mild rant alert: the Compactors

Today I learned that there is a group of San Francisco friends who made a compact at the beginning of the year to not buy anything new for a year except health and safety items, like food and toothpaste and brake fluid. The idea spread, and now there are something like 1,800 people spread across the country who are reusing, recycling, and potentially doing without.

There are two quotes that as an EI, I feel compelled to discuss:

1. "Some have called the Compactors un-American, anti-capitalist, eco-freak poseurs whose defiant act of not-consuming, if it caught on, would destroy the economy and our way of life."
2. "Judith Levine, author of "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping," went really cold turkey in 2004 with her husband. The couple split their time between Brooklyn and Vermont. She applauds the Compactors, but says that not buying stuff for a year is only taking it halfway. Not going to the movies and restaurants for a year -- now that's cutting back."

To these people I say, you want to see a group of people not shop, go visit the EI community. To the Chambers of Commerce, make your stores safe and sell safer products, or as more people get sick, the economy will tank anyway. To Judith Levine, if you want to see people who haven't gone to restaurants or movies in years, I know of some people you should meet.

If every consumer in America shopped like I do, there would only be organic food in grocery stores, the most complicated packaged foods would contain two or three ingredients at the most, and there would be no movie theaters. Hair would be cut at home, and there would be no perms, or perfumes, or home-use pesticides. There would be no 'new car smell,' no fabric softener, no polyester clothing, and no pizza, and no donuts.

Which would be too bad because pizza and donuts have started to smell really good.