Having Principles... a real cure to consumerism

Over the past few years as our family has been on this journey of becoming green, we have developed some serious principles....

And once these principles are in place and we stick to them, they are actually really good for our pocketbook- it is very hard to find things we can actually buy!

Here are some of the principles we've developed- a lot of them with the help of Adria Vasil's ecoholic- A fantastic read!!

1) Cotton is one of the plants that, if it's not grown organically, requires the most pesticides.  So for clothing we have a couple of choices:  organic cotton clothing or clothes made out of wool or recycled materials.

2) If we can't be certain the clothes being sold weren't made by children or people treated and paid poorly we don't buy them.

3) As much as possible we avoid plastic all together-  it has a limited capacity for being recycled, keeps putting the demand on the crazy oil and refining industry and eventually could end up taking 2000 years to biodegrade....  personally I would like my life not to leave a plastic legacy.

4) One can be proud of Canada for our lack of pollution, but if we are sourcing all our goods to China, then it is quite normal for them to have more air quality issues etc. than we do!  So as much as possible we try to buy products made in Canada, Europe where we hope the production, environmental standards are high ( you may or may not agree with me on this one- but in other words we tend to avoid made in China)

So all of these principles make walking through the mall relatively temptation free!!!  Here's an example:  H&M has some organic cotton clothing, but I won't buy from them because I can't be assured of good working conditions for the makers of their clothes!

Here are some stores we can buy from in good conscience:

Mountain Equipment Co-op (they have organic cotton and recycled polyester clothing and the labour conditions are verified by a 3rd party)
Hemp & Co  (on Vancouver Island) clothes made from organic cotton, hemp etc.  lots made in Canada.
American Apparel has some organic cotton clothing and everything is made in the USA

But the greenest store of all:  ANY thrift store!!!  So many things that aren't yet available in earth friendly materials we can buy from a thrift store and at least not be encouraging that industry - we are not in the supply and demand loop!

Hope you find this challenging and interesting!

Catherine