Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Counting my Zero Days

I have decided to start keeping track of how many Zeroes I am able to accumulate in a day.

My "Zero Day" is not the same as the hacker zero day concept.

Instead, my Zero Day has to do with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

There's a lot of talk and action about recycling. Much less on the reduce and reuse side, which is understandable but lamentable.

Understandable: recycle is post-consumptino, reduce and reuse and pre-consumption. The more we reduce consumption, the less people consume = buy, and human economies are structured entirely around perpetual growth.

So corporations are all fine with promoting recycling, not so much reduction.

But I am convinced, and feel it is quite obvious, that the only way out of the terrible mess we are making of our world is for each of us, individually, to reduce our consumption as much as possible.

And you can't reduce lower than zero consumption. So I am going to see how well I can do at achieving some zeroes each day in my life. 

Here's what I am going to track on my Twitter account:
  • Zero use of my car
  • Zero consumption of plastic (plastic bag for groceries, for example)
  • Zero purchasing of processed food
  • Zero purchasing of anything
  • Zero seconds spent watching television
  • Zero drinking of water from plastic bottle (thanks, Rob!)
I am sure I will think of more - and will add to the above list as I do. Do you have other consumptions?

P.S. I am also trying really, really hard to only eat when I am hungry. So far I have lost 5 pounds in the last week. I hope that trend doesn't continue. :-)


2 comments:

iudith said...

Hello Steven,

An excellent topic :)
One item I would add to ANY such list:
buying the "n+1"-th cell-phone, when you (or your household) already do have "n" of them ...

But ... each time when I tackle this topic in ANY circle, namely,
"buy ONLY what you do really need", the only reply received is always:
"if we do not buy, many people will NOT have a job and will NOT be able to survive" ...

So, I believe that such an attitude can ONLY be promoted in a social system
in which the state assumes to take care and ensure a minimum honorable income
to EACH member of the society.

Is there ANY such place in the world ?
I am ready to move there at this very moment :):):)

By the way ... when it comes to cell-phone, I surely beat you "on zero" !!!
And when it comes to TV ... not far from that.

I am very curious of other blogger's opinions.

Best Regards,
Iudith

Steven Feuerstein said...

Northern European nations like Sweden and Norway probably come closest to what you are looking for.

You do make a very good point - we justify consumption as a mechanism for creating jobs. It's a terribly vicious cycle and it will doom us.