Cover of 60: Rethinking Sustainable Living — Care Work, Community, and Interdependence with Laura Danger

60: Rethinking Sustainable Living — Care Work, Community, and Interdependence with Laura Danger

60: Rethinking Sustainable Living — Care Work, Community, and Interdependence with Laura Danger

Listen for free

View show details

Season's Savings | 0.99 €/month for 3 months

5.99 €/month thereafter - terms apply. Cancel monthly.
So much of sustainable living is still presented to us as an individual project — something we are supposed to manage inside our own homes through how we shop, how much we throw away, and all the habits we build around those choices.But what if sustainability is actually asking something bigger?In this conversation, I’m joined by Laura Danger, author of No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More, to talk about what changes when we start thinking about sustainability through the lens of care, community, and interdependence.We begin with something seemingly simple: hand-me-downs. But circulating clothes, toys, bikes, and other resources requires labour, connection, and a willingness to participate in the life of a community. From there, we talk about why care work remains so deeply gendered and undervalued, and how those same patterns show up in environmental work and the systems behind what we buy, use, and throw away.We also get into hyper-individualism, consumption, and the idea of weaponized incompetence on a cultural scale — what happens when we are taught not to know or care where things come from, where they go when we are finished with them, or who absorbs the costs along the way.And we talk about what it means to build something different: sharing resources, participating in mutual aid, showing up for neighbours, and recognizing that interdependence is not a failure of independence. It is how healthy communities work.If low waste living was your own doorway into questioning consumption, or if you’re trying to build a more intentional life that is less isolated and more connected to the people around you, this conversation asks a bigger question: what are we actually trying to sustain?TakeawaysWhy circulating hand-me-downs is radical care workThe connection between gendered labour and sustainable livingWhy care work is essential infrastructure in our homes and communitiesHow hyper-individualism keeps us isolated and overburdenedWhat cultural “weaponized incompetence” can look like in sustainabilityWhy understanding systemic problems does not mean our individual choices stop matteringReciprocity, mutual aid, and the difference between community and transactionWhy sharing resources can strengthen both social connection and community resilienceWhy sustainable communities cannot be built through individual self-sufficiency aloneWhat it means to be a villager, rather than simply wishing for a villageOne Small ShiftThis week, choose one small way to participate more actively in the community around you. That could mean joining or using your local Buy Nothing group, passing something along instead of throwing it away, checking in on a neighbour, sharing food or another resource, or simply noticing where you have the capacity to make someone else’s day a little easier.Connect With LauraNo More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More (book)Time to Lean (podcast)WebsiteInstagramRelated Blog PostsClimate Venn Diagram: A Simple Framework for Climate ActionHow to Organize a Clothing Swap10 Tips for Going Zero Waste with KidsRelated Podcast EpisodesEp. 7: Rethinking Zero Waste and Building Community Care with April DickinsonEp. 11: Money, Enoughness, and Community Care with Women’s Personal FinanceEp. 32: Overstimulation, Overconsumption, and the Pressure to Do More with Gillian GabrylukEp. 36: How to Host a Clothing Swap — Sharing Clothes & Building CommunityEp. 42: Overwhelmed by Climate Change? The Climate Venn Diagram Can HelpEp. 58: How to Quit Amazon, Buy Less & Break the Cycle of OverconsumptionSupport the showConnect With MeWebsiteNewsletterShopInstagramSupport the ShowSustainable in the Suburbs is mixed and edited by Cardinal StudioIf you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you followed the show, shared it with a friend, or left a rating and review. Every little bit helps more people find Sustainable in the Suburbs — and live a little greener.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet