The credit crunch at Christmas
Winter festivals have been an opportunity to forget seasonal gloom and overindulge since pre-Christian times. Today we each spend an average of £400 on gifts and consume a hefty 6,000 calories on Christmas Day itself.
But this year's economic instability means that, for many, the festivities may be a little more subdued than usual. One upshot of the current situation is that we are beginning to question our obsession with material goods and to re-evaluate what makes us truly happy.
This period of self-reflection around our personal values could be good news for the environment too. Though economic stability is clearly desirable and benefits us all, if a recession causes us to consume less, there will naturally be less waste, fewer wasted resources and lower carbon emissions.
There is also evidence that a greater focus on the simpler pleasures of life may actually be better for our mental health.
The supermarkets certainly think that something is changing. Andy Bond, Chief Executive at Asda, recently predicted: "We are moving into an era of the frivolous being unacceptable and the frugal being cool...a fundamental shift that will see the emergence of a new breed of customer".
A report in April by WWF, 'Weathercocks and Signposts', went further arguing that those involved in marketing need to move away from promoting green products and services purely through financial incentives or appeals to people's sense of self-interest.
Instead, it suggested that people who follow 'intrinsic' goals - such as personal growth and community involvement - tend to be more highly motivated and more likely to engage in environmentally friendly behaviour than those motivated by 'extrinsic' goals such as financial success, image and material goods.
It is a debate that is particularly redolent for Waste Watch as we engage more with people around preventing waste, an issue explicitly linked to how much, and how, we consume. It is one thing to encourage recycling, but quite another to start talking to people about the way they consume and produce waste - factors intimately associated with basic lifestyle choices.
But when reducing waste and reusing items are being championed as 'cool' by opinion formers such as Bond, maybe this new era of frugality might give us the opportunity we all need to change our behaviour around waste for the long-term.
