I’m now nearly half-way through my carbon fast.

Emissions from my travel are still very low.

I only used my petrol-driven car once last week – when my bus did not arrive in time for me to meet a friend to join them in their Nissan Leaf electric car (powered by renewable energy) for an evening meeting.   I was very disappointed at not being able to get to the meeting the low-carbon way I had planned – especially as the meeting was about grass-roots activities to foster sustainability!  And I was unable to join the meeting via teleconference. 🙁   But I did get to have a quick ride in the electric car after the meeting. 🙂

And, with it being a wet week (very rare here), I found it mentally challenging to set out on foot with nothing but a big umbrella to keep me dry. And it did 🙂 …even in quite heavy rain 🙂 …until I discovered a leak somewhere in one of my shoes… Still, 40 minutes of walking in heavy rain and only getting wet toes in the last 10 minutes is pretty good.

I also found out that my shopping buggy does a really good job of keeping things dry – except for when a passing car throws up a puddle to drench its bottom. 😐

And there was the time riding my bike to a night meeting when the heavens opened up and my bottom half got drenched… (Mental note:  find waterproof – but breathable – long pants and footwear for cycling in the wet.)

My second big challenge has been to reduce the environmental footprint of my ‘stuff’…by not buying anything new.

With a culture of affluenza and female teenagers in the family, that is a real challenge!

But it has been going very well. 🙂

I was well on track to buying absolutely nothing until just over a week ago.

Then I discovered that one of my children needed new shoes.  And I mean REALLY needed new shoes:

So I bought some for her.

And a reference book I ordered before beginning the fast came into my local bookshop. So I had to pay for that too. (But note that this was a rare, well considered purchase of a book.  I had borrowed it from the library and read it…which is how I discovered that I would be using so frequently that I could not rely on the vagaries of whether or not it might be available from the library.)

But apart from that, I have bought no new stuff. 🙂

I’m feeling a lot more relaxed, especially as I have a bit more time to do other things. (How much time does shopping take…especially with a teen girl?)

My finances will be much better off. 😉

And I will be reducing my environmental footprint…and helping to reduce my contribution to the materials economic system that is wrecking our planet. 🙂

How do you cope with the ‘pressures’ to buy stuff? Just leave your comments in the Reply box below…or send me a voice message by clicking on the tab on the right.

Till next time…be gentle to yourself and our world!