Get it? As you shop, you can\’t see the glass windows and the pennies pile up. You go to the store just to buy what you need. There are times when I don\’t enjoy shopping. You just go to the store, look at the merchandise, and wander aimlessly around the sales floor, just like your friends do. You don\’t understand these women and proudly proclaim, “You don\’t enjoy shopping. You may be a woman, but you resent the incessant female chatter about where they bought what, how much they spent, and heaven forbid, how much they saved.
The names of stores sparkle among them, and they compete over how many stores they ran through, crawled through, explored, or reserved what was missing even on their credit cards. Colleagues who shop at thrift stores, flea markets, and second-hand stores are a bit different. You too care about the environment, because you sort through waste and don\’t like to waste money or unconsumed food. Therefore, you start looking for newly discovered stores. You begin to seek out stores that were previously hidden precisely because you dislike careless shopping.
But when you hear that shopping for clothes can also save the planet, you become wary. Shopping starts to become a bit of a headache, and you begin to wonder what “renewable shopping” actually is. You begin to explore the previously much-maligned secondhand stores and swaps and get a taste of secondhand shopping. No longer want to support fashion chains that only offer new collections in four cycles (spring, summer, fall, and winter) and release new collections multiple times throughout the year. What happens to the unsold clothes that don\’t go away after the sale is over? What happens to the worn out items? At best, they are given to various charities; at worst, they end up in landfills, where they accumulate trash.
Be modern or be “in”! Shop wisely and think about the environment you will leave your children one day. And your children will have to live among what you yourself leave behind.