In this episode of Enough Stuff, we’re talking about what sustainability looks like in real life. Not in a perfectly curated routine, but in the everyday choices that quietly add up over time.

If you’ve already started thinking more intentionally about your habits, this episode is your next step. We’re focusing on practical actions that are realistic, repeatable, and actually impactful.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• Why your default purchases matter more than occasional “perfect” choices

• How reducing food waste can save money and resources

• Why slowing down your shopping habits changes everything

• The power of a few simple anchor habits you can rely on

• How to measure progress without perfectionism

This episode is for anyone who wants to live more sustainably without burnout, guilt, or overcomplicating it.

Small shifts matter. Repeated often, they become a lifestyle.

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Questions, feedback, collaborations, or topic ideas:enoughstufflauren@tutamail.com

If You Enjoyed This Episode

Please follow, rate, and share Enough Stuff with someone who’s trying to live with less pressure, less waste, and more intention.

Music by Ness Nöst, find her music wherever you stream your tunes!

There’s a version of sustainability that looks really good online.

It’s clean, curated and full of swaps that seem to just make sense! Bamboo instead of plastic, refillable instead of single-use, organic, ethical, low-impact everything. It feels productive, like you’re doing something, like you’re part of the solution.

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And to be fair, some of it matters, it doesn’t not matter…

But there’s an unsung truth sitting underneath it all and it’s a lot less marketable and profitable (because that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day).

The most sustainable thing you can do, often, is… nothing! Boom!

Not nothing in the sense of apathy, but nothing in the sense of not adding more.

The uncomfortable reality is this: most of the environmental damage tied to our daily lives doesn’t come from using the wrong version of something, it comes from how much of everything we consume in the first place. The numbers around this are hard to ignore once you see them. The fashion industry alone is responsible for around 10% of global carbon emissions (!!!), and yet people are buying more clothing than ever while wearing each piece less and less. The average garment is worn a fraction of the times it used to be just a couple of decades ago. It’s not just what we buy, it’s how quickly we move on from it.

The same pattern is showing up everywhere: electronics are replaced every few years even though they still work, furniture gets swapped out for aesthetic reasons or small tears, perfectly usable items get upgraded, optimized, improved, and quietly discarded.

We’ve built a culture where replacing something feels like progress, even when nothing was actually wrong with the thing we discarded to begin with.

And sustainability, ironically, has been folded into that same mindset.

We don’t just buy things anymore, we buy better things. Eco versions. Conscious versions. Low-waste versions. But we’re still buying, still replacing, still participating in a system that depends on constant turnover to function.

So the question that rarely gets asked is this: what if the issue isn’t that we’re choosing the wrong products, but that we’ve been trained to keep choosing at all?

Because “doing something” feels good. It gives you a sense of control in a situation that often feels overwhelming. You’re made to feel that buying the sustainable option is a step in the right direction. It’s visible. It’s immediate. It’s easy to justify and made yourself feel like you’re doing good by Mother Earth.

Doing nothing feels different.

Doing nothing looks like wearing the same coat year after year without feeling the need to upgrade it (unless your body has changed). It looks like keeping your phone until it actually stops working, not until a new model comes out. It looks like walking past something you could afford and deciding you don’t need it anyway as well as admiring something that you know would look really good on you but opting to give life to the things you already have and love.

There’s no dopamine hit in that.

Just a quiet decision to opt out.

And that’s where it gets uncomfortable, because opting out goes against everything we’ve been taught about what it means to move forward. About growth, improvement, self-expression, all of it has been tied to acquiring something new and acquiring constant upgrades. Even sustainability has been packaged as something you can shop your way into.

But if you zoom out, the math doesn’t quite add up.

Global material consumption has more than tripled since 1970, and it’s still accelerating. We extract over 100 billion tonnes of raw materials every year to sustain modern lifestyles. Recycling helps (ish), but only a small fraction of those materials actually cycle back into use, a closed loop system. The rest becomes waste, emissions, or long-term environmental strain.

So even if every product became slightly more sustainable, the sheer volume of consumption would still be a problem.

That’s the part that doesn’t fit neatly into a brand campaign, “buy less” isn’t very profitable. “Use what you have” doesn’t drive engagement. “Nothing new this month” doesn’t look aspirational in a world that runs on novelty.

And yet, that’s where the real shift happens.

Not in swapping one product for another, but in questioning the instinct to replace at all.

You start to notice how often the urge to buy something isn’t about need, it’s about mood, that’s what is targetted. Boredom, stress, the desire for a reset, the feeling that something in your life needs to change and a new object might help trigger that change (dude, how many times have I fallen into this trap).

Sometimes it does, briefly.

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But more often, it just adds to the background noise.

More things to manage, to store, to think about, to eventually get rid of (and send to the landfill, eventually).

Doing nothing, in that context, isn’t passive. It’s a kind of resistance, it’s a power we have it our back pocket, it’s activism that isn’t visible.

It’s saying maybe I don’t need to optimize this part of my life. Maybe I don’t need a better version. Maybe the version I already have is enough and isn’t broken.

And that word, enough, is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Because we don’t really talk about it anymore.

We seem to talk ad nauseam about upgrades, improvements, next steps, but very rarely do we find ourselves talking about stopping points. Rarely about the moment where you decide you’ve reached a place that doesn’t need to be expanded.

What would change if that became the goal?

If sustainability wasn’t about finding the perfect product, but about reaching a point where you genuinely needed less of them?

It doesn’t mean never buying anything again. It doesn’t mean rejecting every convenience or living in some extreme version of minimalism.

It just means pausing long enough to ask a different question.

Not “what’s the most sustainable option here?” But “do I need another option at all?”

Because in a system designed to keep you consuming, choosing not to can be one of the most impactful things you do.

It’s subtle, it’s invisible and no one will be congratulating you for it.

But it does add up, quietly, over time.

And maybe that’s the shift we need more of. Less focus on perfect choices, more focus on fewer choices. Less pressure to do sustainability “right,” more willingness to simply do less.

Not everything needs a replacement.

Not everything needs an upgrade.

Sometimes the most sustainable version of your life is the one where nothing new gets added at all.

Like most days, Earth Day always arrives with good intentions.

There are the reminders to bring your reusable bags, the social media posts about planting trees, the quiet encouragement to do a little better, try a little harder, care a little more. It’s gentle, hopeful, in a way that feels necessary.

But if you dare sit with it for a moment longer than usual, skim past the surface of it all, there’s something else there too.

I suppose this other feeling could be described as a quiet kind of grief.

Loving the Earth in 2026 doesn’t feel the way it used to feel, does it? It’s not just hiking trails or ocean views and the idea of protecting something beautiful. It’s holding two (conflicting and difficult) truths at the same time. That this planet is still astonishingly alive, and that we are actively unraveling parts of it in ways that are hard to fully comprehend.You can feel it in small ways.

You feel it in the seasons that don’t quite behave like they used to or in the news alerts that feel increasingly familiar and close. The way extreme weather is no longer shocking to any of us, just kind of…expected. It settles into the background of our lives, something we scroll past on a Tuesday morning while drinking coffee and not even batting an eye.

And that normalization might be the most unsettling part. Not the disasters themselves, but how quickly we absorb them and easily move on (if we’re not personally effected).

We’ve become very good at carrying on. At adjusting, at continuing on with our routines while knowing, somewhere in the back of our minds, that things are shifting in ways we don’t have control over. There’s an insidious tension in that, one we don’t always have adequate language for.

What do you do with a problem that is this big, this slow, and this entangled in the way we live?

Earth Day tries to give us an answer, it’s put aside as a day to reflect and ponde.

It offers action and invites us to begin habits that will travel into the future with us. Small, tangible steps: recycle this, reduce that, choose better. And those things matter, they certainly do, but they can also feel strangely insufficient when you zoom out. Like trying to hold back a tide with a handful of good habits.

This is where it feels like we just we move between two states. Trying, and doubting. Caring, and feeling overwhelmed in the process, wanting to be hopeful, and not quite knowing what that means anymore (damn, this is a bit bleak).

Correct me if I’m wrong but maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough, that caring about the Earth right now is complicated for a myriad of reasons.

It’s not just the appreciation we try to find in each day, it’s also responsibility of being a caring human treading on the earth. It’s not just admiration, it’s also the awareness that goes hand in hand with it. It’s not just about what we love here, it’s about what we might lose, and what we are already actively losing.

There’s a kind of heartbreak in that. Allow yourself to feel that today.

It’s not loud, not always visible, but present in the way people talk about the future now. In the hesitation, in the questions, in the uncertainty about what lies ahead. It shows up in important conversations like where to live, whether to have children, how to plan a life when the baseline assumptions about stability are shifting and uncertain.

And yet, despite all of that, the world keeps offering moments that feel impossibly intact and chalked full of hope.

Something as simple and profound as a warm day after a long winter or the sound of birds early in the morning after a light rainfall or the trees returning to green like they always have. There’s something almost disorienting about it all and how normal it can feel, how easy it can be to forget everything else for a moment and just exist inside it.

Maybe that’s part of the tension too.

The Earth and the beauty all around us doesn’t disappear all at once. It changes gradually, unevenly, in ways that are both visible and invisible depending on where you’re standing. That means you can love it deeply while also knowing it’s under strain, and those two feelings don’t cancel each other out. They can coexist.

So maybe Earth Day isn’t just about action, maybe it’s also about attention.

About noticing what’s still here, not in a way that ignores the reality of what’s happening, but in a way that keeps you connected to it because it’s hard to care for something you’ve stopped really seeing and immersing yourself into.

Maybe it’s about honesty too.

About admitting that this isn’t a simple story with a clean resolution. That progress exists alongside setbacks. That individual actions matter (even when we’re constantly being told they don’t), but they don’t carry the whole weight. That hope isn’t always a feeling, sometimes it’s a choice you make without full evidence that things will turn out okay.

There’s something grounding in that, even if it’s not particularly comforting, you know? It shifts the focus slightly. Away from perfection, from doing everything right and more toward something quieter and more sustainable in its own way.

Paying attention, staying engaged and letting yourself care, even when it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable, is fundamental.

The Earth doesn’t need one perfect day of awareness each year.

It feels like what the Earth really needs is a long, imperfect relationship with people who are willing to keep looking at it clearly and treating each day like Earth Day.

Even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard.

The next two episodes I’ll be putting out will be parts two and three of this series!

But even if you think you know it all, you may still be confronted by something you never thought about, so there’s that too!

If you want to be a guest on the podcast or have any questions you want me to answer on a future episode of the pod, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at my email enoughstufflauren@gmail.com!

The intro/outro song is “Green Grass Stand Tall” by Ness Nöst, you can find her music wherever you stream.

We love to blame the cloud because it feels distant and abstract, like something happening somewhere else, far away from our daily lives (and that’s kind of true, we don’t all live next to servers). Rows of servers, giant buildings, technical systems that we don’t fully understand. It sounds like the problem lives over there.

But the cloud isn’t the full story, it’s just the storage. The real pressure comes from what we do with it.

Streaming has quietly become one of the biggest drivers of internet energy use, and not in a subtle way, at all. Video now makes up the majority of global internet traffic, which means most of what moves through the internet at any given moment is not emails or articles or even social media posts, it’s video being watched, buffered, reloaded, and autoplayed across the world (in ultra HD, a lot of the time).

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Think about how normal it feels to come home, open Netflix, and let something play without really deciding what you want to watch. Or how easy it is to fall into an endless scroll on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram, where the next video loads before you’ve even processed the last one. It doesn’t feel like consumption because there’s no effort involved. It just happens and we mindlessly devour it.

What makes this more complicated is the quality we’ve come to expect. High definition used to feel like a luxury, now it’s the default and when we don’t get it, we are not satisfied. Ultra HD and 4K are marketed as the standard even though most people are watching on screens where the difference is barely noticeable. The jump in data use, though, is very real. Higher resolution means more data moving, more energy required and more strain on systems that were never designed for this level of constant demand.

So even when it feels like you’re doing nothing, just watching a show or letting videos play in the background, there’s an entire physical system working to keep that experience seamless. Data centres drawing power, networks transmitting huge amounts of information, devices constantly refreshing and loading. It’s all built to feel invisible, which is why we rarely question it and not seeing the stress on the system.

And that’s where it starts to mirror something we’ve seen before.

Streaming has turned media into something disposable. There’s no real commitment, no waiting, no sense of choosing something carefully because everything is available all the time. You can start a series and abandon it halfway through without thinking twice. You can watch passively, half paying attention, half scrolling on your phone. The volume goes up while the value of each individual thing goes down.

It’s the same pattern that shaped fast fashion. When access becomes unlimited, consumption follows.

What’s interesting is that some people are starting to move in the opposite direction, not out of nostalgia alone but out of a kind of quiet fatigue and they don’t want that and neither do they want it for their kiddos! DVDs are showing up in living rooms again. Old players are being pulled out or bought secondhand. Even VHS tapes, which once felt completely obsolete, are finding their way back into heavy rotation.

There’s something different about putting on a DVD. You get to choose it. You sit with it, there’s no algorithm pushing you toward something else halfway through. You’re not connected to a system that needs to stream data continuously just to keep you entertained. It’s a smaller, more contained experience, and that changes your relationship to it. Not to mention you’re not being asked to buy crap you don’t need every 10 minutes.

Owning something physical also means it doesn’t need to be delivered to you again and again through a network. The energy use isn’t constant in the same way. It exists, of course, but it isn’t tied to every single viewing. That distinction matters more than we tend to think.

None of this means everyone should throw out their streaming subscriptions and start collecting DVDs. That’s not realistic, and it’s not really the point I’m trying to make. What matters is noticing how much we’ve normalized constant, high-quality, always-on consumption without ever asking what it costs behind the scenes.

Because the system only expands in response to demand. The more we stream (or buy fast fashion, for that matter), the more infrastructure is built to support it and cater to it and our needs. The more we expect instant, high-definition access, the more energy is required to deliver it. It’s all designed to feel effortless and addictive so the demand goes up.

So maybe the more interesting question isn’t whether streaming is bad. It’s whether we’ve ever stopped to consider how much of it we actually want or need.

If the quality dropped slightly, if autoplay disappeared, if there were just a bit more friction in the experience, would you notice? Would you watch less, or would you just become more aware of how often you press play without thinking?

The cloud matters, but it’s not the quiet storage of old files that’s pushing the system hardest. It’s the constant flow of video, the endless demand for more, the expectation that everything should be available instantly and in perfect quality, for us.

That expectation feels normal now. It feels harmless.

But it isn’t weightless, and it never was.

Let me know in the comments your thoughts about this and send this to someone who you think might feel it.

If you care about sustainability, clean living, and making informed choices in a world full of hidden environmental costs, this episode is for you.

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The intro/outro song is “Green Grass Stand Tall” by NESS NÖST, find her on IG and wherever you stream your tunes.

I have spent countless hours over the last 1.5 years writing, recording, researching and unlearning (and learning, too).

As of today, there are 300 of you that have put your faith in me and the Enough Stuff way of life.

Three hundred of you making a vow to challenge the way you currently do things. Top question the status quo and to adopt and adapt to thoughts and ways that you maybe never gave a second thought to. This is the Enough Stuff ethos. Questioning, learning, unlearning, there’s time and space for it all when you make the time and the space for it.

When I started this Substack, 1.5 years ago, reaching this many people was only a vague idea (and a bit of a crazy one, at that). An abstract number in my mind, I never fathomed it would ever actually happen.

But here we are, here you are, my faithful reader. You have put your time and trust into me and I will not let you down as we march on into this time of uncertainty.

So thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I wouldn’t be here writing if it weren’t for your patronage and interest. I wouldn’t have kept writing if it weren’t for all of you who open my email week after week, I do this for you.

I vow to you, going forward, to continue bringing you an honest, straightforward and heart centred approach to living a more sustainable and intentional existence on this beautiful planet we are blessed to call home.

Warmly,

Lauren of Enough Stuff

Somewhere, right now, in a windowless building the size of several football fields, machines are working around the clock to store our screenshots of a recipe we’ll forget we have in a week’s time.

These machines are storing our unread newsletters, our duplicate vacation photos, our hundreds of blurry photos of thumbs (yes, we' all have them), our 47-second videos of nothing in particular. And all the rest, it’s all there. Like me, I didn’t remember backing up my entire phone library to google photos about 4 years ago. I just found them, they’d been sitting there, taking up 12 gigs of space on a server, unbeknownst to me, for YEARS. Three hours of my life is what I dedicated to deleting them. Yes, it’s time I’ll never get back, but at least I nipped that in the bud!

We talk about the cloud like it’s floating above us, soft and harmless. Sounds like it, right?

It isn’t.

It’s concrete, steel, cables, cooling systems, and a staggering amount of electricity. It’s server farms that need to stay on every second of every day because the modern world panics if anything buffers for too long. It’s physical infrastructure built to hold our collective inability to delete things. The internet feels infinite. Storage plans keep getting bigger. “Unlimited” is the most seductive word in tech (but someone is always paying a price).

But nothing physical is unlimited.

Every photo you keep has a cost. Every email you never open has a cost. Every auto-play video that rolls while you’re not even watching has a cost. Not catastrophic individually but planetary at scale. And scale is where this gets uncomfortable.

Because you are not the problem. But you are also not separate from it.

We like environmental villains to be obvious: oil companies, coal plants, plastic manufacturers. And yes, they deserve scrutiny. But the digital economy has quietly become one of the fastest-growing sources of energy demand on Earth, fuelled not by necessity alone, but by convenience, boredom, and habit.

We don’t just use the internet anymore. We live inside it (this thought alone should be enough to send a shiver down your spine).

Think about how often you generate data without meaning to. Your phone backs up automatically, apps track everything, platforms store everything, algorithms encourage constant posting because content is currency. Even inactivity produces data.

Your life is being archived in real time (even this post, no one is immune).

And almost none of it is being cleaned up.

Open your camera roll. Scroll for ten seconds. How much of that would you actually print, frame, or deliberately save if storage weren’t effortless? How many versions of the same photo? How many screenshots of things you never revisited? How many blurry shots taken “just in case”?

Digital clutter accumulates because there is no friction. Just like a big house waiting to be filled, we feel the need to fill the “empty” space we’re given.

But it’s not like a house because there it no full closet door refusing to close, no overstuffed drawer, no moving boxes you have to carry. Just silent expansion on someone else’s hardware.

We’ve created the first form of hoarding that doesn’t look like hoarding. And here’s the part almost no one talks about: digital clutter creates mental clutter too.

Endless tabs. Endless notifications. Endless archives of your past self. Decisions you never made about what matters and what doesn’t. It’s not just environmental weight, it’s cognitive weight.

Your brain knows you haven’t dealt with it.

That low-grade “I should clean this up” feeling? Multiply it across millions of tiny digital spaces. Inbox. Photos. Downloads. Desktop. Notes app. Saved posts. Bookmarks. Cloud drives.

We are drowning in invisible stuff.

And unlike physical clutter, there’s no satisfying before-and-after montage to motivate you. No aesthetic payoff. No one compliments your streamlined Google Drive.

So we ignore it until your storage fills up or you can’t find anything. Until your phone slows down or until the anxiety spikes just enough to buy more space instead of reducing what’s already there.

Because buying more storage is easier than confronting excess. Have you felt this way?

This is the exact same logic that created fast fashion, overstuffed homes, and landfills full of things that were once “useful.” The digital world didn’t solve overconsumption, it just made it less visible.

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But here’s the hopeful part: digital decluttering might be one of the highest-impact, lowest-effort sustainability actions available to most people. Especially those of us whose work, social lives, and entertainment are largely online.

You don’t need to spend money, need special equipment or perfect habits. You just need to delete more than you add.

If you don’t know where to start, here’s a brutally effective reset:

The 10-Minute Digital Detox That Actually Matters

• Search your inbox for “unsubscribe” and mass-delete or opt out

• Empty your spam and trash folders (they still count while stored)

• Delete duplicate photos — especially videos

• Remove apps you haven’t opened in months

• Clear your downloads folder (the digital junk drawer)

• Turn off auto-play on social platforms

• Cancel newsletters you signed up for during a productivity phase you no longer remember

• Stop backing up screenshots automatically

• Choose quality over quantity when you take photos

• Close tabs you are realistically never going back to

Will this save the planet overnight? Of course not.

But it will do something powerful: it shifts you from passive data accumulation to intentional digital living.

And once you feel that difference, it’s hard to go back. Because what most people discover is that digital minimalism isn’t about deprivation, it’s about relief.

Less noise. Less searching. Less guilt. Less background stress. Less energy used to maintain things you don’t even value.

More clarity. More speed. More presence. More control.

Because the goal isn’t to live offline.

The goal is to stop letting invisible clutter run the show.

If you’ve ever felt that weird mix of guilt and paralysis when your storage warning pops up… if your inbox feels like a to-do list you never agreed to… if your phone feels less like a tool and more like a junk drawer you carry everywhere…

This is for you.

You don’t need a new device. You don’t need another subscription.

You just need less.

The internet isn’t going anywhere but the way we exist inside it can change in a quiet, personal and immediate way.

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So here’s the question that tends to stop people mid-scroll:

If a stranger had to sort through your digital life tomorrow, how much of it would you be embarrassed to admit you kept?

Not because it’s private, but because it’s pointless.

We don’t get to control everything about the climate crisis but we do get to control how much excess we personally generate, physical or digital. Whether you’re cognizant of it or not, your data has a footprint, your habits have weight and your “just in case” files live somewhere real.

The warehouse is filling up either way.

The only question is whether your digital life will be part of the problem or part of the cleanup.

Your brain will notice. Your devices will notice. And yes, on a massive scale, the planet notices too.

We can take back control though.

Through mindfully divesting from big tech and cloud space to storing our precious memories on external hard drives, there is a way out.

You can follow me on Instagram at enoughstufflauren and you can also reach out to me via email at enoughstufflauren@tutamail.com!

Intro/outro music by my profoundly talented friend Ness Nöst who can be found wherever you stream your music and on Instagram at nessnost!

We tend to picture pollution as smokestacks, oil spills or plastic floating in the ocean and yes, those are scary and legit examples of what’s happening around us, the tangible and visible things. But there’s far more insidious that we tend to turn a blind eye to, whether it’s because we choose to or not…

It’s those unread emails sitting in your inbox. Ever think about those guys?

We don’t picture the 14,392 (you know who you are) unread emails sitting quietly in a server farm somewhere. We don’t picture the cloud (which sounds so soft and harmless) as a network of massive, energy-hungry data centers humming 24/7, cooled by industrial systems, backed by power grids that are not magically carbon-free.

So here’s an uncomfortable truth, do what you will with it: your digital life has a physical footprint.

Every email you send doesn’t just disappear into thin air, it’s stored on a server along with every “just checking in” message or YouTube video you send your friend. Every newsletter you meant to unsubscribe from, it’s there too. Every duplicate photo automatically backed up and every Slack thread that should’ve died three replies ago, you guessed it, they’re there too.

The internet feels weightless but it isn’t.

Data centers: the physical buildings that store and process our digital lives, consume enormous amounts of electricity. They run constantly and they depend on immense cooling systems and they also count on backup systems. They need redundancy systems too and as our appetite for storage grows, so does the infrastructure required to support it.

Streaming. Scrolling. Storing. Syncing. Backing up. Autoplaying. It all adds up.

We are not just consumers of products anymore, we are constant producers of data and we rarely seem to be thinking about the cost of it all.

Let’s talk about email specifically, because it feels harmless. An email is just text flying through the air, right?

Sadly, it’s not. Multiply that “harmless” message by billions sent every single day add attachments, promotional blasts, utomated marketing funnels, the same PDFs sent back and forth five times with “FINAL_v3_REALFINAL.pdf” as the subject line.

Now multiply that by the fact that most emails are stored indefinitely on servers that rely on fresh water to keep them cool. It’s as if we treat inboxes like digital basements and we’re all data hoarders. Nothing gets thrown away because storage feels infinite but infinite storage requires very finite, very real energy.

And here’s where it gets a little more uncomfortable, you’re welcome!

We love to talk about reducing plastic straws and bringing reusable grocery bags (which, yes, matter) but many of us are running businesses, brands, and personal lives that generate massive digital clutter without ever questioning it or taking a moment to think about the repercussions of all of it.

When was the last time you deleted 10,000 emails or scroll to the bottom of that pesky email and unsubscribed instead of just swiping away? When was the last time you questioned whether every high-resolution photo really needed to live in three separate cloud backups?

The cloud is just someone else’s computer. And that computer is plugged in, all of the time.

Now, to be clear, digital activity is often less carbon-intensive than physical alternatives. A Zoom meeting can replace a flight, an e-book can reduce paper use and remote work can truly shrink commuting emissions. But “less bad” does not mean impact-free.

The internet currently accounts for a significant share of global electricity use, and that share is growing. AI tools, crypto, constant video streaming, and ever-expanding cloud storage are accelerating that demand and our digital minimalism has not kept pace with our digital expansion.

So the question becomes: if we care about our environmental footprint, why does our digital behaviour get a free pass?

Maybe we fall into these bad digital habits because they seem invisible and feel small, maybe it’s because deleting emails isn’t aesthetic enough for Instagram. But if sustainability is about alignment (about reducing excess where we can), then our digital lives deserve scrutiny too.

Not panic or guilt spirals. Just awareness.

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Here is some good news, though: reducing your digital footprint is one of the easiest climate habits to start and I’m here to help you do just that!

You don’t need to buy anything and you don’t need a bamboo version of your inbox.

You just need to consume less data and here’s a simple and effective place to begin:

Simple Ways to Shrink Your Digital Footprint

• Unsubscribe from newsletters you never read (be ruthless).

• Delete old emails in bulk, especially ones with large attachments.

• Empty your spam folder regularly.

• Turn off auto-play on streaming platforms.

• Lower video streaming quality when HD isn’t necessary.

• Delete duplicate photos and videos.

• Remove unused apps (they often store background data).

• Disable automatic cloud backups for things you don’t need saved.

• Keep devices longer instead of upgrading frequently.

• Send fewer, more intentional emails instead of long reply chains.

• Store files on an external hard drive instead of the cloud, this also allows for more autonomy if something were to go wrong online.

Don’t get me wrong, none of these actions alone will “solve” climate change but they do do something important and that’s that they interrupt the myth that digital equals harmless.

They also build a muscle we desperately need, the muscle of enough, because here’s the bigger conversation.

Our digital footprint mirrors our physical one. Endless storage, endless consumption, endless scrolling, endless accumulation. We don’t delete because we don’t have to. We don’t pause because the feed doesn’t end.

But what if sustainability in 2026 isn’t just about what’s in your closet or on your plate? What if it’s also about what’s on your server?

What would change if we treated data like a resource instead of a void?

What if “inbox zero” wasn’t about productivity but about planetary boundaries?

It sounds dramatic to say your inbox is polluting the planet, but scale makes ordinary behaviour powerful.

Billions of small, invisible actions add up. They always have, they always will.

The real question is this: if we’re willing to declutter our homes for the environment, are we willing to declutter our digital lives too? Or does sustainability stop where convenience begins?

Want to stay connected? Let’s connect on Instagram, Threads or YouTube! You can also listen to the Enough Stuff podcast 🫙

- Lauren

ps - I have added a new “buy me a coffee” button. I love that Substack has subscription capabilities but, let’s be honest, we already have so many subscriptions to answer to. What I like about this new method is that it can be a nominal fee that you choose to either just do once or reoccurring and helps me maintain sanity and this Substack in the age of capitalism.

Just a little warning, we do drop the F bomb quite a bit in this episode. If it’s not your thing, I’ll catch you in the next episode.

In this episode, I welcome my friend Kate Kourtsidis back to the mic. Kate is a climate activist and protester. Kate both volunteers her time to NGOs and also works for The S.O.S.A. You can connect with Kate on Instagram @klimikardasheaint, where she’s very vocal about current events.

You can find me on Instagram/Threads @enoughstufflauren and you can always reach out to me via email at enoughstufflauren@tutamail.com!

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Intro/Outro music is the song “Green Grass Stand Tall” by NESS NÖST, give her a listen wherever you listen to your tunes!

If you’re not thinking about the impending doom we’ve created on this planet at least once a day, what are you doing with your time?

I don’t mean that sarcastically, I mean it genuinely because between the heat records, the floods, the fires, the crop failures, the water crises, the species disappearing quietly while we argue about gas prices…how are you not thinking about it?

Eco Anxiety is a relatively new ailment we can add to the brimming bowl of afflictions we contend with on the daily. Add it to the intergenerational trauma that’s piled up from decades of “we’ll deal with it later”, the 24/7 media cycle that keeps us oscillating between numb and panicked and the governments that talk in climate targets while approving new oil projects and systematically destroying habitats and homes. It’s a heavy stew, a stew I am sick of eating.

Let me just say it clearly for those in the back: shit is bleak.

And yet, we’re told not to dwell on it and to stay positive. To manifest and protect our peace. They tell us to log off and to focus on what we can control (not much). Which is good advice until it becomes a socially acceptable form of denial that we all blindly participate in and lap up.

Here’s an uncomfortable question to ask yourself and those around you: when did emotional detachment become a healthier response than grief?

Because eco anxiety, at its core, is grief. It’s mourning a stable climate, predictable seasons, the idea that our children might inherit something better than what we had, it’s saying goodbye to coral reefs and snowpacks and quiet species that never got a documentary (or they did but are now gone).

We pathologize the anxiety, but what if it’s a rational response to a planet that’s crumble all around us?

If your house were slowly filling with smoke, anxiety would be useful and it would motivate you to move. You would act and alert the others. But when the “smoke” is atmospheric carbon and the timeline is stretched over decades, we’re told our distress is excessive. Dramatic. Bad for productivity and the mighty dollar.

What if the problem isn’t that we’re anxious but that we’re anxious alone?

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Here’s another truth: eco anxiety often feels isolating. You bring it up at dinner and someone rapidly changes the subject due to feel uncomfortable. You post something online about it and someone says you’re being negative and a mega Debbie downer. You consider not having children because you worry about what they’ll have to face in their life due to the destruction of the planet and people tell you you’re overreacting. You try to live differently, reuse your jars and bags and you’re called extreme.

So what do we do instead? We internalize it. We doomscroll at 2:47 a.m. while we should otherwise be getting our beauty rest. We read another climate report, we check the weather app again and we wonder if we’re crazy for feeling this way or if there’s some truth hidden down deep.

But maybe the more disturbing thing is how quickly we adapt to bad news.

Remember when 1.5°C was a red line? Now it’s a milestone we talk about in past tense, a lingering dream. Remember when 400 ppm of CO₂ felt shocking? Now it barely trends. Each new record-breaking summer becomes background noise and we continue to metabolize catastrophe after catastrophe at record speed.

That normalization might be more dangerous than panic.

And here’s the part that makes people uncomfortable: eco anxiety isn’t just about fear of the future. It’s also about guilt in the present moment, the moment we’re living right now.

We are very well aware of the flights, the packages, the mindless overconsumption, the convenience. We know our lifestyles are entangled in the systems we criticize and want to take down. That cognitive dissonance doesn’t disappear, it hums quietly beneath everything we do.

So maybe we need to ask ourselves some impossible and uncomfortable questions:

Am I doing enough?
Is recycling pointless?
Should I quit my job?
Should I move?
Should I have kids?
Should I give up flying?
Does any of it matter if corporations are the real problem?

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We’re handed individual responsibility in a systemic crisis and told to shop our way out of it. Buy buy buy, buy the bamboo toothbrush, buy the carbon offset (that doesn’t do much), buy the reusable everything and get rid of the other stuff, replace it all now (please don’t do that). The marketplace offers coping mechanisms disguised as solutions and when that doesn’t cure the dread, we assume the problem is us.

But what if eco anxiety is not a disorder to eliminate, but more of a signal to decode and learn how to interpret? What if it’s telling us that the way we’re living is misaligned with what we know to be true? What if the anxiety is less about the apocalypse and more about powerlessness we all seem to be feeling and not talking about?

Because beneath the bleakness is something raw: we are witnessing the unraveling of systems that promised stability, support and all the good stuff. That’s destabilizing, of course it is. We were raised on the myth of endless growth, infinite progress, technological salvation and now the math isn’t mathing.

Here’s the controversial part: maybe a certain level of eco anxiety is healthy. It means you’re paying attention, it means you care. Maybe numbness is not the goal.

The real question isn’t “How do I stop feeling eco anxiety?” It’s more like, “What do I do with it and how do I channel this energy into real change?”

Do you let it spiral into paralysis? Do you anesthetize it with shopping and streaming?

Or do you try to outrun it until the next heatwave drags it back?

There’s no clean ending here, I don’t have one for you. I still check the wildfire maps and calculate carbon in my head when I book travel and I still oscillate between hope and “we are absolutely f*cking cooked.”

But maybe the point isn’t to resolve the tension, maybe the point is to sit in the tension long enough to ask better questions like:

What would a life look like that aligns with the world I say I want?
Who benefits from me staying overwhelmed?
Who benefits from me staying silent?
What kind of ancestor do I want to be for the future generations?

Eco anxiety isn’t a trend, it’s a mirror we’re all looking into and the reflection is uncomfortable for a reason.

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- Lauren

A little detail about me, I work online as an engagement specialist. It’s kind of this niche thing where I’m given the log in creds for clients, I log into their accounts, pretend to be them and I comment/message/like as them. Yes, this kind of work exists and I do it.

I see a lot of oddball behaviour on instagram, my clients range fro real estate agents to contractors and everything in between. They’re primarily located in the states and so, when I search a hashtag, I witness some pretty whacko stuff! But, amazingly, that’s not what this newsletter is about. Oh no.

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I was inspired this morning to hop on here and write about something I just witnessed and see over and over again, especially when I’m signed in as the contractor and that’s this: Perfectly good, functional homes being torn apart all in the name of upgrading and perceived perfection. Renovations are nothing new and will never stop, I get that. But when did hospital white become what everyone strives for?

This is a screenshot of the picture that took my breath away and got me writing. I see this time and time again and it never ceases to amaze me, and not because I think the upgrade is like totally gorgeous but because I can’t get over the idea of perfectly good cabinetry being ripped out, destroyed, for the sake of…this. Newness. The “vintage” look (which, by the look of it, was upgraded not too long ago) that needs to go.

You get what you perceive you need

Increasingly, homes are losing character. Homes are losing their individuality and uniqueness (if they had any to begin with) and along with this, we are too. This presents an even bigger issue and that’s the waste that is produced from these upgrades. And all for what? So you have to take even more extra care to not splash red sauce all over the whiteness when you’re cooking? Another wonderful thing about not white is it’s way less forgiving when you get messy in the kitchen. Create. But I want to focus on the waste aspect of it all:

Generally, upgrades are perceived. This could be an upgrade in your wardrobe, an upgrade of your electronics, upgrades are generally sold to you and this is the same with your house. We spend so much time being fed aesthetic online that we feel we have no other choice than to create a life that looks like the lives we’re seeing presented to us online. We are fed these ideas, day and day out and when we finally have some cash, we blow it on what we feel we need to present in the world as someone “normal.” If you’re not investing in upgrades, what are you even working for? What are you doing with your life?

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Waste for waste’s sake

Sometimes, upgrades are a necessary part of life. Planned obsolescence exists and therefore our devices, our appliances, our clothing begins to fail us and we’re left with no recourse but to buy again and take better care of those new items so they last. But then the cycle continues. As consumers, this isn’t our fault, there are only so many things we can do and are in control of but we’re sold this idea that we’re in control. Spoiler alert, we’re not.

Upgrades seem to just be part of our lives now, something we can’t seem to get away from. Even old devices that could, under the right circumstances, work wonderfully with new upgrades, start to fail because the companies don’t want you using their older stuff anymore, they want you to invest in something new and then when that new item doesn’t serve anymore, invest in another new item. But it’s also the ads, they get to you, they show you all the new and shiny things you could have if you just work harder and invest your money.

Sterile is beautiful and normies like it

Things are messy anymore, have you noticed? Everything is calculated, right down the the text you can now edit to say exactly what you mean (even after having sent it). Everything is white and new and white and fancy and white and shiny. Dirt be gone. And this reflects how we are updating our lives, our devices, our appliances. Everything, to fit a certain aesthetic that appeals to the general public. But along with that upgrading and aesthetic comes the waste in it’s wake, the waste we don’t see because it’s been hidden away from us. Sure, some of it gets a second chance to shine if someone takes the time to fix it up and breathe some life into the item, but more often than not, it’s trash.

I just can’t help but thinking that we wouldn’t want these things if we weren’t bombarded by them on the daily. If we weren’t being fed this on going feed of what’s better, newer, nicer, more aesthetically pleasing.

I guess I’m just fed up. I want to see the soul in things.

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Want to stay connected? Let’s connect on Instagram, Threads or YouTube! You can also listen to the Enough Stuff podcast 🫙

- Lauren

Before You Go, Check These Out:

What’s the form of activism you feel most comfortable with?

Want to be a guest on the podcast? Email me at enoughstufflauren@tutamail.com! And if you’re just having feelings, let me know, get in touch with me.

Intro/outro song: Green Grass Stand Tall by NESS NÖST and can be found wherever you stream your tunes.

Find me on Threads, IG and most social media platforms @enoughstufflauren

Today is a long one friends, it’s something I’m profoundly passionate about and couldn’t not get deep into, so let’s start with a question that might feel a little uncomfortable to answer (but necessary for the purposes of today’s article):

When was the last time you wore everything you already own?

I’m not talking about the pieces you like and I’m talking about the ones you plan to wear someday. I mean the actual, honest rotation of clothes you reach for without thinking about it. If you’re like most people or even like me, a huge portion of your wardrobe is sitting untouched and quietly aging on hangers while you scroll past “limited time only” sales on your phone (it’s alright, this is a safe place, you can be honest).

Fast fashion has insidiously trained us to believe that clothing is disposable, but it has also convinced us that the problem is corporations alone and we’re just their victims. That narrative is easy to share and digest without thinking. It’s neat and tidy, you know? It lets us be outraged without being implicated. But here’s the harder truth that we don’t often dive into: fast fashion doesn’t exist without fast consumption. And fast consumption doesn’t happen without us, the consumers.

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The average person buys dramatically more clothing than people did just a few decades ago, and yet keeps each item for way less time because seasons change more rapidly and clothing is not made to last. We talk about brands being unethical, but rarely talk about why we continue to fund them, even when we know better than to do so. Most of us can name at least one company we publicly criticize and privately purchase from and the industry thrives on that contradiction.

It’s worth asking why, don’t you think?

Is it actually about affordability? Or is it about convenience? Boredom? Maybe it’s the tiny hit of dopamine that comes from clicking “add to cart” after a long day. We often frame fast fashion as a class issue, and sometimes it absolutely is but fast fashion is also fuelled heavily by people who could afford to buy less and better and simply don’t want to wait, save, rewear, or repeat outfits (or buy secondhand or mend clothing with holes).

We say ethical fashion is too expensive but compared to what? Compared to the price of a single item, or compared to the cost-per-wear of the twenty almost-identical tops that end up forgotten in the back of a drawer? Compared to the subscription wardrobes, haul culture, and impulse purchases we rarely total up?

Another uncomfortable question is this: do we actually want sustainable fashion, or do we just want sustainable branding (sound familiar?)?

Sustainability, in practice, is often deeply unglamorous and boring. It looks like wearing the same coat for five winters in a row, hopefully even more. Sustainability looks like repairing seams instead of replacing garments and it also looks like resisting trends entirely, even when everyone else is participating. Resisting fast fashion is repetitive, even boring, in a culture that treats novelty as personality.

We celebrate decluttering videos, capsule wardrobe reels, and “conscious consumer” aesthetics online, but they are often followed by new shopping lists disguised as self-improvement. These influencers are, more often than not, trying to sell you something that will help you, apparently. Minimalism has, in many ways, become another shopping category on Amazon. We’ve replaced overconsumption with curated overconsumption and called it growth, green growth.

And then there’s the influencer economy (I touched on it briefly up top there), which deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets, let’s get it under a microscope. Many creators speak about sustainability while simultaneously posting daily outfit inspiration sourced from constant new purchases (at this point, it doesn’t even matter if it’s from a “green” brand). Brands send free clothing, audiences receive endless outfit turnover, and the cycle continues under the label of “content.” We rarely ask whether it’s possible to promote mindful consumption while monetizing constant visual novelty. Maybe it is. But the industry hasn’t proven it yet, I don’t think. Fast fashion companies are frequently portrayed as villains exploiting demand, but it’s worth flipping that perspective. What if they’re simply the most efficient responders to a demand we refuse to confront in ourselves? They are extremely good at producing what people clearly demonstrate they want: cheap, fast, trend-driven clothing with minimal emotional attachment.

If fast fashion disappeared tomorrow, would we actually change our habits? Or would we just find the next cheapest, fastest alternative and convince ourselves it’s different?

We often talk about clothing as self-expression, which is valid and meaningful., but at what point did self-expression become impossible without constant replacement? Why do we feel social pressure to appear visually new instead of personally authentic? Why does repeating an outfit still carry stigma in many social spaces, even though most people don’t actually remember what others wore last week?

There is also a deeply uncomfortable environmental hypocrisy most of us participate in. We bring reusable grocery bags, carry metal straws, and debate paper versus plastic all while continuing to buy one of the most resource-intensive consumer goods on the planet at historically unprecedented rates. It’s easier to focus on small daily habits than large, identity-level consumption patterns but clothing is one of the largest environmental footprints many individuals have control over.

And here’s perhaps the hardest question of all: is our attachment to fast fashion actually about clothing, or is it about emotional regulation?

Shopping can soothe stress, a solution (“retail therapy”) we’ve been fed since the beginning. It can create a sense of control, more often than not a false sense of control. It can temporarily fill boredom, loneliness, or insecurity but fast fashion itself didn’t invent those feelings. Those companies just built business models around solving them quickly and repeatedly. If that’s true, then reducing consumption isn’t just a financial or environmental decision, it becomes a psychological one. And that is much harder work than simply switching brands or trying to stop buying.

The uncomfortable reality is that fast fashion is not just a supply chain issue. It is a cultural identity issue and it reflects how we measure status, creativity, self-worth, and belonging. That’s why progress feels slow and behind, because the solution isn’t just better factories or recycled fabrics. It might require redefining what it means to feel “put together,” stylish, or socially accepted in the eyes of society.

None of this means individual consumers carry all the blame, and corporations none. Regulation, labor protections, and corporate accountability are absolutely necessary. But focusing only on industry wrongdoing allows us to avoid asking how our personal habits reinforce the exact system we criticize.

So maybe the real question isn’t “Why is fast fashion so bad?”

Maybe it’s: “What would have to change in your life for you to genuinely want less of it?”

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Would it be slowing down your social media consumption? Letting go of trend awareness altogether? Getting comfortable being seen in the same outfit repeatedly? Accepting that style might come from consistency instead of novelty?

And here’s one final question that might be the most revealing: if nobody else could see what you were wearing for an entire year, how would your shopping habits change?

Your answer might say more about fast fashion than any sustainability report ever could.

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Want to stay connected? Let’s connect on Instagram, Threads or YouTube! You can also listen to the Enough Stuff podcast 🫙

- Lauren

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of enough and what it means to me. Not in the tidy, minimalist, beige-Instagram way but in a potentially uncomfortable kind of way. The way that asks you to sit still with what you already have instead of reaching for the next thing that promises to make you feel more complete and more whole as a human.

I grew up in the 90s, which meant I grew up inside a constant hum of wanting (and perceived needing). It was subtle enough that it didn’t feel like pressure at the time and I was a kid, so I wasn’t catching on, which is how they wanted it. It just felt normal to me and I’m guessing it just felt normal to you too. Commercials during Saturday morning cartoons, magazine covers at the grocery checkout or the quiet suggestion that whatever version of life you were living could be improved—sharpened, upgraded, accessorized—if you just bought the right thing, the shiny thing.

We didn’t call it “consumer culture” back then, it was just culture and most of us were mindlessly falling into the trappings of this lifestyle.

The message was simple and relentless: more is better, new is better, better is always just one purchase away and therefore your happiness, too. And once you internalize that idea as a kid, it doesn’t really leave you, it just manifests in different ways throughout your life.

What’s strange is that the wanting never had an end point. There was no moment where the ads said, Okay, you’ve arrived. You’re good now, you have enough, you’re free to stop. The goalposts kept moving, and we kept chasing them with seemingly no end in sight. A new look or a new gadget that would definitely improve your life or make you the envy of everyone around you. A new lifestyle, a newer version of ourselves we could only ever dream about (or just buy with our hard earned cash). Even when we got the thing we wanted, the satisfaction had a short shelf life. There was always another thing waiting in the wings, already being marketed as the solution to a problem we hadn’t known we had five minutes earlier.

Now, of course, it’s louder and it seems to follow us wherever we go. It’s no longer confined to TV breaks or glossy pages (plus, the majority of us are no longer watching television or reading magazines). It lives in our pockets, dressed up as inspiration, aspiration, self-care and are sneakily fed to us in our endless feeds. Young people today don’t just see ads; they see curated lives that blur the line between marketing and reality, think: reels, tiktoks. The pressure to want more starts earlier and hits harder, and it’s harder than ever to tell where desire ends and conditioning begins.

And yet, here’s a quiet truth that no one selling anything wants to dwell on: most of us already have enough! The cat’s out of the bag.

Enough clothes to get dressed how we’d like everyday, enough food to feel full and satiated. We seem to have endless devices to stay connected with everyone and anyone we could ever want to stay connected to and we have enough information to know what matters to us, if we’re willing to listen. And actually, the trouble doesn’t come from having too little, it comes from being taught, over and over, that enough is never enough.

That belief does something subtle but corrosive to us over time. It keeps us slightly dissatisfied and restless, always scanning for the upgrade. It makes stillness feel like stagnation and boredom, something to shy away from at every turn. It makes contentment feel suspicious, like we’re falling behind and/or stuck. And it turns our attention outward, away from our own sense of sufficiency, toward whatever is being presented as the next fix, like a powerful drug.

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I don’t think the realization that we have enough arrives all at once. It’s more like a slow unwinding, a moment when you buy something and feel… nothing! A moment when the package arrives and the excitement fizzles before the box is even recycled. A moment when you realize the problem wasn’t that you didn’t have the thing—it was that you were hoping the thing would quiet something internal.

Choosing “enough” isn’t about deprivation or moral purity and it’s not about rejecting comfort or beauty or pleasure. It’s about noticing when the desire for more stops being playful and starts being compulsive. When it stops adding joy and starts adding noise which disrupts trying to connect to that internal compass.

There’s a kind of freedom in saying, This is sufficient. It’s not loud or flashy. It doesn’t photograph well but it gives you your attention back. It lets you rest inside your life instead of constantly reaching for a better version of it!

The 90s taught us to want without asking why and the years since have refined that lesson and delivered it more efficiently. Unlearning it takes time and it takes boredom, curiosity and an endless hunger for questioning the status quo. It takes resisting the urge to fill every quiet moment with acquisition, whether that’s buying, scrolling, or comparing.

But on the other side of that resistance is something surprisingly radical: peace. It’s not the kind or peace that can be bought, but the kind that shows up when you stop believing that happiness is always somewhere else and something else.

Enough isn’t a finish line, it’s a practice that you can carry with you everyday if you choose. And every time you choose it, you step slightly out of the machine that’s been training you to want since you were a kid watching cartoons between commercials.

That, to me, feels like a good place to start.

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- Lauren

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I want to dig into and talk about the world’s most perfectly marketed scam: wellness.

You’ve seen it, it’s hard to ignore. The $120 water bottle, the $45 “adaptogenic” hot chocolate, the never ending supplements that will solve all your problems. And finally, the $80 sustainable yoga mat that still ends up in landfill one day (but, let’s face it, everything we own will become trash someday, so that’s also something to consider).

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Somewhere between green juice and gratitude journals, the wellness industry convinced us that the path to peace and a happier planet was paved with affiliate links and oil diffusers. It’s started to not be about healing anymore, it’s about branding rather than keeping more and more crap out of our homes. And let’s be real for a second: the wellness industry doesn’t actually want you to feel better. It wants you to almost feel better, so you keep buying and accumulating stuff you don’t need.

There’s also something else to be said and it’s not directly related to sustainability (but, who am I kidding, everything is when we really get right down to it) and that’s the body shaming that seems to go along with the whole “wellness” industry. It messes with our relationships with ourselves, our inner world and when we’re not feeling good in our skin, we definitely don’t feel good on the planet. How can we care for the planet if we can’t care for ourselves? But I digress…

This industry pushes the same consumerism, just rebranded in neutral tones and soft lighting with a hint of mint. The same emotional manipulation that sold us diet culture (see above), but now it’s wearing linen and calling itself “holistic” and “esoteric”. Turning spirituality and connection to nature into a brand.

It’s also deeply exclusionary, wellness has become this weird marker of status, the privilege to “slow down,” to “detox,” to “reconnect”, a privilege that very few are acquainted with. You know who doesn’t have time for that? The people making the yoga mats, cleaning the yoga studios and packing those superfood powders.

Here’s a radical idea I want to lay at your feet: what if sustainability and wellness were the same thing, and, not only that, both were free? Free for everyone!

What if, instead of buying new self-care stuff, you took a nap? Or went for a walk in nature, forest bathed and meditated? Or you called your friend instead of ordering another “emotional support candle” (but yeah, I also like the odd candle, they can truly be therapeutic)?

Maybe wellness isn’t about consuming our way to inner peace. Maybe it’s about needing less in the first place.

Here’s something you could consider trying on for size: for one week, no “self-care purchases”. No new skincare (use what you have), no matcha refills, no “eco” leggings. Just some quiet moments, a delicious and nourishing meal, quality sleep with your phone in the other room, and maybe some toasty sunshine.

You’ll find that the wellness you’ve been searching for has been sitting there all along and it doesn’t cost $49.99. It’s free. Most good things are.

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- Lauren

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We live in a time where everything is “green”: Green tech. Green fashion. Green energy. Greenwashing has basically turned “green” into a lifestyle accessory.

So here’s an uncomfortable truth for you all, “green” doesn’t mean sustainable. It doesn’t even mean ethical. It just means profitable.

Let’s take a moment to talk about electric cars. It seems as if everyone is obsessed with them. They’re sleek, silent, and they’re supposedly saving the planet. Except, the lithium in those batteries comes from brutal mining operations in Africa that destroy ecosystems and exploit workers. The carbon footprint of manufacturing one EV is massive — and the waste problem when it comes to disposing them when those batteries die? Enormous.

Or “green” fashion (aka “eco-friendly” fast fashion). A $200 linen dress made from recycled water bottles isn’t sustainable if it’s still produced in massive quantities, shipped globally, and marketed to make you feel like you’re saving the world by shopping.

We’ve turned sustainability into a brand aesthetic. It’s all beige tones, bamboo utensils, and tote bags that say “The Future Is Female.” But what if sustainability isn’t something you can buy? The real sustainable choice is almost always the least glamorous one: using what you already have. Repairing instead of replacing. Keeping your old phone instead of upgrading to the “eco” model.

The truth is, a green product that perpetuates overconsumption isn’t green. It’s just guilt-wrapped capitalism.

So next time you see “eco-friendly,” take a second and ask yourself this: is it planet-friendly—or profit-friendly?

You might start realising that “green” is not only a colour, it’s a sales tactic.

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- Lauren

🫒 Before You Go, Check These Out:

Paid subscribers get full access to my essays, private reflections, and practical guides to living with less—but better.

The fantasy of “going off grid” is everywhere an is truly all the rage right now. Leaving it all behind, buying land, growing your own vegetables and fruit, living that disconnected dream. Disconnecting from the chaos and hustle that seems even more and more difficult to get away from.

I get it. The world can feel loud, overstimulating, and on fire—sometimes literally. But most of us don’t need a cabin in the woods and most of us can’t afford a cabin in the world, let’s be honest. Maybe what we really need is just to put our phones down.

Think about it: half the things you think you want are things you only want because you saw someone else have them. I know, mind 9 = blown! But it’s true. We’re not living in an economy of need—we’re living in an economy of exposure and doom scrolling.

Social media is a consumption machine disguised as inspiration. Every scroll fuels the algorithm that tells you you’re not enough until you buy something else, move somewhere else or literally be someone else. The irony? Most of our “eco” desires are manufactured the same way and have the same root.

So no, you don’t need to escape the grid. You need to escape the feed. Ever stop and consider why it’s called a “feed”? You’re literally just being fed on a loop and truly, it’s hard to stop.

So maybe give this a try: one hour a day of intentional disconnection. No scrolling. No “researching sustainable swaps”, just quiet and intentionality in what you’re doing. Whether that’s picking up a book, a paintbrush or just sitting doing some deep breathing and thinking, take a time out. Because the more time you spend offline, the more your values start to come back online. You remember what you actually enjoy doing with your time. You notice your surroundings again and you begin to think for yourself again!

That’s the real off-grid life — not solar panels and chickens (though those are cool and if you can do those things, do them), but reclaiming your own attention from the system that keeps selling you “sustainability” at a markup.

You don’t have to disappear into the forest to live consciously. You just have to stop being sold to and being constantly fed.

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It’s something I’ve wanted…

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