So I am at the doctors office. I’m waiting, my doctor is never on time, I’m not even sure why they always bother to inform me about her “running late” – I’m prepared, I even brought a book. I am however uninterested in this particular book so naturally my mind starts to wander and I am back to thinking about my impact on the world. And I start to reflect on my life; all the friends I’ve made and all the friends I’ve lost. All the food I’ve eaten and all the clothes and shoes I’ve worn and outgrew or simply grew bored and tired of. I think about it all and the impact I’ve left in the world.

I am not really ready to look into my impact on friends and family yet so let’s look into something less daunting shall we.

My thoughts have been circulating around my impact on the world a lot lately. Sometime, somewhere last year I started thinking about the very real impact that my life, mostly the consuming element of my life, was leaving on the world. After all this thinking this year I finally decided to put an end to the constant wondering when I decided to avoid all animal products in my food, in my clothing and in whatever element of life I was going through.

If I’m honest I haven’t really struggled so much with the food element, except for a few social events when I’ve felt like I needed to over explain a lot of myself I haven’t really struggled. I really do miss having salmon sashimi but not to an extent where I feel like a major part of my life has been cut out, I can still enjoy sushi and good food without any of the animals that I used to consume. The biggest conundrum for me has been all my stuff.

Now I don’t necessarily have a lot of stuff but I have stuff. Stuff I have acquired prior to wanting to shop more ethically (and not at all) and stuff I bought before I knew that the fast fashion industry is one of earths biggest polluting industries and that they are also a leader in exploitation since most of their clothes are made by underpaid employees (most of whom are women) working in terrible work conditions.

So I am trying to reconcile my new found knowledge and my stuff. My approach to existing more ethically is simply by consuming less. I’ve decided to stop buying stuff. Truth be told I don’t need more stuff, the stuff I have is more than enough and I am content with most, if not all, of it. So I’ve been trying to decide what is more ethical for me at this point: do I get rid of all my clothes that were made unethically and start from scratch? Or do I accept that my clothes were bought in ignorance and eliminate the need for new clothes and ride these until the seams fall off?

What do I do? I don’t know. If I’m honest I am taking the option that will involve not consuming anymore stuff. I’m not fine with my prior ignorance in purchasing these clothes, far from it, but I am also not willing to have more stuff made in order to replace all my other stuff. Making stuff takes energy. For now I think keeping my bad stuff and not buying anymore stuff is my best option? At least until I find a way of disposing of it in a less harmful way.

How do you dispose of bad stuff anyway? Is it ethically sound to donate clothing made badly, by people who worked in atrocious conditions to someone less fortunate? Why must that person carry the burden of my stuff and my ignorance?

This is post that has no answers. I just needed to get these words out. Maybe by reading them I’ll find a solution or maybe someone out there knows something that can help me?