Authored by green guide Danish Ahmad
We are living in an age of wide-spread extensive consumerism. This is to the detriment of both ours and our planet’s well-being. Living in accordance with minimalist values tries to change this! Being a minimalist, you adopt a lifestyle in which you live your life with only the essential supplies, with limited resources, and only the most important things.
Why do we need minimalism?
We are living in the age of fast fashion and mass-production tech products. Fast fashion brands like H&M and ZARA and tech giants like Apple are mass producing huge numbers of clothes and gadgets every day. Marketing of these products is especially targeting the young population that is already under enormous influence from social media influencers. The modern ways of shopping online just a few clicks away has made it even more impulsive. And every year tons of fabric and plastic goes into landfills which takes years to degrade with sizable environmental consequences.
Apart from environmental hazards, excessive consumerism also has large impacts on our personal lives. For example, the rising culture of social media influencers leads many teenagers into depression and other psychological disorders. The reality of social media consists of filtered content that we chose to put online for the world to see. I would argue that materialism is overcoming this planet, and the greed of possession is rising every passing day. Priorities are changing from relationships to owning possessions, which is a modern-day dilemma. This obsession can lead to both personal and environmental losses. On a personal level people are suffering from depression, anxiety, and envy etc. On the bigger scale it is also damaging our environment.
How can we adopt minimalism?
There are few easy steps which we can follow to make our lives simpler, easier, and better.
- Step: Get rid of those items which you did not use in the last 90 days.
- Step: Evaluate to try to figure out what you really need and what you don’t. Learn the difference between needs and desires. Try to control your materialistic desires. It will leave a positive impact on not just your life but others’ as well.
- Step: Donate surplus items and be a helping member of your community. Gradually you will realise that you don’t need to run the modern race and that you don’t require all those things to be happy.
Impacts of minimalism:
Adopting the minimalist lifestyle can bring a clear positive impact on both our environment and in our personal lives. By pulling ourselves out of the rat race of consumerism we can not only save our money and mental health, but we can also be helpful to save our planet. When we own less it makes more space not only in our homes but also in our minds and hearts. Decluttering our lives with meaningless possessions can save us from envy, bring us mental stability, and give us more room in our minds to think about our relationships and this planet.
If you want to discuss this topic with us, you can book our tour “The sustainable city and you” in Berlin (at: https://greenbiketours.org/vare/the-sustainable-berlin-of-the-future/) and learn more about sustainability and fast fashion culture. We hope to see you there!
- Book: “Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life” Book by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus
- Documentary: The Minimalists: Less Is Now
- Podcast: The Minimalists Podcast