It seems that online shopping is becoming more popular each and every year, and some of the main reasons for the trend are easy to see. Most significantly, online shopping seems to simply be more convenient than retail shopping, as it allows consumers the ability to browse, choose, and order products from the comfort of their own homes. Additionally, online shopping can often end up being more affordable, as the discounts, coupons, and even base prices of many products online are often favourable. But there is a third reason that online shopping has become the preference of many people all over the world: it often has less of an environmental impact than retail shopping.

To most shoppers, environmental impact doesn’t really seem like a topic of concern with specific regard to shopping. However, there are several ways in which online shopping – whether at a large scale online store like Amazon, or a niche store like http://mysmartbuy.com – is the more environmentally responsible option. Here are a few details.

Less Driving
The clearest environmental benefit of online shopping is that it reduces driving needs. For many people, shopping is an activity that can take them all over town, stopping at a number of different malls and stores – which, of course, involves a good deal of driving and fuel consumption. Reducing fuel emissions and driving dependency is one of the most significant environmental efforts in the world, and doing a majority of your shopping online is a good way to contribute.

Less Packaging
Another key worldwide environmental effort is the reduction of material consumption. When you shop retail in person, the chances are good that you will end up with a number of different bags and/or boxes, which will simply be discarded once you get home. Shopping online is more efficient with regard to packaging – typically, everything you order will come in the smallest possible box, which means that ultimately fewer materials are used and ultimately disposed of.

Responsible Returns
Also with regard to the waste of materials, many people who shop online are more likely to return unwanted products. Sometimes it can be hard to find time to make returns around town at different stores, which means people who shop retail are often more likely to waste purchased goods. Returns can be done more conveniently and efficiently through online shopping, meaning you will be less likely to waste products that end up unwanted.

Purchase Of Green Products
Finally, it is also worth noting that it can be easier to find green products online, simply due to the massive selection of online stores. Environmentally responsible products are certainly available in many retail stores, but finding them can be more difficult in person. Shopping online affords you the opportunity to seek out and rely on these products. ‘

The post The Environmental Benefits Of Online Shopping appeared first on EcoHustler.

In the garbage, I see a rose.

In the rose, I see the garbage.

Everything is in transformation.

Even permanence is impermanent.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Two years ago EcoHustler explored the curse you put on your relationship by giving a Valentines gift with a dire ethical footprint in How Deep Is Your Love. The following year we looked at ethical alternatives in Turbo-Charge Your Love. This year we are keeping it short ‘n sweet with 3 reasons not to buy roses this V Day:

1. Ten thousand tons of roses are shipped from Kenya to England for Valentines Day. Kenya is a poor African country, highly susceptible to fluctuations in weather, prone to drought and last year suffered a serious famine affecting 10 million people. That gift to your lover is the biological capacity of Africa diverted from either feeding Kenyans or maintaining the local ecosystem distilled into a disposable product. As the roses rot in an English landfill vital goodness has passed from the Kenyan soil to a plastic lined cesspit via giant planes spewing greenhouse gas; nice gift!
2. The roses are grown in massive greenhouses on Lake Naivasha. The lake is withering away, the hippos are gone, the shore is crowded and polluted. In ten years the lake will have disappeared like the Aral Sea. The land will be dead and the multinational companies profiteering from the business will move to other similar lakes, for example in Ethiopia.
3. Your hard earned wages go into the pockets of unscrupulous English supermarkets and international agribusinesses that will do anything to turn a quick buck, including sticking a label on Kenyan roses saying ‘ethical’ despite the fact that the whole process is fundamentally unsustainable and absolutely immoral. Nobody benefits from the business apart from some corporate drones who manage to keep the suicide economy chewing up what is left of nature for a little while longer.

Don’t buy roses out of season. Give your lover something special. Like a meal, massage or ménage a tois!

“See roses really smell like POO-OO-OO
Yeah, roses really smell like POO-OO-OO”

The post Roses Are Shit appeared first on EcoHustler.

A key strategy to minimize my eco-footprint is to buy everything I can second hand. Clearly this works better with some things (cloths, tools, electronic equipment) then others (shoes, underpants, food).

As soon I discovered that I could buy second hand books on Amazon I figured that, for books I couldn’t find in my local second-hand book shop, this was the most ethical option. Personally, I don’t buy the guff that Kindle (or equivalent) is the eco option for reading. That electronic ‘ware has a big embedded footprint and you will have to worked through a large number of books before it konks out to call it quits. As far as i am concerned the second hand book is king.

I recently purchased a good stash of books on Amazon.co.uk. As always I got a kick as they plopped through the letter box but this time the kick was of the unpleasant variety. As I was flicking through two of my most exciting recent purchases I found out they may have been pilfered from public librarys.

I am about a third of the way through the excellent From Counter Culture to Cyber Culture –  Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism and every time I open it I am faced with ‘Manhattan Public Library – Copy Withdrawn’. The second book that looks stolen is The Transition Handbook. On the inside front cover it says ‘Darlington Borough Council (last withdrawn 04.02.2010)’.

I feel guilty as hell! Have I paid some sleaze ball to skank wicked books out of the public domain? Am I handling stolen goods? I am in a moral quagmire without a paddle. Should I:

1. Report the book seller?
2. Post the books back to the library?
3. Round up a posse and go vigilante?
4. Assume this is the latest tactic of Big Oil to remove key information from the public domain and spread confusion.

Any thoughts appreciated.

The post Has Amazon turned me into a cyber-criminal? appeared first on EcoHustler.

I may never know what motivates the bottled water buyer, but after repeatedly coming face to face with the bullshit, I knew it was time for EcoHustler to strike. Check out what I nearly cycled into in the bike lane on my morning commute to work:

An Eden truck in a bike lane

This is disfunctional capitalism driving a bizarre step backwards in progress. Under the roads that we cycle on are a sophisticated network of pipes which carry high quality drinking water to every building in London. Since the engineering genius of the Victorians all we have had to do is turn on a tap and hydration is sips away. Now, 150 years later this company has decided to turn the clocks back and turn a profit by delivaring water to paying customers (morons) above ground, contributing to the congestion of the city. There is evidence that bottled water is actually less good for you but the real issue here is the massive waste of resources and, therefore, the unnecassary impact on the environment.

Water in underground  pipes is delivared incredibly efficiently; friction is minimal and there is no packaging associated with the water. Using lorries to delivar plastic bottles is millions of times less efficient. It wastes valuble fossil fuels; it increases the air pollution of the city and it makes cyclists lives more dangerous. Why is this legal?

Eden water blocking a bus lane

This is a different part of my commute to work but look; same problem. Eden, the ‘water solution experts’ are not only blocking bikes, they are now blocking a whole bus lane. Hhhmmm, great ‘solution’ guys! I don’t know what bugs me more… that this company names themselves after the unspoilt, natural womb from whence we came, or that they seem to suggest that they have some kind of ownership of the ubiquitous health benefits of water. These guys are douche bags and anyone that buys this product is also a giant DOUCHE BAG.

Whatever!

Same crap business model equally disingenuous name:

'Angel' bottled water

Wicked bike in the front of this shot!!

This chart showing broader issues with bottled water is using US data but much of it applicable for us in the UK too:

Presented by Online Education

The post The Worst Named Companies in London (/ the Earthly Realm) appeared first on EcoHustler.

These days I cannot cycle across London without giant advertizing  boards getting up in my grill, hawking Lurpak butter. The posters shamelessly try to link a mass butter product with the complex and rich well-being benefits of cooking. Be happy, buy Lurpak and cook.

The one problem with this cheery narrative is that Lurpak butter  is shipped across a sea to get here releasing unnecessary and dangerous green house gasses into our unbalanced atmosphere. Why are we creating this risk when we have great local butter, produced skillfully within these lands? The only butter I will buy is local butter. So Lurpak get your big, dangerous, stupid adverts out of my face and stick to selling your Danish butter to the Danes.

The post Lurpak Go Home appeared first on EcoHustler.

Shocking news just in: nations of the world are sending their wankiest people to Cancun after word got out that it is just going to be a giant international circle-jerk. Last year leaders of the free world gathered in Copenhagen for COP 15 but decided, at the last-minute, not to bother with a global treaty to protect: the natural world we depend on, our children or their future descendants. So this year… the gloves are off!

In a desperate last-minute bid for alien intervention to save us from the evil alliance of perverted-banker-greed and slimey-politician-scum good citizens of the world (http://earth.350.org/)  are coming together to create giant symbols to grab the attention of passing alien vessels. Maybe a more advanced civilisation can point out that nature needs the bailout out not a pathological economy founded on consuming our planet.

350 eARTh Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic

350 eARTh – Solar Eagle, Los Angeles

350 eARTh Mexico City

350 eARTh – Delta del Ebro, Spain

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