Clutter doesn’t just appear out of thin air. It comes from things we buy that we don’t really need or quickly lose interest in. The key to breaking the habit of buying clutter is to ask the right questions before you buy.

First came Yuppies. Then DINKs. And now comes the LOHAS consumer label. What's a LOHAS consumer?

By Lloyd Alter

Of course Treehuggers [read: eco-conscious consumers] should make their own soups from scratch and keep them in reuseable containers. But if you are going to buy a bowl of instant noodles, look at these- palm oil free, all-natural and vegetarian soups, but what we really like is that the bowl is completely biodegradable and “decomposes in the soil with no harm to the earth”. Most will find their way into landfills where they probably are no better than plastic, but it is a start, particularly if you live in an area with community composting. Tasty, too… (the soup, not the bowl).