Frugality. The very word summons the taste of powdered milk foaming in my cereal bowl, and the smell of vinegar at work on my bathroom floor. While I’m not a big fan of the word itself, I’ve come to believe frugality is a much deeper and more useful concept than simply conserving money.
I’ve recently started to view frugality as a kind of activism. If one wants to make big changes in the world, frugality is not a bad place to start for several reasons. (Spoiler alert: frugality is also a great way to promote personal change).
Here are five reasons I believe frugality is at the center of mitigating our climate crises, as well as improving the health and wealth of our society:
Frugality makes a dent in carbon emissions
Buying fewer things and making the things you have last longer is the frugal way, but it’s also the way to a cooler planet. Manufacturing and its associated energy use accounts for a large percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions, so by being frugal you’ll naturally be doing your part to address this global emergency.
Frugality makes a dent in pollution
Buying fewer things reduces pollution from manufacturing, but it also reduces the amount of stuff you throw away. Likewise, making your things last longer will help slow the rate of growth of the Texas-sized Great Pacific Garbage Patch swirling in the north central Pacific Ocean. Each problem a frugal person solves creatively is a win for the earth. A frugal person may make a minor repair to an appliance instead of marching out and buying a new one at first sign of trouble. Likewise, a frugal person may choose to bypass a raft of cleaning products for good-old-fashioned vinegar, further reducing the manufacturing and disposal of both chemicals and plastics.
Frugality improves your health
This goes for your own health and the health of everyone around you. Driving less, walking and biking more, even taking public transit — they all promote healthy movement and exercise, as well as reduce the poisonous byproducts of burning fossil fuels. Ask any doctor: More exercise and less poisonous gas equals better health.
As your healthier, more frugal life comes into focus, you may even find you have to spend less time sitting at a desk earning the money you need to survive. Less time at a desk is good.
Frugality is the essence of wealth
Frugality is a common trait among the super wealthy, as well as among average financially-well-adjusted persons. That’s not to say one shouldn’t enjoy the occasional splurge, but Benjamin Franklin’s simple rule of spend-less-than-you-earn is the primary vehicle for wealth, and the motor that drives it is frugality.
Meanwhile, there’s a synergistic effect at work: All of the previously-mentioned activities in this article — buying less stuff, making stuff last longer, walking, biking, and taking public transportation — are wealth and health accelerators.
Frugality is a vote against violence
Consumerism drives the harnessing (and sometimes enslavement) of workers in poorer countries, to build the wealth of richer ones. Frugality becomes a statement that you refuse to participate in an economic game that takes advantage of the poor in foreign nations, who often work in unsafe conditions and lack the protection of their own governments.
Normally, consumer spending has the side effect of bolstering government agendas through the vehicle of taxation. Frugality requires less taxable income, and therefore reduces support for the carbon-burning excesses of war and other rampant military spending. This doesn’t answer the question of how reduced taxes might affect the government programs necessary to serve the poor and disenfranchised. But one would hope that such a reorientation of values at the citizen level would build from the ground up into something greater, perhaps a frugal and benevolent government providing health care and equal treatment for all people.
