Get Cynical

From The Telegraph:

It started as a pledge over dinner between friends worried about the impact of mass consumerism and today’s disposable society.

“Let’s see if we can give up shopping for a year,” they said.

Now, at the close of the “12-month flight from the consumer grid” — in which the 10 friends were egged on by thousands of supporters inspired by their idea — some have declared the experiment so revelatory and life-changing that they plan to continue the boycott indefinitely.

The 10 middle-class professionals living in San Francisco dubbed themselves the “Compact” after the Mayflower Compact, drafted by Puritan pilgrims who reached the New World in 1620.

There would be no new clothes, gadgets, computers, car parts, mobile phones, books or music for them for a whole 12 months, they pledged. Only food and essentials such as toothpaste, soap, basic (“not sexy”) underwear and medicine would be allowed. Everything else would be borrowed, traded, home made or bought second hand.