Boycotting the shops

Published on Sunday 17 June 2007 01:14

IMAGINE not buying anything new for a year. No shoes, DVDs, birthday cards or make-up. Want to replace your television? Find a secondhand one.

Some 8,300 people have signed up to the Compact, a Californian movement that goes beyond recycling. In a bid to reduce clutter and simplify their lives, compacters have pledged to buy only food, health and safety items and underwear, logging their progress at www.sfcompact.blogspot.com. "Consumer culture is destroying the world," says John Perry, one of Compact's founders. He now buys from secondhand shops and uses websites such as eBay and Freecycle.

It is both liberating and cost-effective, as author Judith Levine knows. After doing without for a year in 2004, she wrote a book, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. As well as clearing an 8,000 Visa bill, she says the experience taught her a lot. "It showed me that I could happily live on a lot less."

Not everyone is so enamoured by the idea, however. "What is so immoral with savouring some niceties of life?" writes one at www.ehrenreich.blogs.com. "I work damned hard for the meagre money I earn. I don't see why I should feel guilty if I want to purchase a new pair of shoes or a nice dress."

But Perry reckons nothing can beat the thrill of tracking down a bargain. "You get this bravado. You want to brag more and more."

Watch out for a 'compact' near you: with branches in Iceland and Hong Kong, it is going global.

Healthy planet

FORGET lugging half a dozen bags of shopping home with you - stick them on a shopping trolley instead. The Hook and Go from Designs We Need (DeWeNe) unfolds to carry 32kg of shopping (or an average eight bags' worth) without straining your arms. Ideally, of course, you'll hook canvas, not plastic, bags on to it. 45 for the Hook and Go; 17.50 for a pack of four black canvas bags, at DeWeNe (www.dewene.com)