Let's Get Metaphysical

I suppose you could say I'm a lapsed Pagan. I've dabbled (the most accurate term in my case, I'm afraid) in assorted branches of Pagan religion since my pre-teens. Recently, due to my increased interest in and connection with nature, history, folklore and more, I've been taking another look at these faiths and traditions. My intuition suggests that introducing a spiritual aspect into my life will help to fill the void inside that I've previously papered over with excessive shopping.

This void is not the gaping darkness it once was. These last couple of years have done me good - I've picked up a variety of creative hobbies, renewed connections with family and friends, and even with the wider world through activism, and disconnected somewhat from my gadgets. I'm not as painfully self-conscious, not as distracted, and not as prone to constant comparison. Lately I've picked up my long-neglected yoga and meditation practice too. It's a bit sporadic, but it helps. Looking deeper into the spiritual now feels like a natural next step - one I've avoided for a long time, for fear of looking or sounding 'woo-woo', upsetting the die-hard sceptics amongst my family and friends (admittedly there are some people I just won't discuss anything of this nature with), or simply feeling worried that I don't know what I'm doing, and might not find what I've always felt I'm looking for.

(Do you ever have the feeling that you're following a trail of breadcrumbs through life? Since childhood I've felt 'nudges' or seen signs that I do my best to follow, trying to piece together a bizarre map of coincidences, hunches, feelings, and notes from a plethora of old books. More and more lately I find myself musing on the saying, "That which you seek is seeking you.")

Why Paganism? Because it feels right to me. I grew up with remedies from the herb garden and food from the hedgerows. When I walk on the land, I feel part of a huge and intricate web. The more I see and come to know of nature, the more it feels miraculous, magical. I feel my ancestors, my history, my connection to the soil and the chalk and the bones of the land. In our home, this year we have begun to celebrate the turning of the seasons by marking the solstices and traditional fire festivals - I think it's a good way for all of us to feel connected to nature, and the little one enjoys gathering greenery and blossoms to decorate the table for our feasts.

Our table for Beltane (May Eve)

Once when I was young, I stayed up all night reading poetry, and the dawn chorus and the breaking light seemed like such a gift, such a wondrous and incredible thing, that for a short time I thought I had found God, and became a devoted churchgoer. I can still feel that sense of awe and joy, of reverence, for the natural world, but I no longer feel it fits within the framework of patriarchal religion. That was just the only frame of reference I had at the time, the only hook on which I could hang such emotions and experience (having attended C of E school).

I'm also psychic. Or perhaps that's a bit strong - intuitive, or sensitive, might be a better term. In really small ways usually - dreams that come true being the most common. I also briefly had a sideline in telling fortunes at secondary school for fifty pence a pop, until my accuracy was denounced as 'creepy' and one girl spread a rumour that I could tell you when you were going to die (spoiler: no I can't). I've never made any real effort to work with it or hone it - in fact I've generally suppressed it (that fear of being too woo-woo, again) - but every now and again I get something a bit more dramatic and difficult to explain, such as the way I met my second boyfriend. I woke up one Saturday morning, and could 'see', in my head, exactly what was going to happen that day. Not as a vision, but the knowledge was just THERE, whole and complete.

I got into action before my rational mind could talk me out of it. I got up and dressed, tidied my room, took my guitar out of the cupboard and stood it in the corner. I wrote my phone number on a slip of card and put it in my pocket. I walked to my friend Ana's house down the street, and together we walked to a house we'd never visited before. My now-ex was in the garden. We looked at each other. Ana and I walked away. In my head, I was counting down - and on cue, he came running after us. I gave him my number.

An hour or so later we were all hanging out in my conspicuously tidy room. Ana was stroking my pet rat. The new guy was playing Basket Case by Green Day on my guitar. We were together for over a decade. In fact, part of the reason I stuck out the relationship was so long was because of the circumstances in which we met - I felt perhaps we were capital-F Fated. Now I suspect I simply wanted a boyfriend so much that I accidentally manifested one.

It's not that I think this kind of experience is a prerequisite for choosing a Pagan path, but I do feel that these traditions provide a good structure for learning how to use and channel this 'ability', so that - I hope - it can become something I can work with and direct rather than being something that just happens to me.

I've had other weird experiences - both in similar vein, and very much not - which I may talk about at some point, as some of them have shaped my world view in a big way. I don't often discuss any of this, as I know even my most supportive friends might be disbelieving, and I don't want to feel I have to excuse or justify what I have felt and experienced. But I'm done with pretending that such experiences and feelings don't have a huge influence on who I am. I don't want to suppress this part of myself any more - I want to embrace it, and go deeper.

As a teenage Wiccan, I very much followed a Pagan-by-numbers approach. I bought a book that told me the names of some deities, and the right words to say for this or that ritual, and which herbs or coloured candles to buy. I dutifully followed the steps, but I never FELT anything. It was like shouting into an abyss.

Now I am a bit older, it's obvious why this approach didn't work. You can't just read a name in a book and tell yourself to believe in it. This time around, I intend to listen to my intuition, read widely, get my hands muddy, and find a path based on what I know, feel, experience and believe.

It's time to get my woo-woo on.

I Suck at Being Green (But I'm Still Trying)

There are a number of reasons why I'm not very good at being green. I've been trying to 'go greener' since late 2019, when I learned about the climate crisis and went into panic mode. And whilst I do my best, I still often feel like a beginner at these lifestyle changes, and I've made more than a handful of bad decisions along the way. I console myself with the fact that I alone won't make any huge difference one way or the other, but as someone who cares about nature and the environment, and who wants to leave a safe and thriving planet for future generations, I still feel that it's worth trying to bring my lifestyle in line with my values.

In some areas, I feel like I'm doing okay. I've hosted a successful clothing swap party (pre-COVID!) and look forward to doing so again one day. We clean our house with reusable cloths and white vinegar, we use cloth wipes for the little one's bum (he doesn't like wearing the reusable nappies, though, which I wish I could have predicted before I bought them as they're hardly cheap. And I don't know if the staff at his nursery next year will be willing to use cloth wipes, but I'll certainly ask), and I continue to volunteer for Greenpeace. I use an eco friendly natural deodorant, and it took a long time to find one that was natural, effective, and doesn't contain baking soda, to which I'm sensitive (I use Space Cat by Awake Organics; it lasts absolutely ages - one tin lasts me six months - comes in recyclable packaging, I smell faintly citrussy, and I don't need to worry about aluminium in my breast milk). My hair dye is henna; for laundry I use an eco ball with a touch of Dr Bronner's if it's Dai's work gear or baby poop; I have a safety razor so I don't use disposables. We have a sustainable loo roll subscription. I'm on a green energy tariff (I use USwitch to get the best deals). So it's not all bad!

But there are still a lot of changes I'm struggling with. My biggest weakness - and this won't surprise you! - is that I still find it really hard not to shop for new clothes. Even though I don't need any! It's a problem. I've noticed that I have a big splurge around every third month (September, December, March). So gotta watch myself this month. And yes, I'm buying from much better companies, and I no longer spend my entire bank account every month (hooray) so things have distinctly improved. Fashion is such a polluting industry, though, that I really want to stop shopping when I don't actually need to be. (Even as I'm typing this, my brain is like "oh but when you go away for your birthday weekend you might see something you like," but I must try harder to be a bit more ruthless if I don't want to end up back at square one.) 

I find it hugely frustrating that others find it comparatively easy not to clothes shop. My friend Topaz has only bought a handful of second-hand items on eBay since her last big clearout, which was last year. Whereas I seem to be convinced that I'll miss out on some magical item that will, I dunno, round out my personality and give my life meaning? 

Food is another bone of contention for me. We did try switching our weekly grocery shop to an organic delivery company last year, but in the end we had to accept that although the quality was great, the cost just wasn't realistic for us. I also don't do all the grocery shopping for the family, and those who do don't necessarily share my concerns about excess packaging and imported foods. I did put my foot down over blackberries in January flown from South America, but when somebody else is buying your food you can only do so much whingeing before you start sounding seriously ungrateful. We also do eat meat, although we have cut down a lot, but I can't honestly picture Dai ever going veggie.

I have also found that frugality and environmentalism don't always go hand in hand. Often they do, such as with our kitchen cloths and baby bum wipes, but sometimes the price of an eco alternative puts it well out of my reach. Sometimes I accept paying more for an item which is better for me and better for the environment, for example I only use cosmetics without a whole host of toxic ingredients (except the batch of seriously colourful make-up I recently bought off a goth friend - she wasn't using it, so it's recycling, and although I'm ambivalent about make-up on occasion I've been enjoying playing with things like upsettingly orange eyeshadow and swamp-witch-green mascara. I dread to think what's in it, though). And since I switched us all to natural bath products, the Spud's eczema has cleared up, which is telling. It means that my spend on cosmetics is a lot higher than some people's - what's a body lotion cost in Aldi? 70p? The last one I bought was from Luna Levitas and cost about a tenner. But I use what I buy, only buy what I need, and my skin does actually seem to benefit. And we save on eczema creams, so there's that.

I had a bit of a problem with shampoo, though. I tried switching to natural shampoo last year, but I didn't know that in a hard water area, shampoo needs to have a surfactant to actually work. Many shampoo bars and natural shampoos are just made with oils, so for several months I went around with greasy hair and a horrible grey waxy build-up that even the strongest apple cider vinegar rinse wouldn't shift. I couldn't understand what was going on and thought I was just going through the worst detox phase of all time. Then just when I was ready to give up, I found a post on a blog called Sustainably Lazy that explained the whole thing. I immediately switched to a shampoo bar from Lush and have never looked back! 

I've made the mistake of trying to buy my way to sustainability, spending a fortune on organic veg boxes and reusable nappies and fancy matching cloths and zero waste bras (okay, I actually really recommend these, they're from Pethau Bach on Etsy and they're brilliant and gorgeous. They also come in a breastfeeding style, which is what I currently wear) and jute washing up cloths and organic toothpaste and so on and so on, which blew a chunk of my finances and turned out to be completely unnecessary in a lot of cases. You can use old cotton t-shirts for cleaning rags, you don't actually need a colour coordinated set. I've also tried to do the opposite and stop spending any unnecessary moneys ever, but I went too far in my Eco Thrift Crusade and felt like a right joyless old frump; in the end it was a relief to run out and buy some nail polish. So as usual, extremes are counter-productive, at least for me. I push myself too far in one direction or the other and then tend to burn out. 

For a while recently I felt tired of the whole thing - I'd lost any sense of what the point was, and the ever-present temptation of shopping my way to fulfilment (or at least a sort of pleasant-ish numbness) was starting to seem a far more tantalising prospect. Funnily enough, it was my rekindled interest in Paganism (more about this later!) which has revived my interest in green and simple living. I say funnily enough because my previous forays into various Pagan paths have involved purchasing a lot of fancy implements and setting up elaborate altars only to feel disheartened and move on after a couple of months. This time I've bought no athames, pentacles, incense, altar cloths, crystals, divination decks, Goddess statues, wands, runes, singing bowls, ritual robes, goofer dust, crystal balls, besoms, black mirrors, candles or anything else! Instead I've taken my own advice - spent time daily in nature, kept up my meditation practice and done a bit of online research. I came across a description of Druidry that stopped me in my tracks, as it seemed very close to what I've been feeling and experiencing myself. 

I'll need to know more about Druidry before I say for sure, so I need to get my hands on some books and look into it further, but it really seems like a down-to-earth philosophy of living that could add meaningfulness to my environmentally-based choices and depth to my experience of the world. The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids offers a highly recommended correspondence course that I'm intrigued by, not least because you're assigned a mentor whom you can plague with questions (Dai can attest to the fact that I'm full of annoying spiritual questions right now). I've also been reading some Druid blogs (Druid blogs!) and, well, isn't it great when you find someone else articulating things you've been thinking and feeling? 

So that's where I'm at right now. Imperfectly green but doing my best, intrigued by Druidry, excited by possibilities (and overfond of parentheses). 

Ways I'd Like To Rejig Society (or, Unfucking A Couple of Things That Are Fucked)

I had a strange and memorable conversation with a dear friend a few years ago. We were talking about cosmetic companies testing their products on animals. Awful, she said, disgusting. Shouldn't be allowed. 

So, you check the labels when you buy make-up, then? To make sure it's cruelty free?

Oh no, she said with a brisk shake of the head. Can't be bothered with all that.

I think this illustrates the way a lot of people feel about this and other related issues - animal testing, food production, sweatshop factories, poverty and hunger, forced labour and modern slavery, climate change, mass extinction. Sure, we know there's a problem, and in general we think this stuff shouldn't be happening. But... the way we live is so easy. So comfy. Let's just draw a discreet veil over all the stuff we wish wasn't happening so that we can just carry on the way we are.

This is why I believe that, unlike economics, sustainability needs to apply from the top down. If new standards for businesses, new legislation, were to exist, the choices available to the everyday consumer could be made less damaging. It's easy to choose cruelty free when all of the options are cruelty free. You don't need to check your labels for the leaping bunny when cruelty free and sustainable is simply the default. 

I'm not really sure why FairTrade, cruelty free, organic and eco friendly options are still considered a bit niche, and items made by desperate people in horrific conditions using toxic chemicals are the acceptable norm. I hope to see this change - really change - within my lifetime.

Some people may feel a sense of resistance to the idea of having their options for consumption limited. We are used to choosing from a vast menu of options for everything - from wedding dresses to peanut butter - and we don't really want this to change. But who would knowingly choose children's toys containing lead and mercury, or a plastic lunch box that potentially releases carcinogens into your food? To say nothing of the hazards for the people who have to make such things. In his book Consumed, Benjamin Barber writes, "We are seduced into thinking that the right to choose from a menu is the essence of liberty, but with respect to relevant outcomes the real power, and hence the real freedom, is in the determination of what is on the menu."

Businesses and governments love to put the onus for change on the individual consumer, rather than accepting any limitations on their greed and rapacious behaviour. But no one individual can do everything, even if they felt inclined, when as we have seen, many simply aren't interested in doing things that aren't easy. In a world where we still have to employ people to pick up litter thrown on the ground, we can't expect every individual to make every choice for the good of the whole planet. And adding more and more green choices to the smorgasbord of options already available can't be the answer on its own - as Annie Leonard notes in The Story of Stuff, "It's simply not possible to get 100 percent agreement from nearly 7 billion people on any issue, and our ecological systems are on such overload, that we simply don't have time to try. Imagine if we had had to wait for 100 percent consensus before getting women the vote or ending slavery: we'd still be waiting."

I believe that we can build a less environmentally destructive, more equitable society. I also believe that as things currently stand, we need legislation to help us do so. 

Similarly, when we talk about sustainability - or, more to the point, when our so-called leaders talk about sustainability - the emphasis is always on preserving the status quo. As John Michael Greer demonstrates in the introduction to his book Green Wizardry, "Consider the endless bickering over the potential of renewable energy in the media and the internet. Most of that bickering assumes that the only way a society can or should use energy is the way today's industrial nations use energy. Thus you see one side insisting that windpower, say, can provide the same sort of instantly accessible and abundant energy supply we're used to having [...], while the other side - generally with better evidence - insists that it cannot. 

"What inevitably gets missed in these debates is the fact that it's entirely possible to have a technologically advanced and humane society without having electricity on demand from sockets on every wall across the length and breadth of a continent. [...] What stands in the way of this recognition is the emotional power of today's ideology of progress, with its implicit assumption that the way we happen to do things must be the best, or even the only, possible way to do them."

Imagining other ways of living can be uncomfortable, even scary. This, I suspect, is how a lot of people feel with regards to the idea of buying less. It's a limitation. A sacrifice. A loss of freedom. Naturally, we chafe against even the idea of restraint. We are so used to having whatever we want, preferably immediately, that alternatives seem dismal, frightening, unpatriotic. Certainly I have felt that way, even though my attempts to buy less have increased my resilience, self-esteem, appreciation and contentment almost from day one.

Ultimately, however, these are the changes we need to make - as a society, we must learn to consume less, waste less, and cooperate more. Because we have already done damage to the Earth, our home, through our current mode of living, and as this century wears on and the results of that damage become ever more apparent, we will need to adapt if we wish to survive. 

Up until fairly recently, I've been frightened of these changes. Dreading them. I couldn't picture what a society might look like that could weather the future and the crisis we face. However, John Michael Greer's Green Wizardry, with its discussion of appropriate tech, made me feel far more hopeful. And if you'll forgive me referring once again to The Story of Stuff, I found much to be optimistic about in Annie Leonard's description of her living situation, which I would very much like to emulate:

 "It's really just a bunch of good friends who chose to live near one another - really near, like next door. We find life easier and more rewarding because we focus more on building community than on buying Stuff. We share a big yard; we often eat meals together; but each family has its own self-contained home into which we can retreat when we want to be alone."

In Leonard's community, even watching TV is something that people generally do together. Stuff is shared between families so less resources are used on buying new items. Services are shared too - plumbing, cooking, babysitting, repairs, carpooling. (I WISH I had had this as a new mum.) If someone is sick, the community steps in again for rides to the doctor, childcare, even bringing flowers. 

If we could shift to a society set up like this, we could buy less and lose nothing.

Some Stuff My MP Doesn't Want Me To Tell You

There's some stuff I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while, so buckle up. 

Last year I spoke to my MP on Zoom about the climate emergency. It was hard to get a word in edgeways as he graciously allowed that he might upgrade his car from a hybrid to a fully electric model, and boasted about his heat pump boiler system (I'd recently contacted my council representatives about the possibility of installing heat pumps in public parks, to be told that the government had helpfully introduced legislation to make this an impossibility. I told my MP about this and he quickly changed the subject). 

After fifteen minutes of this smug waffle in my half hour time slot, I got a bit annoyed and suggested that I didn't feel the government is treating the climate EMERGENCY with the appropriate amount of urgency. (You know, where they encourage us all to buy electric cars and use bags for life whilst also trying to open new coal mines, and trying to fund new fossil fuel projects in Mozambique that would produce enough greenhouse gas emissions to, oh yeah, kill us all. With taxpayers' money, by the way. I didn't say that bit, though, I don't think the Mozambique thing had happened yet.)

The MP's eyebrows shot up his ruddy, pork-pie face and he started on about how we don't want to scare the public. I pointed out that 'the public' are going to be pretty scared when food shortages start in this country, which Extinction Rebellion predicts could be as soon as a couple of years. He didn't have a lot to say about that, other than to caution me again about scaring people.

We're not supposed to talk about the state of the world today. It scares people. It makes them uncomfortable. It puts them off their tea and biscuits.

Except, not talking about it isn't going to lead anywhere good. If we can't look at the problems, if we can't discuss the problems, how in hell are we going to do anything about them while we still have time?

The MP said that change needs to come from the individual consumer. That's you and me. Not governments, not banks, not corporations, not big business and energy companies, but the little people. 

This made me feel deeply uneasy. I hope these opinions were representative of this MP only, not the whole government, as it made me suspect that when the world is past saving, and the people are in the streets demanding to know why more wasn't done, the whole bloody lot of them might just shrug their shoulders and slope off to their bunkers mumbling something about "Well, it's your own fault for buying so many disposable straws."

This was a bit startling to me, as I had been assuming that the people in charge were largely rational and would be stepping in to help any minute now. This was the first time I got a look at the mindset that prioritises profit over people, and wants to preserve the status quo - unrelenting economic growth - over all else and at any cost.

 

It's a little concerning if the UK government thinks that our beeswax wraps and moon cups are going to save the world when 71% of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by just 100 companies. That's right, companies, not countries. Businesses and their investors are doing the majority of the damage to our ecosystem and, oh yeah, killing us all. Sit with that one for a moment.

I posted about all this on Facebook once, and was surprised to find that a good few people still think that the climate crisis is a big hoax. I've agreed that in ten years' time, if they're right and we're all still alive, I'll buy them a pint. Inwardly, I found it difficult to understand a point of view based on completely dismissing fifty or so years of scientific study from assorted geniuses across the world.

But okay, let's leave aside the changing climate for just a moment. We're still in the shit, in a variety of disturbing and terrifying ways. And still nobody is talking about it. We're talking about TikTok and television and the weather, but we don't generally like to look directly at the fact that our lifestyles cannot logically continue as they are today. 

So here's a few more things you may not have known about:

- We get the metals and minerals for our cars, phones and other gadgets - and our jewellery - largely from open-pit mining. Environmental issues aside, this is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and children are doing it. Also, rocks don't grow back. Future generations will not have access to these minerals, so unless we change our technology and vastly improve our recycling (and stop upgrading our gadgets every two minutes), we will reach a point when we can't actually manufacture any more.

- I don't know about you, but I've never really thought much about these metals and minerals and where they come from, or how. Let's just hit a couple of the highlights. One gold wedding ring creates 30 tons of toxic waste, and cyanide is often used in its production to remove the gold from the ore. Generally nobody is cleaning up this cyanide afterwards and it just sits around in pools, leaching into waterways. So that's nice.

- Did you know that the release of the PlayStation 2 helped fuel and fund a war in the Congo? Coltan, a mineral used in the manufacture of the games console - as well as laptops, phones and other such devices - became suddenly extremely valuable when Sony released the PS2, and rebels and militia troops from neighbouring Rwanda, as well as Western-based mining companies, forced children and prisoners-of-war to mine the 'black gold' in dangerous conditions. It's estimated that as many as 40% of coltan miners are children.

- There is enough food being produced in the world to end global hunger. It's not that we don't have the food. It's not that we don't have the money to distribute it. It's... just not happening.

- The one where Shell had nine activists killed following a sham trial. Or the one where Shell used a military police force against peaceful protesters and eighty people ended up dead, their bodies dumped in a river. There are actually more examples, yet this company with blood all over its hands just keeps on truckin'. Consequences? What are those?

- Disney's merchandise is made in sweatshops. Child labour, again. Workers are beaten, sexually harassed, and in some factories, forbidden to speak. It makes me sick that my child's Winnie the Pooh clothing was made in squalid conditions for pathetic pay by someone else's children. In 2018, Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, earned $66million. I say earned because I don't know the word for money made from the blood and sweat of impoverished people.

- The price of the average cup of chain-brand coffee could provide malaria medicine for six children in India. But again, because of the unequal spread of wealth and resources, this isn't happening, so we go on drinking our caramelattes while other people's kids die from preventable disease.

- On the topic of preventable disease, one hundred thousand children per year die of dysentery because they don't have access to clean water. If you're wondering what that's like, you might find out. Water shortages are predicted within some UK counties within the next decade or so, as our own natural water reserves are becoming too degraded, depleted and polluted to sustain us. Southern Water is looking at building a desalination plant in the Portsmouth area to treat sea water for human consumption. Which is great for us, but a bit shit for all the plants and wildlife that also depend on those polluted natural waters. Good job we don't need trees to breathe or anything! Oh, wait...

- On the topic of preventable disease once again, I don't know if you've noticed any pandemics lately, but if you missed the last one, there'll probably soon be more on the way due to our revolting factory farming practices. 

- One hundred species are going extinct every day, mainly due to deforestation. One. Hundred. Species. A day. 

- Do you know where we derive much of our medicine from? Lifesaving leukaemia drugs, for example? Quinine, another example? Oh yeah, that's right, plants from the rainforest. Imagine what other lifesaving drugs we could have found by now if we were preserving them instead of bulldozing them into clear-cut oblivion. Just a thought. We've analysed roughly 1% of rainforest species for their beneficial properties. We're destroying the rest, apparently. 

Do you find pandemics scary? Do you find food shortages and polluted water uncomfortable?

Me too. I think it's a sign of sanity.

I don't have the answers. I do know that we can't continue to deplete the earth's finite resources, or keep treating people and animals like commodities - or worse - to make stuff that ends up in the bin (for examples, see the shelves at your local Poundland or B&M). I know that we don't solve the problems by ignoring the problems. 

I'm sorry if I'm making you uncomfortable. But I hope I am. I do believe that the big changes we need to overhaul this unfair, violent system need to come from governments and world banks and big business, but I'm also faced with the reality that they aren't going to make those changes until and unless they have to. That means we need to speak up. We need to hold them to account. We need to point out the problems and keep pointing them out until something is done about it. We need to do the boring legwork - the 'clicktivism', the petitions, the letters, the emails, the protests, the boycotts - we need to vote with our wallets, we need to raise our children to care for the planet rather than seeing it as a collection of resources to exploit. We need to stop waiting for someone else to do it. 

I'm sorry to break the news to you that Disney aren't good guys! I don't like it either! 

I know you're tired. I know you're busy. I know you'd rather not think about it. There is so much work to do. There are so many problems, and they're all interconnected - women's rights and racism and child labour and war and poverty and deforestation and air pollution and palm oil and about a million more 'ands', and it's so easy to feel disheartened and helpless. And nobody wants to be accused of being 'shrill' or 'too serious'. 

But the first step is talking about it.

We need to start talking about it.

This post was heavily inspired by Annie Leonard's book The Story of Stuff. Please do read it, if you're able. There's a lot of stuff that's shocking, but there's also a lot of reasons to be hopeful, and ideas for how we can change and what we can do.