What do the frugal use of money and living a life with minimal impact on the environment have in common? Quite a lot in fact, for there is a strong connection between living with a minimal environmental impact and living a sound economic life. It is no coincidence that economy and ecology have the same root eco which denotes home. To start this discussion, let us define two important terms: frugality the virtue of getting good value for every dollar spent, and eco-living following a lifestyle which reduces both local and global environmental impact.
When we combine these terms, we have ecofrugal living or ecofrugality the lifestyle of enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every dollar spent while reducing both our local and global environmental impacts. And hereafter, let us call its practitioners: ecofrugalitarians.
Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin in their landmark book Your Money or Your Life correctly equate the earning of money with the spending of life energy. That is, we use our life energy and our life time in certain activities which pay us money in exchange. They further expand the definition of frugality to: enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from everything you have use of.
Over the past century we changed our perception of frugality from one of high virtue to one of low opinion. We made the frugal Scot a figure of amusement rather than a role model when we embraced the consumer society as our collective life model. Rather than enjoy to the fullest the use of what we spend our money on, many seek enjoyment in the quantity of things acquired thus, the proliferation of bumper stickers such as Shop til you drop and Whoever dies with the most toys wins. Current North American society has tried to make consumption the pinnacle of happiness and, in doing so, has built a mythology around the good of consumption and the evil of non-consumption. But, as Dominguez and Robin and others have shown, happiness and fulfillment do not continue to increase with increasing money expenditure.
This observation can be best illustrated by the fulfillment curve which illustrates the degree of fulfillment we obtain in relation to the total amount of money or life energy spent over a given time period i.e., month or year. Initially, as we spend money, our fulfillment increases. The first important level comes at the top of the survival zone. At this point, we are spending enough money to ensure our personal survival, or family survival if we are supporting others. This means ensuring that we have enough money to cover the costs of basic food, shelter, clothing and energy. Unfortunately, there are still too many people in the world and in our own communities who have not reached even this basic fulfillment level, most the victims of poverty.
Once the top of the survival zone has been reached, increased spending allows us to move into the comfort zone. Here we have moved past the basics of survival to greater choices in food, shelter and clothing and other items and services which truly facilitate living. Needs are satisfied and we spend on wants, using our money now for items which bring us pleasure. As we move further up in the comfort zone, increases in fulfillment and happiness are the result of money spent on luxuries, items and services which do not necessarily increase our survival or comfort level but from which we ideally hope to derive enjoyment.
However, as we spend more on luxuries, fulfillment does not increase at the same rate. We don't get the same bang for the buck. And past some critical point, increased spending actually begins to diminish fulfillment. Dominguez and Robin call this critical point: enough. Many of us do not know when we have reached enough and, bombarded by advertising and other propaganda of the consumer society, continue to spend in an attempt to find happiness. As we move further and further past the enough point, however, our fulfillment begins to fall at an ever faster rate. If we have become addicted to consumption, we desperately spend, trying in vain to capture the same fulfillment that spending had given us earlier.
How do we know when we have reached enough? Again, Dominguez and Robin point out the way. (I do not intend to present a full abstract of their nine-point plan for financial independence. I do strongly recommend that you read their book. See CANDO Corner for reference.) They outline four aspects:
1. Knowing how much is flowing in and out, and what we are spending our money on accountability;
2. Developing an internal and personal yardstick for fulfillment;
3. Finding a true purpose in life; and
4. Knowing how your life fits with the needs of your community and the world - responsibility and environmental and social stewardship.
Where the lines marking the survival and comfort zones and the enough point lie on the spending axis of the fulfillment curve in relation to money or life energy spent is a personal decision. But from an environmental perspective, it is important that comfort and enough are not widely separated. Here, in this separating sector, is where we hone our personal art of ecofrugality. Practicing ecofrugality combines technical principals of money and time management and environmental stewardship with the creativity to develop a personal lifestyle as unique as our finger prints.
Ecofrugality is not living without necessities; it is not deprivation in any sense. It is finding a personal balance point among happiness, responsibility, consumption and the spending of money and life energy. It is enjoying what we have and use and do to the fullest extent. When we practice ecofrugality, we do not denounce or rid ourselves of all possessions although some may find such a practice freeing. What we seek, to again cite Dominguez and Robin, is to have a "high joy-to-stuff ratio"seeing waste as not lying strictly in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them. To find our level of greatest fulfillment may take months of observation and adjustments, but most find it so fulfilling that they wonder why they didn't embark on the exercise sooner.
Ecofrugality combines the art of frugality with the reduction of our environmental
impact. Practicing ecofrugality extends our responsibility for determining what is
enough to include the wise use of the planet's resources and concern for the well
being of all species. This may require lowering our personal enough
During our life on Earth, we all and here I refer to all living creatures make our mark upon the planet: our environmental impact. For most living organisms, the size of that impact is proportional to local population density and some measure of the organism's size and function in the chain of life. For example, the impact of one locust may be small within its environment, but a swarm of locusts can lay bare vast areas of vegetation with devastating local impacts and some degree of global effect. For the human species, we must include other factors to determine the environmental impact: the affluence of our lifestyle and the level of our technology. Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren have devised a simple equation to describe the size of the human global environmental impact (I):
Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology.
The first factor on the right side of the equation, the size of human population P has an enormous impact on the Earth because of its complicated magnification by the affluence and technology factors. Even at low levels of technology and affluence, a large population can have devastating impacts on the global environment. Small populations with high levels of affluence and technology will also have a great impact on the environment.
The affluence factor A is a measure of the consumption of resources and is influenced by how well the population lives. The weight of the affluence factor is much greater for higher levels of affluence than it is for the simplest lifestyles. For example, living the average North American lifestyle has impacts thousands of times greater than simple hunter/gatherer lifestyles. Are our lives proportionately that much more fulfilled?
The technology factor T addresses the manner in which we achieve affluence. Technology requires the extraction of minerals, and non-renewable materials and energy from the planet and generates waste and pollution. Technologies based on stone tools have a greater impact on the environment than those based on wooden tools, and manufactured metal tools have a greater impact than stone tools. The more advanced technologies have the greatest impact. Advances in technology may also lead to increases in both affluence and population, thereby producing a further negative impact on the environment.
The I = PAT concept was designed to define large-scale environmental impacts, but it is, in truth, the expression of the sum of millions and billions of individual and local impacts. It can also be used to describe the impact of a sector of affluence or technology. For example, the impact of private vehicles for transportation can be determined by the number of those vehicles (their population), the technology behind the vehicle (e.g., gas-guzzlers versus fuel-efficient or alternate-fueled vehicles) and the affluence of its use (e.g., commuting long distances to work daily versus only taking Sunday pleasure drives).
The concept also shows that we personally can lessen our environmental impact by reducing our level of affluence and the impact of technology in our life. How we decide to live in order to reduce our impact on the environment takes the same degree of thought and balancing of options that we required to define our enough limit. We may require a personal vehicle but buy the most efficient available and use it sparingly. We may find that we can do without a personal vehicle but do not wish to give up the state-of-the-art computer or television or sound system. The point is that we have taken the first positive steps, and like learning to walk as an infant, the first small steps are then followed by bigger ones and eventually we are running. As we wean ourselves off a spending for fulfillment lifestyle we may find that we can eliminate even more and still feel fulfilled. This is the path of ecofrugality.
What is rarely ever stated in discussions of frugality or personal finances is that saving money and saving the planet are highly interconnected. Although only one sentence in their book on achieving financial independence, Dominguez and Robin state one very important environmental point: The key is remembering that anything you buy and don't use, anything you throw away, anything you consume and don't enjoy is money down the drain, wasting your life energy and wasting the finite resources of the planet.
Reduction of waste in any form is a win for the environment. Reduction of material and energy use is a win for the planet and all life forms. These are obvious benefits of ecofrugality. Furthermore, pollution can be reduced, species and habitat saved, and quality of life improved by simple individual actions which are ecofrugal.
For example, the production of meat for human consumption generates mounds of waste, pollutes water and air, uses energy resources and increases the loss of natural habitat at a greater rate than the production of basic foods from plants. If we observed one meatless day per week, we would reduce our personal contribution to environmental degradation from meat production by approximately 14 percent. It has been estimated that if the general population of the United States or Canada followed this practice, they would have a greater positive environmental impact than all the vegetarians in those nations.
Another example is the use of personal vehicles to commute to work. The driving of fossil-fuelled, individual vehicles regularly to work each week increases local, regional and global air pollution and uses important energy resources. (I won't go into the many other environmental concerns over the production and use of the single occupant vehicle as a means of regular, repetitive transportation.) If we refrained from using our vehicle one working day per week, we could reduce the emissions and fuel usage of travelling to work by 16 to 20 percent. There are many alternatives: walking or cycling to work, working at home, working a four-day week, using public transportation or car-pooling. All but the latter two eliminate vehicle emissions and fuel usage for at least one day a week; public transportation and car-pooling use fuel and produce emissions but at a reduced per-person rate.
One negative argument used by sceptics concerning such actions is: "I am just one person, my changing will not save the world." This is just a rework of the argument people give for not voting, and it makes little sense because both are our responsibilities as members of our community. If only one person makes changes, they can at least have the satisfaction of making a personal statement on the state of the world and of taking a personal action that does something to improve it. When others join in, we begin to reduce the population factor in the PAT equation. A journey is started with a single step and completed only after many more follow. Lifestyle change starts with a single individual and grows until it becomes the new way of life for the many. Remember, every social, religious and technological movement today began in the mind and with the actions of one person.
Another aspect of ecofrugality is that we do not necessarily have to entirely give up a specific product. We may find alternate ways of having or using it with reduced cost and environmental impact. This may involve sharing, renting, or buying used. Since ecofrugalitarians do not necessarily have to own something to derive pleasure or good use from it, they may decide it is more frugal to rent or to share an item with others. Libraries and video rental stores are based on this premise, but larger items such as cars, trucks and get-away cottages may also be rented or shared with others. Sharing the usage of a single item among a number of people can not only be frugal, but it also can have a positive spin for the environment: fewer resources consumed, less pollution, etc. Buying used has a positive environmental side similar to renting and sharing and is usually a great money saver.
Buying locally incorporates ecofrugality with a sense of local community. It makes little sense to the frugally minded to buy fresh produce grown in some other country or distant part of their country when it is also grown locally. First, the produce is fresher because it is picked closer to ripeness and purchase; second the transportation of produce from long distances consumes energy resources; and finally, buying locally gives our neighbour an income which supports the community in many ways. Sometimes we may have to pay more per pound for local as opposed to imported produce, but this is one case where saving a personal dollar may not be for the highest overall good. Similar arguments can be applied to other products and services.
Living with a sense of ecofrugality is a major win-win situation for ourselves, for our fellow humans and for the health of our environment. The key here is personal fulfillment, knowing what level of consumption is enough both for ourselves and our world. The goal of ecofrugality is not to turn our lives toward poverty, but to seek ground where all can find fulfillment and comfort in living.
An interesting thing often happens when we stop consuming before reaching the enough point and use any remaining income or time to give to our fellow humans and other living creatures: our sense of fulfillment goes up. We find satisfaction and peace of mind knowing that our lives have made a difference in the life of at least one other person. Personal satisfaction also comes from knowing that we have helped to stop the destruction and begun the repair of our planet for the good of all life.
Finally, Dominguez and Robin were saddened that the word frugality had developed such a bad reputation and there was no other single word in the English language for living at the peak of the fulfillment curve, the point of enough, a word signifying always having plenty but never being burdened with excess while evoking careful stewardship of resources coupled with the joyous expansion of the spirit. I too share their concern and cannot find a single word to convey that concept. But for me two will do: living gently.