Employees, Consumers Deplore Waste

Bookstores toss resources, bad books out of the door. Yes, tearing off the covers and dumping is an old industry practice, but with the dwindling amount of natural resources, some carefulness is warranted.

I read this book, Affluenza, and it was a really flawed look at American excess. - They say you don't need a computer! But they forget many jobs don't take paper applications, and that with all the school work your child is doing using computers nowadays, you'll need to drive your OMG WASTEFUL car to the library so they can have access. And of course, the cure for American excess is to conspiciously consume 'green' items, and to be an edgy Adbusters lover. They of course also lack a real class or racial analysis of the issue, and are the sorts who complain about our kids playing violent video games, when common sense would tell you that children should play kids games like Cooking Mama or Mario and only adults should play violent video games.

I think a lot of our excess can be pared down by sharing and recycling. I just gave a woman tons of old manga from the 90s. I gained more space, and the woman gained some enjoyment for her child. Win-win.

Why You Won't See Haiti Listing In My Shop

It's actually pretty simple. If you spent $25 in my shop, and I gave $15 to Haiti, truly, it's just not very efficient. You could have just gone to amazon and gave a whole $25 to the Mercy Corps or gone to the Red Cross and given your entire $25 to them. Having me as the middle man weakens your contribution. Not to mention, I would personally give to established charities- even Wyclef Jean's Yele has come under scrutiny for personal enrichment off charity, and random etsy sellers are actually much less transparent than that. I think a recurring gift might be best, because months and months on, charities will still be helping people recover from the quake.

I don't believe in the awareness model. People don't care if we're 'aware', they care if we're actually helping them.

I don't care about all natural

People can say anything is 'natural' and just because it might be doesn't make it better. In a soap, I'm looking for hardness[is it hard? does it get all goopy in the shower?], shower fragrance[does it smell good in shower?], out of shower fragrance[does it smell good on skin?], and moisturizing and skin feel[does it make my skin feel soft? does it have ripples that feel good on skin?] I tend to gravitate away from flower scents, and towards unisex.

Note that no where on this list- which is quite extensive for a layperson, is 'naturalness'

We're Wasting Supplies

H&M; Walmart waste clothing. We also have so much old clothing in the US that we've destroyed some African clothing markets because we dump our stuff there. I think soon we will have to learn to reuse things, and maybe stores could tighten inventory. Just dumping useable cloth is not the way to go.