- Less Plastic Packaging
We avoid shopping in supermarkets and shop in markets instead. In Asia, supermarkets are almost always more expensive than the local wet market. If you haven’t spent much time in Asia, you might not have heard of wet markets, or if you have, you might be thinking of the infamous Wuhan market; epicentre of Covid-19. Really, wet markets are similar to farmers’ markets in the west. Fruit, veg, noodles, and other foods are sold from market stalls. There’s no excess plastic packaging, in comparison to the supermarkets which often triple wrap individual fruits and veg in layers of plastic. At the market I can bring my own bags and avoid any packaging waste completely.
2. Reduced Transport Costs
The cheaper transport costs always seem to align with the most environmentally friendly options. The worst option would be owning a car (or owning a car each!) but we are entirely car-free. Next are taxis, which we use occasionally, usually only when there’s an awkward location to get to. Public transport is the next best option, it’s cheap and most buses in our city run on fuels that are more environmentally friendly. Finally, the very best option: your own two legs. We are lucky that we both live withing walking distance of work. We almost never walk to work (for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into) but walking home is something we do fairly often.
3. Only Buying What We Need
We recently had a big clear out when we moved to a smaller apartment. This really drove home for is how much we had spent money on that we really didn’t need. We are now both much more focused on a) only buying things we really need and which will improve our lives, and b) buying things that are good quality and will last. This way we will contribute less waste and reduce our reliance on mass produced crap that factories are churning out everyday.
4. Repairing and Reusing
Similarly, we are aiming to hang on to what we do buy. I’m seeing a lot of connections between minimalism and frugality. Whereas before we might have thrown out something that was looking a bit tired or worn out. Instead, we are now trying to make things last. We are aiming to repair (or sometimes just thoroughly clean) things that we might previously thrown away. I like the idea which I saw echoed across several minimalism blogs, of ‘shopping at home’. This encourages us to check that we don’t already have something at home before buying a new item.
5. Fewer Takeouts and Food Delivery
Finally, we’ve massively reduced how many takeaways we order. We are still having takeaway food about once a week (maybe this amount will continue to go down as we become more frugal), but we are avoiding having it delivered to us, choosing instead to walk and pick up our food. The less we takeaway, the less packaging waste we have, and if we pick it up ourselves we save money on delivery costs as well as reducing the emissions if someone on a motorbike were to deliver it to us.
