Not Made in China: Half Done

Yikes. Nearly a month since my last post. ...

Our self-imposed standard of avoiding anything Made in China has past the halfway mark. In some ways, it's been fairly easy to achieve because we buy very little that is new (and decided just this weekend -- or at least re-confirmed? -- that anything bought second-hand doesn't count as a digression). I guess it's a carry-over from last year's experiment to try and not purchase anything new for 12 months, which we did admirably well up until the last few weeks of December.

Yet, it is easy to forget to check every label, and not everything you purchase online states country of origin ... So, it was with some surprise, that my wife's new Converse sneakers should have been made in China! Even a set of paper clips had the words "Made in China" stamped into the cheap metal.

How can one country -- even one with a population of more than 1.3 billion people -- produce so much stuff? Where does all the raw material come from? Where does all the waste go? As the Dude would say, "All this consumption cannot stand."