2007: The Hottest Year Ever!

I have a twisted tendency to get excited about record-breaking events related to climate change. Tornados in Birmingham and London, Hurricane Katrina, the floods in Mozambique. There was even a slight twinge of vindication when I first heard the news that the World Trade Centre was a target for protest. A quick chain of assumptions was shackled together in my head: capitol of capitalism > consumption > oil > inequality > backlash > end of Bush > end of consciousless capitalism. I still think this tiny sliver of silvery lining in such a thick black cloud will result in a positive step forward in the great scheme of things... it's got to after such an historically painful chain of events.

Basically, if a disaster qualifies as a headline story... and the media alludes to a link with climate change - I take solace in the fact that the message is getting through... Trouble is, with every new disaster comes compassion fatigue and the assumption that it's inevitably going to get worse and worse and the only thing you can do to forget about it is to distract yourself.

Ironically, the most common distraction of 'choice' is retail therapy. Being an eco- designer doesn't stop me from partaking in this dirty litle habit. I try and consume my neighbours' waste (skip-dive) and then wrack my brain to find a way of re-incarnating their dead products and leftovers as useful or at least mildly attractive objects. It recently hit me, that for the most part, I make storage solutions ... in order to hide away my own stuff and pretend I live a minimalist life.

I am now baby-sitting half of my friend's stuff for a year while she flies off to 'live lightly' on the other side of the world for a year or two. I had to witness the painful take-it/store-it/chuck-it ritual and couldn't help being drawn into the debate about whether she'd be able to sell her Radio-Shack cassette tape player on Ebay or not.... or indeed, could an African child adopt it?

This said, my new year's resolution is to waste less time worrying about waste, waste less space storing stuff so as not to waste it and waste less time trying to find the stuff I've stored.

This said, I'm not going to completely give in to the temptations of disposable products. I'm not going to absolve my guilt by dumping cheap tack outside the nearest charity shop. I'm not just going to drive to the recycling centre to dump my guilt.


RECYCLE, RE-USE, REDUCE, REJECT
My problem is not the junk that I buy... being a proper designer, I spend hours agonising over every purchase, whether for me or a gift for someone else. I always choose the best thing I can nearly afford and (usually) only what I really need. My problem is all those thought-that-counts gifts and the stuff I've saved simply because I coudn't face the fact that no-one else was using it.

I need to implement my own environmental policy. "I don't want or need anything for Christmas" will never be an acceptable answer for some of my friends and relatives. I need to do what I expect from responsible multinationals at a personal level and put pressure on my 'suppliers' else I'll continue to end up with, or more importantly, my son will continue to receive all the tack in China. At least this year we kept our side of the 'one present each' bargain... which is a start!

2007 will be about getting rid of what we can't store and cleverly storing what we can. It will be about letting people - not stuff or TV shows - back into our home. I can amuse them with my almost fetishistic positive spin on all things disastrous (man-made or otherwise). For instance, in terms of what not to talk about at dinner parites, Iraq now encompasses every taboo (religion, politics and even sex) in one topic... but on the lighten up people: Saddam's dead, Rumsfeld's finally been thrown out and next year, Bush WILL be too (insha'Allah).

If the Met office is right - and as a long suffering, self-righteous eco-warrior, I hope they are - London's streets and Victorian buildings are not pleasant places to endure record-breaking temperatures. Come cool yourselves in our basement flat and shady garden. The green shoots are already peeping through the soil!