Ethical New Year’s Resolutions

You’ve eaten the goose, the tree is wilting, you’ve overdosed on ‘You’ve Gorged Yourself To Death’ medicine, and there is still one night of celebration to go. One last night of bubbly and mince pies and inequality streets, and, incidentally, one last night of the 2015 Rubbish You.

Yes – Rubbish You – with your over ample back end, and your drink problem and your unfingered Dostoevsky’s – will all disappear in 2016 to reveal a surface shinny, bespoke New You, who exercises like Rocky Balboa, cooks like Nigella and reads like Matilda. Its a new dawn, its a new day…yada yada yada, who you trying to kid sister?

But I see nothing essentially wrong with New Year’s Resolutions, the problem is that us human folk have a tendency to aim high, but punch low. It is a part of the mentality that excuses Today You, with your inefficiencies and low moral standards, and implores Tomorrow You to pick up the pieces.  Indeed, most dreamy, I’m Going to Sort My Shit Out moments, happen just post large, uncoordinated indulgences. No wonder we all fall for it just after Jesus’s birthday, the biggest party in town.

So how about small changes? Habits you can learn in days, that will fold themselves under your fingernails and stick like bits of dried chilli? Things that are easy to change without having to suffer a full scale personality transplant? And how about making them ‘ethical changes'; little things that are supposed to be altruistic but are really about helping you get to sleep better at night? Well here are a few ideas…

Clean Naturally

Many people I have spoken to, although having an ambivalent attitude towards medical animal testing, are dead against animal testing on beauty products. As such, like me, they prefer to utilize companies such as Rimmel and Lush as their ‘against animal testing’ providers. However it took me a while before I stopped to consider animal testing on some of the household cleaners that I was using, such as bleach and multi purpose sprays. Though some ‘free from’ products are available, they are often expensive to buy. You can, however, go the au naturel route, and use lemon juice, vinegar and baking soda for free from testing products that also have Green credentials. There is a plethora of info on the webosphere on how it ought to be done. Simples!

Charity Shop 

Research suggests that a third of all the millions of pounds worth of clothes that we purchase, ends up in a landfill. Indeed, according to the EarthEasy website, 5% of all waste in North America is textile waste. We have come a distance from the days when charity shops were considered the last chance salon of the penny poor, and now amongst certain circles, they are deemed as vaunted meccas for those suffering from post austerity, ‘Cheap Chic’. Bu they have a point; if, as organisation WRAP have been making the case, we are binning such gargantuan amounts of perfectly wearable textiles, then charity shops, thrift stores and second hand boutiques should be the first post for all conscientious shoppers. If you don’t think you can go a year without buying a new frock or smock or set of crocks, consider going a year only purchasing second hand goods, and giving away anything you secretly know you’ll never wear/fit into again.

Drink Local 

I already had laid down my ‘buy local’ ethos for fruit and veg and other food stuffs, but in the last year I have started focusing on re-orientating my liquid geography in an effort to curb my carbon foot print. After water, wine is probably my preferred tipple and in some senses, the news for wine drinkers is good. According to the LiveScience website, most of the carbon footprint in wine comes from transportation, not production. So the easy solution is, indeed, to buy local, right? Well British made, organic wines can be pretty decent but not exactly cheap or accessible. In fact some of the cheapest most accessible wines in the country come from France, where some exporters have begun using old fashioned sailing methods from the Languedoc and Bordeaux regions, to reduce their footprint.

Though the amount of ‘footprint’ depends on the methodology – plane, boat or road – it still makes broad sense to buy wine in regions fairly close to the UK, so I stick with France, which also has high numbers of vegan friendly wines and is often pretty cheap at the German Supermarkets. Into the new year I’m going to annoy Victoria Coren Mitchell, and forego hipster blend teas and coffees flown in from a far and focus on drinking home-grown, herbals. If you haven’t a herbaceous border in your back garden, try buying locally grown mint or other fruits and herbs to make your own home brews.