"Please come in, would you like a cup of tea?"

"Yes please" I said, climbing into the campervan, surprisingly spacious, basic but more importantly, warm and homely.

"Sit down please. Help yourself to a biscuit, we found them in a bin behind Sainsburys."

Sat in a bowl on the table at the 'office' end of the camper was a bowl full of the biggest chunkiest most appealing looking cookies I had seen in a long time. It looked like a lot of love had been put into those cookies and yet they had been thrown away, no doubt along with the many many tons of other food that is discarded everyday. Discarded yet perfectly edible.

And delicious they were too.

I had come to this secluded road in a wood in North London to meet with two Freegans, Alf and Bob.


(Bob and Alf by their campervan in North London)

I have been batting emails and phone calls back and forth with Alf for a good few months now. He is a hard man to pin down and when you come to learn about his lifestyle, you will see why.

I spent a couple of hours chatting with, learning from and being inspired by Alf and Bob. So watch this space and all being well, in the next few days you will have a decent audio and video introduction to Freeganism and methods in how to live a simpler life.

Tags: freeganism, freegan, food, whaste, shopping, Consumerism, community

environment |enˈvīrənmənt; -ˈvī(ə)rn-| |ənˌvaɪrənmənt| |ənˌvaɪ(ə)rnmənt| |ɛnˌvaɪrənmənt| |ɛnˌvaɪ(ə)rnmənt| |ɪnˌvʌɪrənm(ə)nt| |ɛn-|noun1 the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates.• [usu. with adj. ] the setting or conditions in which a particular activity is carried on : a good learning environment.2 ( the environment) the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, esp. as affected by human activity.

It's Blog Action Day and the collective mission for all bloggers is quite simply to raise awareness of our environment and the impact we are having apon it.

Preaching change is not what I would normally do so i won't.

I will say though that any enlightened western mind should, in my mind, already have an environmental philosophy fundamentally based on a moral conviction that we as human beings have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the natural systems that sustain life.

As an inseparable part of our environment, we have an obligation to sustain life, protect life and ultimately to protect the underpinnings of life.

We are consuming more and more, and the more we continue to do so, the more we stretch the limitations of our ecosystem around us.

Yes, It would be wonderfully idealistic if tomorrow we could flick a switch and become self sustainable. Perhaps we should consider working towards sustainable development instead..? This is a far more realistic goal in the short term.

Whenever I look over the British countryside I am not thinking.. "Ooo look at that intricate system of agriculture, that patchwork quilt made of fields busily producing our food."
I am thinking.. "Where have all the forests gone".

I am not saying I want everyone to 'Robin Hood' it over the length and breadth of the country, hunting wild bore and foraging for mushrooms (although I would happily live like that).

I just wish we had not got so greedy and thoughtless when we started managing the land.

I am not anti-growth or anti-industry. I do wish though that we had listened to E.F. Schumacher when he first wrote 'Small Is Beautiful.' He was truly a man before his time.

Modern economics is preoccupied with measuring our 'standard of living' by the amount of annual consumption. It assumes that a man who consumes more is 'better off' that a man who consumes less.

Many eastern minds, particularly ones with a Buddhist background would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is just a means to human well-being.

Surely the aim is to obtain the maximum amount of well-being with the minimum amount of consumption. The less time digging the fields, the more energy left for artistic creativity.

This world we have created around us considers consumption to be the only purpose of all economic activity.

We seem to be making bigger and bigger machines, in an attempt to produce faster, in order to keep up with our ever increasing demands. It's a vicious circle, obviously exerting yet greater damage against our environment and in my mind does not represent any form of progress.

We need to change our thinking, make it more organic, far more gentle, simpler, balanced and in tune with the land around us.

So, as i said.. I will not preach as to what you can do, or tell you how I try to do my bit. Instead I will recommend a book.

E.F Schumacher supplied many of the answers we need now back in 1973 with 'Small is Beautiful'
34 years ago he said..

"..greed and envy demand continuous and limitless economic growth of a material kind, without proper regard for conservation, and this type of growth cannot possibly fit into a finite environment. We must therefore study the essential nature of the private enterprise system and the possibilities of evolving an alternative system which might fit the new situation."

If you feel it is too late for you to change your ways.. Please read this book and learn how some ways must be changed if we are to leave anything for our children and their children to interact with, to operate in, to live within... i.e. an environment.

Tags: E.F. Schumacher, economics, Consumerism, Buddhism, literature, philosophy

It seems that for some of us we start in one room and work your way around the house until we get back to the first room we played with. Then we start all over again.

I am guessing this continues until your walls hold enough cd's, dvd's and trashy ornaments to earn a steady ebay income for the next 12 years.

Others do the house up till it is just how they want it... Then move.

Perhaps I belong to the last category. Kind of the very long term property developers approach. The only difference being that this home is being done up with personal tastes in mind and not that of any potential purchaser.

For some, the improvement of the house and the space inside the four walls directly correlates to maintenance of the soul.

This I think is a very dangerous mindset to fall into. I think the more we clutter our house, the more it clutters our soul. I am not saying we all have to live in a white space minimalist box. I just think we 'the consumer' tend to get carried away with all the pretty things we are told will make our lives fuller, happier... better.

Right, that said I am off out to buy a compost bin, a door bell and other ever so practical objects to clutter house and garden.

Tags: home, diy, Consumerism