Speaker 1: It's Monday, May eleven. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
Speaker 1: coronavirus update. One of the most interesting aspects of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic is how our everyday lives have changed. One
Speaker 1: such thing is a move away from the culture of waste.
Speaker 1: People are regrowing scallions and growing herbs at home, washing
Speaker 1: and reusing ziploc bags and more. But while being this
Speaker 1: frugal in the past was mostly rooted in saving money,
Speaker 1: this time around it's a little different. There's a fear
Speaker 1: of scarcity and also an effort to avoid unnecessary movement.
Speaker 1: Meredith Haggarty, editor at Vox, joins us for the novel Frugality.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Meredith, I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how our lives have changed because of
Speaker 1: the current pandemic that we're going through. One of the
Speaker 1: interesting things there's this new sense of frugality that is
Speaker 1: set in for a lot of people. Anecdotally, you just
Speaker 1: hear some of these stories, and even online you've been
Speaker 1: seeing things about how people are growing green onion scallions
Speaker 1: at their home so they don't have to get out
Speaker 1: to the store so much. Myself. I've taken to rewashing
Speaker 1: and reusing the little red plastic solo cups, and even
Speaker 1: saving some of those plastics to go containers from take
Speaker 1: out and things like that. We're kind of all getting
Speaker 1: in this mode again. A lot of it is not
Speaker 1: necessarily new, but maybe the circumstances of why we're doing
Speaker 1: it is obviously new. So Meredith tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about how frugality has creeped back into America. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I also I noticed a lot of people
Speaker 1: tweeting or talking about eating the ends of their bread
Speaker 1: for the first time, or washing aluminum foil, which they
Speaker 1: hadn't done previous. I have not done that yet, I have,
Speaker 1: I've only just started doing that. I was not, I
Speaker 1: have to admit, like a super frugal person myself previously.
Speaker 1: But the thing that I thought was really interesting about
Speaker 1: this behavior is that when I first started hearing about
Speaker 1: it was from people who I knew, say, weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: in a position of economic preparity. There obviously is a
Speaker 1: lot of unrest and uncertainty about the future right now,
Speaker 1: and everyone's a little freaked out, but it seemed like
Speaker 1: these new behaviors weren't necessarily coming from a place of
Speaker 1: will I be able to buy this stuff for my
Speaker 1: family again? It came a lot from a place of
Speaker 1: is it safe for me to go buy this for
Speaker 1: my family again, or is it safe for me to
Speaker 1: send somebody else to buy it, Or wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: better to maybe get a little bit more out of
Speaker 1: my bread, a little bit more out of my aluminum oil,
Speaker 1: a little bit more out of my ziplock bags. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're seeing people sort of embracing and realizing
Speaker 1: what they had on their hands already. And you contrast
Speaker 1: this with the kind of thought of frugality from years past,
Speaker 1: or you know, your grandparents or other even culturally people
Speaker 1: that had to have saved because they've gone through tough times.
Speaker 1: They went through the Great Recession, they lived in a
Speaker 1: country maybe where they didn't have a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: things like that. That's kind of where you think the
Speaker 1: basis of it comes from. But you're right, everything is
Speaker 1: different now, you know, with all of these stay at
Speaker 1: home orders and people are genuinely freaked out sometimes about
Speaker 1: going out into public and getting sick. You're just kind
Speaker 1: of wanting to save as much as you can, just
Speaker 1: to save yourself from being out there. So I talked
Speaker 1: to an expert in for gality, Ronald Goldsmith, who had
Speaker 1: studied it pre pandemic, and he had talked about how,
Speaker 1: for the most part, there had been two types of frugality,
Speaker 1: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic is just some people are naturally frugal.
Speaker 1: They might be super wealthy, but they're still going to
Speaker 1: save every takeout container no matter what. And there are
Speaker 1: other people who are extrinsically frugal, and that's because of
Speaker 1: the circumstances they find themselves in economically. For the most
Speaker 1: what Mr. Oldsmith said to me was, they would like
Speaker 1: to be able to be less frugal, but they don't
Speaker 1: have the funds for it. And in this case, we're
Speaker 1: seeing just sort of this moment where people who were
Speaker 1: not intrinsically frugal are suddenly becoming extrinsically frugal, but not
Speaker 1: because they don't have the money, but because they are
Speaker 1: dealing with this unprecedent hented situation that we're all dealing
Speaker 1: with right now. And it's crazy, because we invented this
Speaker 1: whole industry of disposable products really a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the article. Diapers, cameras, contact lenses, the
Speaker 1: plastic bags, the zip blog bags, all of this stuff
Speaker 1: is just disposable things for us. And now even with
Speaker 1: the ziplog bags, people are washing them and turning them
Speaker 1: inside and in drying them so they can reason. And
Speaker 1: you know, these are all these things maybe so going
Speaker 1: back to this getting out in the world just so
Speaker 1: you don't have to re buy them again, and some
Speaker 1: people like kind of that regret sets into It just
Speaker 1: happened to me because I literally just ran out of
Speaker 1: these gallon sized ziplock bags and I'm like, man, I
Speaker 1: should have watched some of these this past week and
Speaker 1: save those. Yeah, it's like when I don't have this anymore,
Speaker 1: I don't have it in a way that I think
Speaker 1: some people just hadn't really experienced in the same way before.
Speaker 1: It's a strange time, but I think that cultural disposability
Speaker 1: thing that's sort of the thing I really wanted to
Speaker 1: get out in this piece too, is like America has
Speaker 1: a materials culture and has four seventies some add years
Speaker 1: at least, maybe more, and we've been encouraged through marketing
Speaker 1: and through the way that things are made through planned obsolescens,
Speaker 1: through disposability. Just to think of things as being able
Speaker 1: to be thrown away, and that we constantly did the
Speaker 1: new thing, that we're always being sold something else, and
Speaker 1: that was good for marketers, that was good for companies.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily good for the environment. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: good for us. And more importantly, it's not necessarily necessary,
Speaker 1: which I think is the thing that people often forgot.
Speaker 1: I have always thrown aways ziplock bags, and I've only
Speaker 1: just started rewashing them and just like, oh now I
Speaker 1: still have zip block bags. Blot out small miracle. Talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit about the fear of scarcity
Speaker 1: and panic buying, because we know we all remember the
Speaker 1: stories right when this happened. Obviously, the toilet paper, paper, towels,
Speaker 1: cleaning supplies, that was the first stuff to go. Right
Speaker 1: now we're hearing about things with the food supply and
Speaker 1: certain things might not be available. Tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about that. So we're definitely seeing fears around the
Speaker 1: supply chain. As someone who's reported on the supply chain
Speaker 1: in the past, I've never heard people talk about it
Speaker 1: in conversation quite as much as we are these days,
Speaker 1: there's the fear that all these meat plants are being
Speaker 1: shut down, which they probably should be for safety. There
Speaker 1: are fears about toilet paper and Clorox wipes and all
Speaker 1: these things that the supply chain, because of the way
Speaker 1: it's structured, is not able to just get up and
Speaker 1: out to us at the speed that we're currently demanding it.
Speaker 1: So I think that instills some people just a real
Speaker 1: fear of like even if I go to the supermarket,
Speaker 1: if I get myself out and I go out, there
Speaker 1: will there be the thing that I need there, which
Speaker 1: is an unusual thought in America before the pandemic. This
Speaker 1: is actually one of the aspects of these where I
Speaker 1: the most was like, well, when I have started doing
Speaker 1: these things, I am doing it because I'm afraid it's
Speaker 1: not going to be there when I get to the supermarket,
Speaker 1: Like I am afraid of scarcity personally. And I think
Speaker 1: that we saw that same fear with people buying up
Speaker 1: all the toilet paper immediately. As we know coronavirus is
Speaker 1: not a gastro intestinal disease, it doesn't really make sense
Speaker 1: that we all went out and bought toilet paper, but
Speaker 1: that is what people did, and that leads to shortage,
Speaker 1: and that leads to this fear of future shortages. Just
Speaker 1: the realization that we might live in a really interconnected
Speaker 1: and impressive global system previously, but that's not necessarily always
Speaker 1: the case when things are changing so rapidly and so terrifyingly.
Speaker 1: Definitely interesting times with what's going on, And one of
Speaker 1: these things that's interested me so much is how we're
Speaker 1: adapting and changing to all of this. So I want
Speaker 1: to use the term you coin for the article. It's
Speaker 1: us so interesting how this novel coronavirus has instilled this
Speaker 1: novel rugality in a lot of people. Meredith Haggarty, editor
Speaker 1: at Vox, thank you very much for joining us. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
Speaker 1: this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget effort
Speaker 1: today's big news stories. You can check me out of
Speaker 1: the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, So follow
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