Simple Shifts No. 2
Where we drop our hard-earned dough matters. Spending with intention, collective action, and boycotts work. Small changes, big impact. Part 2, let's go!
#4 Renew Your Library Card
If you’re not already, start utilizing your local libraries. Not just for the books, but now more than ever, it’s important to make use of one of the last remaining free third spaces in our society. You’d be surprised how many activities and services are offered at your local library, especially if you have kids. I attend a free watercolor class at my local branch, and it’s been the best Tuesday night activity. Hell, sometimes I just go to people-watch and chat with strangers I might not typically interact with.
For free ebooks & audiobooks link your library card to Libby—because you’ve already cancelled Amazon, right?! (see #1 😉)
For free alternatives to the megacorp streaming services check out Kanopy; all you need is a library card or student ID.
Donate and become a PBS Passport member (support public broadcasting).
And there’s Hoopla. With just a library card, you can stream or download audiobooks, ebooks, online courses, comics, movies, TV, music (see #7 😉), and magazines. It syncs across all your devices and is completely free through your public library, amazing!
“Use your library like it’s your second home. It’s a building literally full of free resources that they want us to pay for elsewhere.” — Dave Norton
#5 Shop Secondhand
If you know me personally, you know this is all I talk about. Shopping secondhand (pre-loved, used, vintage, whatever you wanna call it) is important for so many reasons. It supports your local community, keeps perfectly good stuff out of landfills, lowers your carbon footprint, reduces the demand on new production, and helps conserve precious natural resources.
When you shop secondhand, you're giving a second life to items that might otherwise get tossed.1 That means less clothes in our landfills and less demand to keep cranking out new stuff, new collections, new junk. If we stop buying everything brand new, maybe companies will stop making cheap-planned-obsolescence-built-to-fail2 junk. That’s the hope anyway.
Sooo, unless it’s a health or beauty product, disposable or sanitary item—before you run out to buy it new—check the following first:
Join your local Buy Nothing or Trash Nothing groups. These are community-based groups where people can give, lend, and share items with each other. Find one near you: buynothingproject.org
Check your local Thrift Stores, Consignment Shops, Habitat For Humanity / ReStore, Marketplace, Offer Up, etc..
Owning every tool under the sun sounds appealing, but it’s unnecessary. Borrowing from a friend, neighbor, or renting tools instead, will save you space, stress, and money, especially for the tools you need only occasionally. If you need a tool long term, estate sales and antique markets are a treasure trove for tools. And chances are these older tools are built 10x better than anything new (which were intentionally designed to break)3.
Looking for a specific item/brand of clothing? Search for it on eBay, Poshmark, ThredUp, Depop, Mercari, and the like.
“Next time you need something, stop, and ask yourself if you can get it secondhand first. It’s better for the environment, the community, your wallet, and you might just find something waay better than you would off the shelf anyway.” — Pandani People
#6 Stop Using AI
Stop using ChatGPT, Deepseek, Qwen, Grok, Llama, yada yada yada, and any other large language model (LLM) for things you can just Google (also switch to Ecosia:) Stop using AI as your life coach, therapist, astrologer, and business manager. Stop using AI as your graphic, web, and social media designer. Stop using AI as your bad-art generator. Stop using AI as your content writer or asking it to summarize things you don’t want to read. Stop using AI to write your papers, emails, and text messages.
Everyone’s writing is starting to sound like the same cold, unimaginative corporate speak. It’s quite literally killing our creativity.
Not to mention its overwhelmingly negative impact on our environment. The energy consumption tied to generative AI is colossal. Training just one LLM results in a carbon footprint of 300,000 kg of CO2 emissions4 — that’s comparable to 125 round-trip flights between Beijing and New York.5 Oof! Whether it’s the carbon emissions, immense water consumption (people living near data centers have no water because it's being diverted towards these plants instead6), or the fact that it's draining vital resources all to make billionaires and corporations richer; the environmental costs of generative AI are staggering.
It’s also taking jobs and money away from creatives (and so many others). If you can’t afford to hire a copywriter, creative, designer, social media manager, etc., and you’re tempted to just pop over to ChatGPT to do all the work … please read this entire tread and caption by Dear Darling Studio.
#7 Cancel Streaming Services
Now is the time to break free from streaming and break out your vinyl, cassettes, 8-tracks, CDs, and DVDs! Let’s bring back physical media. Oooh, should we start making mixtapes again?!
Cancel Spotify. They don’t pay artists, only their shareholders, and they laid off 17% of their staff to replace them with AI7. Canceling my Spotify back in January was the best decision. I’m 100% back into my CD, vinyl, and 8-track collection, supporting artists directly through their websites, Bandcamp, and borrowing from the library (see #4 😉). And with rumors of Spotify tacking on ads to their Premium plans, now is the time to ditch ‘em.
Honestly, cancel all your streaming services while you’re at it. Most of the media we consume is owned by one of six companies8. Don’t let them dictate your media consumption. Watch what you want, when you want, on your own terms, instead.
Free “streaming” alternatives: Kanopy, Hoopla, YouTube (support independent creators).
“Spotify doesn’t seem to care about your relationship to ‘your’ music anymore, and, for long-term users, this has felt kind of like a bait and switch.” — Kyle Chayka
#8 Join Your Local Mutual Aid Network
In challenging times, mutual aid is a great way communities can come together to support one another when the government can’t or won’t9.
mutualaidhub.org helps you find a mutual aid network and other community self-support projects near you. Reach out to these groups directly to get involved, offer resources, or submit needs requests.
If there isn’t one near where you live, you can start your very own!
“Mutual aid comes in many forms, but at its core it is about community-building, not about charity. Mutual aid groups work with people in the neighborhoods where they live. They talk with people, understand their needs, forge connections and work within communities to address those needs however they can.” — Stop The Sweeps
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https://www.simpleconsign.com/blog/5-earth-friendly-perks-of-secondhand-shopping
https://www.iberdrola.com/sustainability/planned-obsolescence#:~:text=What%20is%20planned%20obsolescence,been%20banned%20in%20some%20countries.
https://www.consumersinternational.org/news-resources/blog/posts/built-to-fail-is-planned-obsolescence-really-happening/
https://foreignpress.org/journalism-resources/what-to-know-about-chatgpts-impact-on-planetary-resources
https://tsl.news/opinion-stop-using-chatgpt/
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-centers-water-data/
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/spotify-laid-off-17-of-its-workforce-in-2023-while-reportedly-paying-artists-jus/1115258396634273/
https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/
https://afsc.org/news/how-create-mutual-aid-network