I’m not really sure at this point, I will think, but it has to be something tough, and something you tell people about, donating to charity isn’t hard, and it’s something everyone with some spare money should do, nor is it unusual enough, even in large quantities, to make people think about their own lifestyle, which is the positive aspect of Dave Gorman’s America Unchained.

It’s a noble thought, I will see if I can come up with some suggestions.

On my drive home today I was thinking of our little problem and came up with two ideas:
1 Why just stop at clothes? Why not make sure all the food items (are you sensing a theme here?) we buy are from ethical supplies i.e. freedom foods, fair trade etc.

2. How about we cut down the amount of money we spend every week/month and then the rest that we’d have saved can be donated to a charity or good cause.This has the advantage of being difficult (something you seem to thrive on) as we have to consider every purchase we make and also research good causes to decide which is the most deserving of our hard saved cash.

Originally Posted By Ado
Now please say something silly so I can critise you and your ideas please :o)

Bonus points if you find an outfit made entirely of cheese.

Originally Posted By mbooth
One more thought occurs to address the problem of not buying clothes often:

With the clothing, maybe you could challenge yourself to buy one full responsibly manufactured outfit for yourself or G-Bot (shoes socks pants trouser shirt coat hat — go nuts) and document the process. This gives you both an end goal to aim for and the personal satisfaction of voting with your wallet. ;-)

Ah, a very interesting idea. I like that. This could be a good way to get started. Going through each piece of clothing idividually, limiting myself to one piece from any specific supplier (meaning I can’t just find one campany and buy everything for there). I could do both a smart (for work) and casual (for rocking parties plus lols). Doing a male and female outfit would also be good, not sure G’Narr would wear anything I bought her (especially if it’s made of hemp:o) but a good expansion…

Now please say something silly so I can critise you and your ideas please :o)

..but serious, good one. I’m warming to this idea…

Rules thus far would be:

-Ethically sourced clothes.
-Male & Female outfits and/or Smart and Casual.
-One piece of clothing from each source.

Originally Posted By Ado@mbooth -

Fair point, for the record I adore KFC but have, of late, found it less tastey as I’m thinking of all the wrongness it contains.

I completely agree regs it needing to be something dificult too. As I think I illustrated with my Olympics boycot, me being a HUGE sports fan, it really did hurt at times, but that’s surely the point.

Also, good point on the “publishing” side (damn I wish I could pick holes in your reasoning instead of praising your logic Mr Booth), doing something that is outside my current sphere of knowledge would lead to discovery, ergo something to inform about.

So, yes, all good points. Clothing is a good idea, problem is it’s not like I have to buy clothes very often, but that might be a good thing as it gives time for research too.

So I guess that’s a completely definate “I’m toying with the idea”. We have till the end of the week (well Sunday) to come up with ideas and I this is both a good idea and good points to think about…

PS, I’m not just automatically limit myself to one thing, I will decide (and be influenced collectively I’m sure) depending on the merit of each idea.

One more thought occurs to address the problem of not buying clothes often:

With the clothing, maybe you could challenge yourself to buy one full responsibly manufactured outfit for yourself or G-Bot (shoes socks pants trouser shirt coat hat — go nuts) and document the process. This gives you both an end goal to aim for and the personal satisfaction of voting with your wallet. ;-)

Fair point, for the record I adore KFC but have, of late, found it less tastey as I’m thinking of all the wrongness it contains.

I completely agree regs it needing to be something dificult too. As I think I illustrated with my Olympics boycot, me being a HUGE sports fan, it really did hurt at times, but that’s surely the point.

Also, good point on the “publishing” side (damn I wish I could pick holes in your reasoning instead of praising your logic Mr Booth), doing something that is outside my current sphere of knowledge would lead to discovery, ergo something to inform about.

So, yes, all good points. Clothing is a good idea, problem is it’s not like I have to buy clothes very often, but that might be a good thing as it gives time for research too.

So I guess that’s a completely definate “I’m toying with the idea”. We have till the end of the week (well Sunday) to come up with ideas and I this is both a good idea and good points to think about…

PS, I’m not just automatically limit myself to one thing, I will decide (and be influenced collectively I’m sure) depending on the merit of each idea.

Here’s one:

What about clothing? What if the challenge is to buy only clothing that you *know* is responsibly manufactured, where workers are paid fairly and treated decently?

It’s harder than simply avoiding something you could do without – since clothing is something that everybody *has* to buy at some point – so we must do our research. And research is good because then we can publish our findings, pointing out which manufacturers are to be avoided and which ones are “StuporCollider Friendly” or whatever. (The point here being that I don’t want to read about how you avoided McD’s for the hundredth time. Instead I think there’s scope here for meatier articles.)