Overdoing things

In 1994, Princess, a friend from the United States, visited me in Groningen, where I lived at the time. Before we went out to the supermarket in the local mall, I took a shopping bag with me. Princess remarked on the shopping bag as if it were something peculiar. You could get a new one at the supermarket, she said. I answered that it was wasteful to fetch a new bag from the shop. She then called me an environmental extremist. I had no car and travelled by train, so that might have made her think this. I already believed that Americans are wasteful consumers, so her remark confirmed my prejudice. Taking a shopping bag with you is a minor inconvenience, but where does it stop? In other words, what will life be like after the apocalypse?

Perhaps Princess was right. Most of my clothes are over twenty years old. Some come from a thrift shop. There are holes in my underwear. My excuse is that no one sees my underwear. Sometimes I take a bath when there is plenty of solar and wind energy. I have an electric heater to heat the water. When the sun doesn’t shine, I sometimes warm up a litre of water and take a washcloth to wash myself. Compared to taking a shower, it saves over 95% in energy and water. Now and then, I succumb to temptation and take a shower or a bath. And I can’t help but eat scraps others leave behind, or when my son still lived with us, use paper towels he had discarded after hardly using them.

Waste and spillage unnerve me. I had a poorly insulated old home. It caused distress, making me anxiously oversee my natural gas consumption. I could easily pay the bill, so it wasn’t that. Insulating my house and only heating the living room resolved my emotional issues. As a side benefit, I reduced my energy bill by 70%. Still, I can’t stop brooding over new ways to lower my energy consumption even further. I do office work and can work at 17 degrees Celsius with warm clothes and gloves. My mother once said that I overdo things. Buying second-hand is what poor people do. My parents were raised in poverty and had worked hard, so they could buy new things and enjoy luxuries.

I don’t want to upset others, so I try to act inconspicuously. Everyone should live a simple life, but for a long time, my argument was, ‘Who am I to tell others what to do?’ Later, the excuse became, ‘Who is going to believe me?’ It is not always possible to guess what disturbs others. Or I might forget. Once, I wore worn-out clothes to a family party. My father was not amused. That was an oversight. My father thinks it is disrespectful to the hosts. They don’t take offence, and I don’t take offence at my family’s excessive consumption. That has been their upbringing. They must know they turn our planet into a wasteland. But everyone else lives the good life, so what is the point?

What is normal?

Who is an extremist depends on what we consider normal. Today, we think it is normal to live at the expense of poor people and future generations. It is normal to aspire to a luxury yacht and extravagant living. You may not be able to afford it, but you can dream of it. That is the American Dream. My life is rather ordinary, albeit with a few luxuries. I don’t engage in extreme measures like turning off the heating or getting rid of my car. I might have done so if I had lived alone, but my wife doesn’t want it. It is not enough, but there is no point in scrapping comfort if you are the only one doing it. What is the point of living without comfort if others go on driving SUVs and taking holidays by aeroplane?

The only way to do it is to do it together. Wasteful lifestyles can’t remain the norm much longer, so if we don’t change, disaster is likely. We can manage. My great-grandparents hardly left the village they lived in. They had no car, no television, and probably had never been to Germany. That seems like extreme living now. But it is not as hard as it appears. The 80/20 rule states that, for many outcomes, roughly 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes. It means that for those who aren’t poor, an 80% reduction in consumption would reduce their well-being by 20%.

The Netherlands has a mild climate. Winters have become significantly milder in recent decades, so there is hardly any frost. Cuts in energy use will cause discomfort but little suffering. In many other locations, the situation is quite different. I once read a story of a guy in rural Ohio who had lived off the grid for one winter and shared his experience on a message board. He woke up to a harsh reality. Things freeze and break down. You can easily get injured and incapacitated. He will not do it again. And he couldn’t do without a car. More experienced people gave him tips. One commenter suggested that he should move to a warmer location. Alaska has its version of the 15-minute city, Whittier, where all 200 residents live in one building, complete with necessities like a shop and a church.

Time is money or convenience

In 2002, when I was unemployed for a few months, I tried my hand at an allotment garden. It was a lot of work. It got me a few vegetables I could buy cheaply at the supermarket. Once I had a job again, I gave it up. Not so long ago, most people grew their food because they were poor. They had no other job, so they had the time. There were no agricultural machines, so it was manual labour. Today, home-grown food is uneconomical. Working 1 hour at the office might buy the food that takes 40 hours of work if you grow it yourself. It is an economic calculation. If I could earn more by producing food than working at the office, I would quit my job and grow food. That is why few people grow their own food.

You can save money by cooking your own meals instead of eating out or ordering takeout. Alternatively, you could work more, and if you make more money than you save by cooking, eating out is economically optimal. Usually, you don’t make these calculations. I never go to the canteen at work. I spread my bread before going to work instead. Many people take the convenience to save time, often because they have no time due to their work commitments. They say that time is money. So, time equates to money or convenience. People who work in restaurants have jobs that wouldn’t exist if we cooked our own food. Many of these jobs are bullshit jobs.

The consumerist economy is about squandering resources and energy to make money. Advertisements tell us how easy a product is and how much time or trouble it saves us. They don’t tell us how many hours we work for it. Eating out is convenient, but you have to work longer hours to pay for it. You could work less when you cook your meals yourself. If you forego ease, you can have more time. In the past, people had time to grow their food or mend their clothes. That is a lot of work, but food and clothes were more expensive, or incomes were lower. Buying new clothes meant more work than mending the old ones, because they had to work more hours to afford them. It was economically efficient to mend clothes and grow food because they were poor.

Wealth and poverty

My closet still features clothes from forty years ago. My mother bought them when I was a teenager. Most clothes don’t last that long. The fashion industry is the second-largest polluter. It generates, among others, mountains of waste, including landfills of unsold clothes, 20% of the world’s water pollution, and 10% of global carbon emissions. The economy is about selling more stuff to generate profits. The latest trend is fast fashion, so clothes that fall apart after you have worn them a few times. Your clothes won’t last a season, and new ones are cheap, so you can always stay fashionable.

The world’s largest waste producer, China, is making new clothes affordable for everyone, including the poorest. New clothes from China have become cheaper than second-hand from Europe. Africans can now buy new clothes. And so, Africa is now finally becoming economically developed, thus consumerist and wasteful like the rest of the world. Today, many Africans have newer clothes than I have.

Who is rich and who is poor? To me, wealth is how long you can survive on your capital. So, if your expenses halve, and your capital remains the same, you are twice as rich. The wealth of humanity is how long we can sustain our lifestyles. At present, human consumption levels are unsustainable because they exceed the planet’s capacity. If we could consider this planet ours, which we can’t, we are eating up our capital. We are poor but could be rich and live off the interest of our capital if we reduce our consumption to sustainable levels. And if you have a capitalist spirit like me, and think ahead, you are willing to save and invest in the future.

Living without a car

Many car owners work one day per week to pay for their car. Using public transport may take longer, but without a car, you can skip one working day each week or retire earlier. And you can think further. Why should you make that trip? In the past, people hardly ever left their village. If your aunt celebrated her birthday and lived thirty kilometres away, you didn’t go. And no one was offended. You didn’t go anywhere. There were festivals in your village that you could attend. Once or twice a year, there was some entertainment. For the rest of the time, you had to entertain yourself or bore yourself. That is extreme living.

For many years, I didn’t have a car, despite having a job that required one. I lived in a remote city. My job was there, or at least 200 kilometres from home, so I had to stay in a hotel. In that case, I took a train to a station nearby and parked my bicycle there. In either case, I went to my work by bike, either from my home or from the hotel. Using public transport requires planning, extra time, and sometimes considerable sacrifice. I remember taking a thirty-minute walk through the snow to reach an office outside the city centre, as buses only went there during rush hour. And then there was all that waiting at train stations. It saved me money, allowing me to buy a house. After all, time is money.

After I met my wife, we could borrow her mother’s car if we needed one, or we rented one. When her mother’s car fell apart in 2003, I bought my own, a second-hand 1998 Opel Astra, which has now survived over 320,000 kilometres. But I still go to work by public transport. And I use public transport for trips, if it is not too much trouble. Later, I began thinking about ways to reduce energy consumption. One way was combining trips. So, if I visited my sister, I also visited my father. That saved 200 kilometres of driving. We went to the forest nearly weekly, a 60-kilometre round trip to see some trees. There are parks near home. And so, we walk in these parks instead.

Turning down the heating

My grandparents had no central heating. It was cold inside their home, and it could even freeze. They warmed themselves at the stove in the living room, the only warm place. Central heating is a luxury we can do without. In 2022, Vlad the Empire Builder decided to launch a special military operation in Ukraine, leading to the termination of cheap Russian gas supplies to Europe. Natural gas prices skyrocketed for a while. To save energy, many people resorted to extreme measures, such as turning down the heating or only heating the living room. Some even turned off the heating entirely and put on a warm vest or a coat. You may not want to go that far, but heating only the living room makes sense.

Newspapers in the Netherlands featured a series about people who cut their energy use. Take, for example, Adri from Yerseke and his wife, who heat the living room of their 1906 home with a modern AC unit. They have insulated the walls, installed high-efficiency windows, and installed solar panels on the property. They consume 2,400 kWh of electricity and generate 3,000 kWh per year. Their natural gas use is nearly zero, as they shower only occasionally and wash themselves with a washcloth. Switching from central heating to an AC in the living room is probably what generates the most savings.

In our living room, the winter temperature is 19°C. I also made some changes in recent years, such as insulating poorly isolated rooms. An AC is now the primary source of heating. Only if the AC can’t maintain the temperature does the central heating come into play. As a result, the remainder of the house remains barely heated, which is where most of the cost savings come from. I work in a small room in the attic with an electric heater. When working there in the winter, I may wear warm clothes and gloves, and put an electric pillow on my lap. When you choose to do these things, it feels much better than when you must because you can’t afford the energy bill. But it is how we should live.

Growing your own food or local farming

Growing food is a lot of work. I had an allotment garden for one season. Sneek had clay soil, which is sturdy, thus not easy to till. The cost savings were negligible, probably less than the plot’s rent. Vegetables and potatoes in the supermarket are affordable, so the allotment garden wasn’t worth the hassle. I suspect we will live simpler lives in the future, yet I don’t foresee 90% of the population working in agriculture, as was the case in the Middle Ages. In wealthy countries, that number might rise, but not above 10% I suspect.

We will still have much more energy than we had for most of history. We will discontinue unnecessary economic activities and allocate a greater share of our resources to agriculture. And so, agriculture will probably remain largely mechanised and carried out by professional farmers. Today, farmers sell their produce to national and even global markets. European wine ends up in the United States, and California wine ends up in Europe. That is resource inefficient.

High energy prices may revive diversified farming for local and regional markets, as well as growing crops in their respective seasons. That was also the case in the past. Today, we have supermarkets. Selling local products may require a separate distribution channel, such as a person collecting produce from farmers and selling it to local customers. Several foods require centralised industrial processing for safety reasons, but a wide range of foodstuffs is suitable for local production and consumption.

Not throwing away

Recycling costs energy and doesn’t fully recover all the waste. So, what about not throwing things away in the first place? You can recycle glass by dumping it in a glass container, but turning it into new glass costs energy. And there is so much packaging. You go to a shop, buy a bottle, and throw away the old one when it is empty. That is normal. An outlandish suggestion is to have a tank in the supermarket where we can refill our reusable bottles. And we could bring bags with us for bread and fruit.

There are some considerations. It might not be a good idea for perishable foodstuffs. It is also advisable not to mix skin care products with detergents. It is best to use separate bottles designed for each substance to prevent accidental mixing. The hardest part is that we have to bring these bottles and bags to the shop. We have to plan and take the bottles and bags with us. That is an inconvenience that modern consumers might consider outrageous.

Finally, there are a few extreme ideas that might get you out of your comfort zone. You can save energy and water by showering or bathing less frequently and using a washcloth instead of a shower or a bath. You warm a bit of water, add some soap, and there you are. Some people change clothes daily. Once or twice a week can be enough in many cases. You can also switch to less frequent underwear changes, such as every other day instead of daily. Washing your clothes less frequently saves energy and extends their lifespan.

Latest revision: 29 November 2025

1. Welcome To Whittier, Alaska, A Community Under One Roof. NPR (2015).