I have been feeling the weight of privilege a lot recently and I feel like I need to address some of it here on this page. I read many blogs that are always offering better ways to live whether it be through the food you cook, the clothes you wear, the way you style your home, etc. and very few of them acknowledge that there is a level of privilege that comes with all of it. For this particular way that I am offering, less waste, I need to acknowledge that it, too requires privilege. It requires the privilege of time, finances, transportation, location, community resources, etc. It would seem that living with less waste would require less. It doesn’t. It requires more. More time to plan, time and transportation to go to all the different locations for your less waste products, living in a community that offers food in bulk, money to pay for less waste/local food because often, in order to live less waste in a city setting, it is more expensive to eat this way. Also, you have to live in an area that offers recycling or an area that offers bulk products.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some ways that living less waste is cheaper. For instance, buying from thrift/consignment stores, buying less meat, using what you have to create something that you need instead of buying new, cooking from scratch (sometimes), and just buying less in general. And I’m pretty sure that if we homesteaded off grid, it would be a lot cheaper but that’s not where we are.

I have truly tried to offer suggestions that many people can do despite income, jobs, living locations, etc. but I need to take this time to let you know that I understand the constraints that you have. I understand that we can’t all afford to buy from the butcher (for us, we have had to cut way down due to some budget constraints but now that I know what I know about the meat industry it means I can’t buy meat from the typical grocery and am having to get creative with vegetarian dishes) and we all don’t have the time to go consignment shopping or the transportation ability to go to the bulk store as well as the soap store and the other grocery store. There are folks that have to take multiple buses just to get to one grocery. I need to acknowledge this but I also need to encourage that even with constraints there are things that we can do to produce less waste everyday and yes, it might take sacrifice (I miss a lot of my meat meals!) but I hope you are doing what you can.