Anti-consumerism

After I wrote about waste, I realize I'm an anti-consumerist.  I practice what I preach.  I only buy what is necessary.  I admit I'm frugal, because I come from a thrifty family.  It's not a wealthy, successful family, so you learn to scrimp and save.  I recently got into a tweet war with a couple of women, because I tweeted it was interesting that vegans are likely to enjoy better health than meat eaters, and perhaps this is karma.  A woman disagreed with that, because she is some sort of self-appointed diet and fitness guru.  Another woman weighed in; she said veggies are too expensive in the country where she lives.  I mentioned that I can afford to eat healthily, because I live a frugal life; they both made fun of that response.  But so many people's priorities are out of whack.  They put unnecessary, extravagant material purchases before necessities like nutritious food. 
My birthday is approaching, and I love music.  I have a ton of it, though.  I don't really need more.  It has been a while since I bought myself an album I wanted, though.  And something that's been bothering me is that I'm not getting an extra day off this week for Thanksgiving.  My supervisor was surprised that they didn't ask me if I wanted to work the usual amount of days this week or have an extra one off.  So that makes me want to treat myself even more.  If I do, and it's a big "if," because I know I don't need it, I'll try to purchase an album in MP3 format; this way, it would go digitally right to my computer, and then I'd put it on a flash drive, which I already have.  So there would be no waste associated with such a transaction: no materials, no packaging, no paper, no plastic.  It's, no surprise, also cheaper to buy it that way.  If the album I wanted was only available as a CD, then I might buy it, but I really don't see myself buying more than one. 
If I ever get around to it, I will try to sell much of my large CD collection.  All I need to do is put a CD onto my computer, and then I have it.  I no longer need the CD.  My CD player also plays music from flash drives.  Flash drives can be plugged right into the CD player.  The player never has trouble reading music on the flash drive.  I have had problems with CDs, though.  Sometimes they don't sit in the tray right, and they need to be adjusted.  Sometimes the player takes a while to read a CD.  The CD player fails to play CDs in other ways.  These problems can be remedied (so far), but, for me, CDs are more problematic than flash drive music.
As usual, I will buy no Christmas presents for anyone this year.  As a result, I won't receive any either, which is fine with me.  Think of the waste that will be a result of all the consumerism that will occur this holiday season.  People will give, and receive, piles of needless crap.  Children will get toys that they will lose interest in shortly: assuming they were ever interested in them at all.  Adults will also receive tons of gifts they don't want, which will also result in a mountain of waste.  Then there's all the wasted packaging, wrapping paper, and the shopping bags this crap went into.  And, of course, this stuff didn't magically appear in stores.  It was manufactured, and I've already mentioned how much waste there is at the corporate level, where money is more important than anything, which certainly includes reducing waste.  Then they were transported to the stores: probably by fossil-fuel burning trucks at some point in the journey.
If you care about the environment, it makes sense to be anti-consumerism.  Reduce waste.  Reduce litter.  Save money.  Reduce the amount of possessions you have.  The more stuff you have, the less free you are.  The more stuff you have, the harder it is to bring it with you.           

Waste

I hate waste.  It's very depressing to see how much of it is happening at the corporate level.  There's a lot of it occurring in the giant store I work in.  The only material that's recycled regularly there is cardboard.  I take out the trash frequently, and it's clear that some of my coworkers aren't even recycling that.  A couple of people use a certain desk.  Behind that desk are two cans: one for trash and one for paper recycling.  I frequently find paper in the trash can.  These two cans are right next to each other!  The apathy when it comes to recycling and the environment disgusts me.  My coworkers frequently toss their empty soda bottles into the regular trash.  They could return that those bottles for 5 cents each.  Even when you pay people to recycle, many of them won't do it.
At a previous job, a coworker's friend was visiting him at work.  He mentioned that he doesn't care to recycle because, when the environment shits the bed, he will be dead and gone by then.  He obviously thought he was being hilariously funny, and my coworker laughed.  I didn't.  I don't find laziness, apathy, and selfishness humorous.   
Caring about animals and the environment go hand in hand (I think they should,), because that's where wildlife live.  I recycle as much as I can at home, so it angers and frustrates me to know how much waste is occurring elsewhere.  May have mentioned this before, but I have pulled stuff out of the trash (at work) to recycle, despite my OCD telling me not to.  Although I wear work gloves when I handle trash at work.  When I take out the trash, I try to save trash bags.  If one can isn't very full, I will dump it into another.  By contrast, some of (if not all) my coworkers just automatically (and thoughtlessly) take the bags out of the cans and throw them out: even if there had only been a tiny amount of trash in there (one piece of paper, for example).  This sort of mindless waste pisses me off.  So you see how one can reduce waste and save money simultaneously (The store uses less trash bags.). 
The holiday season is a very wasteful one.  Yesterday, I rang up a lot of holiday decoration purchases.  What a waste.  Decorations are a waste of money, time (putting up and taking them down), and materials.  People brought up carts that were full of boxes of Christmas lights and other needless, useless decorations.  Plastic bags were filled with all this unnecessary crap.  So the decorations themselves are a waste, so is the packaging they came in, and the bags they went into.  This wasteful display depressed and angered me.  I have no decorations, because I don't need them: no one does. 
Then there is the most obvious example of holiday waste: the Christmas tree.  Killing, or buying, a tree for Christmas disgusts me.  You're murdering a tree, raping Mother Nature, so you can have a tree in your home for a short period of time.  Then you will unceremoniously throw the tree out (more waste).  You'll waste time getting the tree decorations out, putting them on the tree, taking them off again, and cleaning up the after the tree.  When I walk a certain route, I pass a cliff.  When one looks over the cliff at a certain spot, one can see a Christmas tree, wrapped in plastic, stuck in the trees.  It has been there for quite a while: disgusting.  The world would be a better place without the person who put it there.  So much wasted stuff becomes litter.  I see it everywhere: yet another reason to get away from society.