Tried a "no spend month" to cut my footprint and it backfired in a way I did not expect

Cameron Fisher · 2026-09-17T17:25:04.408207+00:00

Last month I challenged myself to buy nothing new for 30 days to shrink my carbon footprint, and I actually made it the whole time, but here is the twist. Instead of driving less, I ended up ordering stuff online from three different stores because I kept telling myself it did not count if it was used. The kicker is those three shipments came from warehouses in Ohio, Nevada, and New Jersey, so my delivery miles probably went up, not down. I tracked it with a simple spreadsheet and my trash actually dropped to one bag a week, which felt great, but my cardboard pile tripled from all the boxes. What I learned is that buying less stuff only helps if you also stop the impulse to replace it, and I clearly have not figured that part out yet. My wife laughed at me when I showed her the numbers and asked if I was going to count the gas I burned driving to the post office. Anyone else try a low waste month and watch one area get better while another one quietly got worse?

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Tried a "no spend month" to cut my footprint and it backfired in a way I did not expect | Climate Action - Chatter Central