We live in a society already obsessed with consumerism and well on it's way to obsession with the environment. This is pretty funny as it leads to ads which say "Buy a hybrid Honda Civic and help save the environment." It gets better when you realise that people believe it and buy a new hybrid, selling their two year old vehicle to someone else who will probably drive it. I've done a bit of maths, and it seems to me that if you buy a new car you have one more car being manufactured, and one more car either on the road or on the scrap heap. All of these things are bad for the environment. Also you save quite a lot more money not buying a vehicle than by buying one, no matter how little fuel it uses.

It's not just cars though. So many ways to save the environment and money are sold to us. I'm not a particularly smart person, but I'm pretty sure the best way to save money is to not spend it. Less stuff = more money. And if you want to reduce your carbon footprint and waste output, stop buying stuff. The more stuff you purchase, the more stuff has to be made, and the more stuff ends up as landfill or as a pollutant.

Saving money while reducing waste is easily demonstrated with food. The more processed food you buy the more expensive it will be per goodness (due to the effort in processing) and the more waste you will have (due to the packaging). If you eat fresh you will have less waste, less processing, and it will likely be cheaper. You'll almost certainly end up healthier as well.

Here are some helpful hints for saving money and the environment:
- Instead of getting a hybrid vehicle, stop driving.
- Don't bother replacing those incandescent light bulbs with flourescent. Turn the lights off instead.
- Instead of weighing up the healthiness of a boost juice over the cheap price of coke, eat some fruit. It's cheap, and it's the stuff juice is made of.

OK, so realistically we're not going to stop spending money altogether because we want to keep a standard of living, and trade is just such an efficient way of spreading the benefits of skills and resources. Just don't think that being a heavy consumer and beneficial to the environment are compatible.

For more fun, listen to Kate Soper on alternative hedonism and read this interview with Juliet Schor about the politics of consumption.