Buy Less, Consume Later is a call to move beyond your micro actions and engage with collective ways to move the needle in addressing climate change. In the book, Conway-Wood highlights the role of greenwashing perpetuated by our capitalistic society and seeks to help the reader identify these ploys as well as possible solutions that the reader can take. In her words:

Switching to a bamboo toothbrush might make us feel good, but it’s a drop in the ocean of systemic change needed to build a sustainable future. Overconsumption is the leading cause of the climate crisis, and greenwashing is playing a huge role in that destruction by fuelling our desire to buy more, and keeping our attention on ‘sustainable’ options instead of corporate change. To really make a meaningful impact, we not only need to consume consciously and challenge brands and advertisers, but we also need to reduce our consumption and change our entire relationship with ‘stuff’.

Sian knows being "fully sustainable" is easier said than done and cites her experience when shopping for a sustainable diaper brand and the underwhelming response she received when she made it from a "green" brand. In her opinion, it is better to consistently communicate the progress and changes that your brand is embedding rather than just outright greenwash your products to protect your brand integrity in the long run.

My biggest takeaway from the book was to continue educating myself and calling out brands when they commit the seven deadly sins of greenwashing. Conway-Woods gave me a lot to think about and I will endeavour to be a conscious consumer and citizen.

This is a great read, perhaps a must read, as there are so many things many of us could learn from this.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

I absolutely loved this book! It's a great take on a pivotal topic right now - the impact fashion and consumerism have on our lives and our future. The book focuses on the term "greenwashing" and how companies exploit environment to try and mislead the consumers to buy more. It also provides examples of greenwashing and useful tips on what consumers should look for when trying to consume less and live more sustainably, and we all should be doing to really preserve the environment. All in all, a great read that I hope many people will pick up!

One of my New Years Resolutions and I've seen some other people's New Years' resolutions this year is to become more environmentally friendly. I think that this book is a brilliant beginner's guide into how to be more environmentally aware when buying products and when living our lives without placing the blame of the environmental crisis solely on the consumer's shoulders which I've noticed a lot of people tend to do. This book explains how corporations and governments are responsible for the majority of global emissions but how they tend to push the blame onto the consumer instead of taking responsibility which I appreciated.

It also talks about what people who don't have a lot of time on their hands to research products before buying them can do and it also talks about how people who can't afford to spend more money on environmentally friendly products or want to stop spending money on surplus products. Which I loved as some books like these can tend to forget that not everyone can afford or has the time to be an activist.

This book by Sian Conway-Wood aims to inform us, the consumer, on ways to be more sustainable with our shopping habits so that we can reduce our environmental impact. The books talks about greenwashing and how companies try to mislead the consumer with misleading environmental claims. It provides loads of examples of what the companies have done in the past and how they try to hide behind various "green" terms. There are suggestions throughout this book on what we should be aware of when thinking about our environmental impact, what kinds of questions to ask companies who claim to be sustainable and what we as the consumer can do (think activism), and what the governments and large corporations should be doing.

It is a good book to read whether you are just starting to get interested in sustainability or if you have been interested for a while but don't know how to make a bigger impact. A couple of gripes - some of the content is repetitive and there are way too many examples. This book could have been a lot shorter and focused. Also, the author seems a bit keen to promote organic cotton. While organic cotton is certainly better than the non-organic variety, it consumes too much water and land to grow. Promoting other materials that are better for the planet (such as hemp) would have been a much better choice.