My take on the initiative was that it is attempting to address specific problems. The website has suggestions about how to do intermediate things, much like we've had no-buy months (rather than years) in Saturday Savers Club. The end clutter is especially around phones and the push to upgrade frequently, even though there is nothing wrong with your current phone. I think we have legislation in this country now about domestic appliances - that manufacturers must provide repairs and are required to re-cycle obsolete items. (Couldn't find the link, sorry).
We've known about private vehicles for years but:
- people don't want to give up their cars.
- our public transport sector is a mess and horribly expensive to use.
We do have some good changes here, though: for a long time you have been able to hire bikes in London and some other cities - just pick them up from one stand, do your journey and drop them at another stand. I noticed in Canterbury the other day that you could hire escooters next to the rail station - great idea for a tourist town. And we have zip cars and vans in some places, where you just hire the car from a street location in your neighbourhood by the hour. In Leicester, there is a lot of infrastructure work going on to make it safer and more pleasant and convenient to walk or cycle (or scoot, I guess).
I balked at the clothing ambition - I think the one that you talked about in your end of year clothing audit was much more realistic. I've had a fairly conservative approach to buying clothes and it's still been an average of more than three items a year, although probably not more than twelve on average including underwear. That seems to me more realistic and do-able. Again, I think the initiative is trying to focus on the massive over-consumption of fast fashion and tackling the likes of Boohoo and Shein with their associated labour and human rights issues, as well as environmental ones.
I was thinking that it may be a little like health and safety training - health and safety at work improves immediately after training but then declines over a period of time, so it has to be repeated at intervals (and, I guess, in a new and refreshing way, otherwise it is pointless). Maybe it is the same with evironmental shifts, there is a need for constant refresh, both to remind folks and to bring in new people. Maybe a bit like having Veganuary(?) in January?
Yeah I agree that the clothes number that was I think a dozen as the average in the 80s is more doable.
You're probably right about that. And if you think about it, real change comes from making habit changes one or a few at a time, not a whole-life overhaul all at once where you feel overwhelmed and like it's too hard and so you can't sustain it. Dieting is that way; people who are like THAT'S IT I'M THROWING OUT ALL THE JUNK FOOD AND BUYING MORE VEGETABLES THAN I CAN CONCEIVABLY EAT ...generally fall off the wagon and feel like it's impossible, but if you make a goal like "I'm going to do Meatless Mondays and limit myself to one soda per day instead of three" or whatever your goal may be, that's easier to maintain and make it a real lifestyle habit. Then once you've made it normal, then maybe you can add in something like, "now I'm going to try cooking a new recipe once a week" or whatever gets you closer to your healthy eating goals.