Shopping

What we buy, how we take care of it and how we dispose of it are all important things to consider when we think about our environmental impact.

Shop with purpose

Our love for the latest style or model is having a very real impact on our waste. While it may be hard to resist that impulse buy, much of the stuff we buy ends up in landfill. Knowing what you're looking for before you shop wastes less time, money and helps cut down on waste. When buying clothes, for example, think about which colours and styles work for you and try to buy items that go with the things you already own. Most importantly, try to invest in things that will last.

Pack it in!

Packaging makes up about five per cent of the average shopping basket and in the UK we produce 9.3 million tonnes of waste packaging a year. Follow these simple steps:

• Look for unpackaged or minimally packaged goods.
• Take your own bags out shopping
• Try to buy in bulk
• Recycle or reuse any packaging you end up with.
• Name and shame the excessive packagers - upload your photos to our Pack it in! rogues’ gallery on Flickr.

Wash it well

About 75-80 per cent of our clothing's environmental impact comes from washing and drying. But if, for example, you wore your jeans at least three times, washed them in cold water and dried them on the line, you would use five times less energy. Here are our tips:

• Wear it again – is it really time to wash it?
• Wait until you have a full load.
• Try to use a cold-water rinse.
• Hang it out to dry. Air drying uses no energy at all.
• If you must use a dryer, try to do several loads at once. By drying loads one after the other you can take advantage of the leftover heat.
• Ditch the iron - it also consumes energy, deteriorates fabric and it’s not exactly everyone’s favourite chore. Try hanging clothes up immediately after you take them out of the machine.

Get crafty

Do you know how to sew on a button? Replace a zip? Take up a hem? Learning these basic skills can really help you get a bit of extra life out of your clothes. If you are feeling creative you may even want to customise your old clothes, turn them into something completely different or even make completely new ones from scratch.

You could find a friend, a parent or a grandparent with these skills and ask them to show you. You could also join an online community such as Burda Style where you can watch tutorials and swap tips with others. Or you could search for projects on blogs like Craft Zine. Of course, if all this seems a little bit daunting you could find the name of a local tailor or seamstress who can make repairs and alterations for you.

Donate, don’t dump

When you’ve finished with your clothes, books, DVDs or toys, why not donate them to a local charity shop? You’ll be giving them a new life and supporting charitable work in the process.

In this section