A trip to London.....

After a day in London visiting the V&A, the Natural History Museum and Liberty it is safe to say I have visual overload. I started to read the book Emotionally Durable Design on the train journey there which definitely changed the way I responded to the the information I received.

"Over 90 per cent of the resources taken out of the ground today become waste within three months: waste consisting of plastics, metals and other synthetic compounds no longer recognisable to the microbial decomposers that degrade substances back to their basic nutritional building blocks."

Today consumer behaviour has been more apparent to me than ever before. Today I became aware of the bottled water I had in my bag and the plastic cutlery I used for lunch both of which will take hundreds of years to biodegrade for not much more than five minutes use. Now, waste has always been something that really bugs me. Even when I was young I hated to throw anything away because it seemed wasteful. So I would often revamp or reuse things, but this behaviour was not driven by any environmental factors. However, in adulthood environmental factors do impact my buying decisions. I recycle, I buy organic, I regularly buy and sell used items, and I walk short distances but only when it is convenient to me. All of the aesthetic things I am usually completely absorbed in and want to take home looked very different today. Today, I didn't buy anything that wasn't edible. Today I noticed all the things that were of little use but were highly aesthetical. I noticed the things that were a gimmick and that would soon be unloved and be chucked out. I noticed endless amounts of packaging and people revelling at the thought of their new purchases.

A trip to the V&A did not help rid me of my frantic consumer thoughts. Especially when I entered the glass and ceramic sections. All this stuff could so easily have ended up in landfill but instead made it into the museum. 

Craftspeople that specialised in repair - well you don't see that anymore. It's cheaper to buy a new one! But like my dad says 'you don't get owt for nowt'. The planet appears to be paying the price.