Consumer guide

Your habits

I shop, therefore I am. Consuming goods is one of our favorite past-times. Shopping is a hobby. Hanging out at the mall or going to the shopping center is the preffered way of spending a Saturday for many of us. Yet, how do we travel there?

Actually, if you only go to the shopping center once a week, and concentrate all your shopping in one; you may not be the worst CO2-heavy person at the mall. Planning outings that involve getting in the car to pick up goods should involve a certain amount of neccessity to begin with and secondly combining several errands. If you jump in your car every single day "just to pick up..." followed by one single item - you could most probably have postponed your errands and bulked them all together. 

There are many ways to make a difference

There used to be an ad for The Yellow Pages that said "let your fingers do the walking". In modern society the google most everything and can easily save ourselves a lot of trouble by finding shops and services close to each other, which saves a lot of milage and a lot of time. Some shopping malls use this for all it's worth, claiming that they are more eco-efficient, since the customer does not spend time or energy looking for a new parking-lot outside every single store. That may be true, but if the alternative is for you to take a tram, bus or train downtown and walk between stores - we all know who is the eco-nicer.

There are many ways to make a difference. Car-pooling for one. It's actually much more social and a lot more pleasant to shop with someone else. So ask around if someone else needs to do errands. You're on Facebook anyway, maybe someone is headed in the same direction as you.  

And if you are going shopping for clothes; the bags aren't that heavy. It's not like you actually need a car to get them home. So what's your excuse for getting behind the wheel? Laziness? Think how much better those outfits will fit you, if you stay in shape and walk everywhere...