Gift giving is an integral part of our culture. We have many occasions to splurge on our loved ones, birthdays, weddings, diplomas, anniversaries, but Christmas is the biggest of them all.
In 2020 retail sales in the US soared by $789.4 billion during the holidays. Just to put it in…
Once upon a time, Black Friday was a single day dedicated to excessive consumption that marked the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Those were the golden days of lining up in front of a store from 4 in the morning, shoving people out of the way while sprinting toward…
The appeal of neoliberal capitalism is that any company is allowed to fight for the consumer’s attention and dollars. As a result, consumers have ‘limitless’ choice of what to buy, when and how much. …
According to studies, we have closets full of clothes but 12–50% of them lie unused, and just in Sweden 2 million functional mobile phones, not older than 4 years are stored at homes but not used. Clearly we have more stuff than we need and this takes a toll on…
I have been fascinated seeing my dad’s guitar collection growing from zero to six in the past few years. Six guitars are possibly reasonable for a professional musician, but for a hobby guitarist is a tad excessive. And excess, as you might already know, is my arch enemy.
One sunny…
Humans have always used and used up stuff. To fill their bellies, cover their bodies and put a roof above their heads. Throwing away or consuming more than necessary was taboo for most of human history. Thriftiness and frugality were the virtues of prosperity for many millennia. …
Freedom to choose has what might be called expressive value. It enables us to tell the world who we are and what we care about. In other words: choice enables us to express our identity. In the western consumer culture we associate this expressive choice with consumer choice. …
Imagine this scenario:
Maggie has been drinking her morning latte with straws in the past 5 years, not giving too much thought to sending heaps of plastic to the landfill. A few weeks ago however, she started dating a devoted environmentalist. What a twist! His passion rubbed on Maggie and…
What is overconsumption? Over compared to what? Is there a normal consumption? How do we measure it?
On our quest to find solutions to the problem of overconsumption we faced these questions ourselves. If we want to solve problems, first we have to define what they are. …
Why we started this publication
“The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle.”
— Agrees 11.000 scientists. (1) That is a lot of scientists folks, they might be onto something.
They are indeed, but if you are sceptical, I would like to demonstrate the validity…
