians) that we need environmental regulation, government investment and wholescale change to combat climate change.
The most important piece of advice I can ever give is that the most sustainable purchase is no purchase. Your home is a treasure trove of sustainable solutions if you know where to look. I am extremely aware of how white and middle class the environmental and sustainability movements are and I won’t be sending out ‘101 ways you can be more eco-friendly’. However, to alter the mindset is to alter the behaviour. There may be a couple of tips along the way but I hope to give you the ability to know what is the right choice yourselves. At the end of every newsletter (after this one) I will be linking to some fantastic climate writing, journalism, books and podcasts at the end of each newsletter so you can learn a bit more if you want to. Before I go any further, please make sure you are registered to vote.
Hopefully you learn at least something from the newsletter and can pass on some of this new knowledge to a friend to educate them too. The long journey to stopping the end of the world starts with one tweet, one text or one subscription to a newsletter. This newsletter will drop into your email every Friday and I hope you will subscribe if you have not already!