I had some friends coming to stay for the weekend and I needed a pump to blow up a couple of air beds. Now nine times out of ten, if you asked someone what they would do in this situation, they would say ‘go and buy one’ – I‘ve done it myself. Yet when I think back to how many times I’ve needed a pump over the last decade, I can count them on one hand. So I decided to be different this time and ask a friend if they had one I could borrow hers. I used it for two days and then returned it, just like that.
Spaceship Earth
Yet the overwhelming message today is ‘buy, buy, buy, it’s the only way to save the economy and create jobs!.’ ‘Consumption is good, growth is good’. But where is this ethos taking us though? Stuff that we buy has to be manufactured, which uses up raw materials, requires energy and creates pollution. It only has a finite life span and is then discarded as junk, and we don’t care what happens afterwards to it, as out of sight is out of mind. We seem to think that we live on an infinite planet, which has infinite resources, and the infinite capacity to absorb our waste.
This is clearly not the case as Kenneth Boulding explains in his seminal article “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” [1]. Here he compares the ‘cowboy economy’ of our present system which has the assumption of unlimited resources and sinks, with the reality that the Earth is a closed system and that there are finite limits.
City life in the smog
We’ve already seen that the by-products of our society have come back to haunt us, with increasing levels of CO2, ozone depletion and increasing pollution – see some of the recent BBC reports about air pollution in China [2]. Another book on this subject that might be of interest is the infamous ‘Limits to Growth’ [3].
Scientists have identified a number of areas of concern which they have dubbed ‘planetary boundaries’, where they believe that our activities are pushing the planet beyond its ability to recover [4]. These include biodiversity loss, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, climate change and ocean acidification. All these issues point to the fact that we aren’t living sustainably and that we need to change if both our generation and future ones are to have a decent life.
Planetary Boundaries
So how does sharing and borrowing come into this? Well doing this challenge over the last year has shown me that I don’t need much stuff to be happy. Happiness is all around us, in our friends, family and in nature. Yes we need clothes and food, but do we really need the latest version of Gadget X when we bought the previous version last year. Personally I get a lot of pleasure from books, and these days I regularly use the library, and if they don’t have the book that I want then I’ll try and borrow it from a friend or buy it second-hand and then take it to a charity shop afterwards. I sometimes try to convince a friend of mine to use the library more instead of buying the latest DVDs and books from the shop. His reply is that he might want to use them again in the future. So I reply ‘just borrow them again, and if they don’t have it, what’s the worst that can happen?’ We worry that if we let it go then maybe we won’t ever be able to have it again. And that’s the key point – if we don’t have it what really is the worst that can happen? I’m probably sounding quite strident at the moment and I don’t want to preach to anyone. I have to ask myself these questions all the time as well as I have real problems resisting the easy fix of online shopping.
What this weekend has shown me is that there is a need for us to share more. It goes against our nature to do that, as we like our ‘stuff’ and we don’t trust others with it. But we do have close friends and family that we trust, so why not start with them. That is exactly what I did this week when I sent out an email to some close friends, listing some of the things I have and that others may need at some point in the future. As an example, my carpet cleaner would have been useful for a friend recently, but she didn’t know I had one so she had to rent one out herself. It’s hard letting go and allowing others to use our things, but I feel our attachments to stuff has caused many problems and that by sharing and letting go of our attachments and worries, not only will it be good for the planet but as individuals we will benefit as well.
References
[1] http://www.eoearth.org/article/The_Economics_of_the_Coming_Spaceship_Earth_(historical)
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21198265
[3] Meadows, D.H, Randers, J. and Meadows, D.L. (2004) Limits To Growth: The 30-Year Update.
[4] http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-programmes/planetary-boundaries.html