Author: Halina Brown

Sustainable Consumption in Style

I read in the most recent issue of New Yorker about this fellow Peter Adeney who lives a happy life of extreme frugality and small carbon footprint. His point is that this is not deprivation but rather liberation (he retired at age 30). Great idea. But here is my question:

Why is it that people who are zealously reducing their carbon footprint inevitably dress in checkered flannel shirts and hiking boots, live in rural areas, grow their own food, and do their own carpentry?

Can we have zealots of sustainable consumption who wear well-tailored high quality clothes (which last for decades), shave their legs (that one is for women), get stylish haircuts, and enjoy schmoozing in cafes of large cities instead of fixing their own backed-up plumbing? I bet this latter model has a potential to create large following, including me, if we could only shake up the stereotypes.

There are other advantages of urbane sustainable consumption: it reduces car dependency; and it contributes to a steady state economy by not eliminating employment for the local handyman, hair stylist, and boutique clothes maker (it is impossible to buy mass produced clothing of high quality).

Crash landing at Schiphol Airport

Schiphol airport in Amsterdam used to be my favorite large city international airport. It offered a quiet lounge furnished with couches, a children playing area with soft pads and cushions, a room for praying, which was an oasis of tranquility, and even a small art gallery featuring selections from Rijksmuseum. I always thought: Oh, the Dutch, they know something about quality of life! Well, I was wrong: they were simply behind everybody else in dragging the travelers into the chamber of horrors of consumerism, which is what the major airports have become.

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On my recent visit to Schiphol, I found myself waiting for the gate departure in a huge noisy shopping mall under extremely bright florescent lights, assaulted by advertising from every possible direction. Gone are the quiet areas and soft seats, gone are the café-like corners, replaced with a large fast-food cafeteria. The closest thing to tranquility is the computer working area, with its hard, sit-up-straight chairs.

Some marketing geniuses have concluded that if this captive population with two hours to spare and the vacation-spending mindset is aggressively stimulated and kept restlessly moving, they shop more. Well, this is to you, marketing geniuses: it does not work for me, and hopefully not for many others. I refuse to buy anything at the New Schiphol. I just need to figure out some new quiet and soft corner to hide.