This is probably too gentle to really be a "throw down the gauntlet" post, but I have been thinking today...
When one has a need for a durable good, most of the time it really can't be necessary to buy something brand new. How much does that need to have "new" things drive the depletion of our resources, the filling of our garbage dumps, etc. To use an example that I would never actually DO, if I wanted a fur coat, why would I buy a brand new one, necessitating the new killing and torture of an animal, when I could instead go to a vintage store and buy one made from an animal killed decades ago?
I was thinking about this today because as I was unloading the dishwasher, I did a count on our forks and SOMEHOW over the last two years they have dwindled away and we are missing 5 of them. We're down to three forks. And this was a nice mid century modern flatware set that my partner used when he was a kid. My instinct was to look on Amazon for a whole new silverware set, and then I realized how wasteful that would be. Of money and natural resources. Instead I Googled for a while, was able to track down the manufacturer and pattern, and after some searching on Ebay I now have vintage replacement pieces for the original set coming to me at a fraction of the cost of new. Less $$ spent, I bought only what I needed, and nothing new was created.
I want to make more of an effort to extend this way of thinking to other (necessary) purchases. I could easily go all year only buying new clothes from Goodwill. Nothing new created. I think this will be my mantra in 2018. I know forum Mustachians are way more advanced than this but this would be a big change for me.