Have you ever walked along the shampoo aisle in a drug store and wondered which bottle to choose You’re not alone It’s often hard to know which product to spend your money on Over the years I’ve lived in small places where stores offered very few options When I ran out of shampoo in Peru for example I bought the only kind sold in the village shop When I returned to Canada I felt completely overwhelmed the moment I walked into a store So many things to choose from And so few that I really needed Years later I wondered how our purchases affect the environment Factories use Earth’s resources to create products and when we don’t want an item anymore we often toss it into the landfill How would the world look if we bought less stuff Lately I’ve been reading about creative ways that people meet their needs without buying much at all It’s all about community Did you know that if you want a blender in Toronto Ontario you can borrow one from the Kitchen Library Or that in Kenya families share a small amount of money some times less than twenty-five dollars to start entire businesses And strong communities aren’t just fun to live in They’re good for the environment and can reduce poverty too How Grab a friend and a snack to share come along and find out On a summer evening my family loves gardening in our parking spot especially because neighbors always come by to chat GASTON CASTANO Introduction 6
7 Do we really need so many options PINDIYATH100 DREAMSTIME COM My university dorm room was tiny I didn’t have my own kitchen or bathroom and I loved it Sharing space meant great conversations in the cafeteria and drinking hot chocolate with housemates in the living room down the hall These days I sometimes joke that our apartment building reminds me of my university dorm and I mean that in a good way In university my dormitory room looked out onto this cherry tree ELLEN GONELLA My Two Cents Worth 7
8 Shopping How Embarrassing Did you know that until a few hundred years ago buying a loaf of bread could start terrible rumors Usually rural women made all their bread at home and if neighbors saw a woman buying it they might whisper that she was too lazy to bake or that her bread was like a stone Until the 1800s families proudly made most of the things they needed to survive Now in many cultures families buy as much as they can How did we go from being embarrassed to shop to being proud of it It’s a long story And it started hundreds of thousands of years ago when humans first walked the Earth Pack It or Toss It Human beings or Homo sapiens as scientists call us have existed for more than 200,000 years And for 99 percent of that time we’ve wandered around following our food If sweet red berries Fingers crossed that the bread will turn out well otherwise people will start whispering about this 15th-century French woman A DAGLI ORTI BRIDGEMAN IMAGES Pssst Don't Tell Anyone chapter one
grew in the valley in summer we were there to pick them and if antelope ran across the plains in the fall we showed up to nab some juicy steaks As soon as food ran out in one place we moved on to the next carrying everything we owned on our backs Even if wide-screen tvs had existed no one would have wanted one Imagine carrying it around day after day Money in Our Pockets About 12,000 years ago people in the Near East western Asia began to help nature along a bit When they found a plant they liked they cleared space for it and brought water from the nearest lake or river The plants grew bigger and yielded more food Eventually families stopped following their food around and stayed in one place planting and tending their crops Of course people couldn’t grow everything they needed So they traded what they had for what they wanted That was often trickier than it sounds A family wanting to bake bread 9 This is a fei stone traditional currency on the island of Yap in the South Pacific One stone could weigh as much as a small car ERIC GUINTHER GFDL WIKIMEDIA ORG These days so many people love shopping that malls like Galeries Lafayette in Paris have become tourist destinations T W VAN URK DREAMSTIME COM
