"I believe shopping is a way to cope with stress, anxiety, and depression. Shopping can be addictive because it gives you a sense of immediate accomplishment and instant gratification. These feelings of instant gratification and accomplishment increase our feelings of pleasure, or in this case, our levels of the hormone dopamine, which leads us to continue to shop. Usually, you don't buy what you need--you buy what you need to feel good" (93). Oof.
This volume is packed with practical ideas for just about every area of life, broken up into neat sections with bullet points. I think this makes is conducive to beginners picking up ideas for starting small. She does point out that it's near impossible to have a completely zero waste life, and that moving in that direction is a process. Overall, I think Weldon comes across a lot less shaming than many in this space (based on my very limited experience). For example, when discussing glue sticks: "Use natural, nontoxic glue sticks if you can find them. If not, it's not the end of the world" (113). But to me, the work still seemed to have a tone of "You're not doing enough! Try harder!" like when she was discussing "Get your kids outside. Encourage them to put down their mobile devices and go plan outside. Bonus points if they play with a sibling or a friend!" (113). This is just an expression, I suppose, (as is the expression "it's not the end of the world," in this context, cringe), but still made me recoil a bit and wonder exactly who is handing out points. I need to read a bit more in this genre before I'm sure if this is recommend-able, I don't have enough of a sense where it is on the spectrum of available resources.
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