I had a conversation with Dave, a friend of mine, today and we wandered into ethical living territory. It seems he and his wife Esther have made huge strides in making their lifestyle more sustainable. I wondered aloud about the options available to me, after all the basic stuff, the structural stuff has mostly been done, so where do we go from here?

Our lightbulbs are low energy, we recycle, compost, have a water meter, only one car (oh OK and a motorbike), we bank with an ethical bank, we try and take the environment and people into account in our buying decisions and we live fairly frugally but still very comfortably.

So where do I go from here? I think there are two sides to this for me, the first is reducing the carbon footprint. I recognize that western lifestyle takes too much out of the world and making efforts to balance that out in some way is essential. The second is having a deeper reason, a goal, to discover something better, richer, deeper than what is offered by consumerism.