An end to the throwaway society

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has announced that the developing world must orient itself to climate action; this is a “make it or break it” year.

We have the knowledge to meet this challenge. The alternative is climate changes creating violent weather, pollution, ruined environments, extinctions.

We must make cultural adjustments if we are to “make peace with Mother Nature”. We can modify our economic model and redefine profit to include planet health. We must move away from a throwaway, carbon-generating society and learn to value old outdated items that still work and can be repaired or recycled. The lovely clothes now out of fashion must not be discarded but treasured. The “keeping up with the Jones” by buying new things and clothes in the colour or fashion of the moment is finished.

We could benefit from understanding a Japanese philosophy that “nothing is perfect from the start, life worn items and signs of repair of an object symbolises the idea that its history is part of its beauty”.