Yawn! They are looking to change the world
Many Gen Xers &Ys Step Back From Materialistic Life, Move To Cut Their Carbon Footprint …..Evelyn Nieves SAN FRANCISCO
Many Gen Xers &Ys Step Back From Materialistic Life, Move To Cut Their Carbon Footprint …..Evelyn Nieves SAN FRANCISCO
THEY drive hybrid cars, if they drive at all, shop at local stores, if they shop at all and pay off their credit cards every month, if they use them at all. They may have disposable income, but whatever they make, they live below their means, in a conscious effort to tread lightly on the earth. They are a new breed of Gen Xers and Ys, Young and Wealthy but Normal, or Yawns.
The acronym comes from The Sunday Telegraph of London, which noted that an increasing number of rich young Britons are socially aware, concerned about the environment and given less to consuming than to giving money to charity.
Yawns sound dull, but they are the new movers and shakers, their dreams big and bold. They are men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s who want nothing less than to change the world and save the planet.
Take Sean Blagsvedt, who moved from Seattle to India in 2004 to help build the local office of Microsoft Research. Moved by young children begging on the streets, Blagsvedt quit Microsoft and launched two networking sites, babajob.com and babalife.com, to link India’s vast pool of potential workers with the people who need labour. The larger goal — to reduce poverty.
Far from the techie cafe life, Blagsvedt, 32, lives at babajob’s headquarters in Bangalore, a 3,000-square-foot apartment where his mother and stepfather also live and 15 workers come and go every day. “I’m a happy person,” he said. “It’s great to do something that you believe in doing.”
The high-tech world has spawned some Yawns, but they can sprout anywhere. In fact, Yawns are a subset of a growing global movement of the eco-socially aware. The state of the economy and the state of the planet have inspired people to consider what they buy and how they spend in ways not seen since the “Small is Beautiful” and ecology movements of the 1970s.
The movement makes perfect sense, said David Grusky, a sociologist at Stanford University, since society tends to follow cycles — with anti-materialist periods like the hippie movement generating a pro-materialist reaction — the yuppie period, and so on. Not to mention, he adds, that the evidence of major climate change and a concern with terrorism gives rise to more interest in spiritual as opposed to material objectives.
The upshot, he said, is that “A cultural and demographic ‘perfect storm’ may well push us decisively toward an extreme form of postmaterialism in the upcoming period.”
That helps explain why Earth Day has become so big again, why products are all going “green” and why freecycle.org, an internet community bulletin board where members offer items for free, has grown in five years from a dozen members in Tucson, Arizona, to a network of over 3,000 cities in 80 countries.
That helps explain why Earth Day has become so big again, why products are all going “green” and why freecycle.org, an internet community bulletin board where members offer items for free, has grown in five years from a dozen members in Tucson, Arizona, to a network of over 3,000 cities in 80 countries.
Deron Beal, the site’s founder, counts 4 million members, and growing by 20,000 to 50,000 members each week. “People have many reasons for freecycling,” said Beal. “But the biggest reason is environmental — reusing and recycling instead of helping create more waste.”
Could it also be that we are sick to death of buying stuff? Pam Danziger, a consumer trends expert, thinks so. “The green thing is just a small part of it,” said Danziger, whose firm, Unity Marketing, has new research showing luxury spending is way down. “Americans have been on a buying binge for the last 10 years,” she said. “Our closets are full. Our attics are full. Our garages are full. Enough already!”
Yawns live small, but they already own whatever they want. Rik Wehbring, a 37-year-old dot.com millionaire — he worked for multiple start-ups — limits himself to living on $50,000 a year. That’s no chump change but well below what he could spend in San Francisco, where his rent eats up 40% of his allotted spending. Wehbring doesn’t own a television, his mp3 player cost $20(“and it works just fine”) and he drives (when he drives) a Toyota Prius.
He buys most of his food from local farmers’ markets, is leaving the bulk of his estate to various environmental organisations and donates money to what he considers worthy causes. Everyday, he grapples with “how to live a low-carbon life.” But Wehbring doesn’t buy clothes, or much of anything. “I don’t need a lot of material possessions,” he said. — AP
Yawn Sean Blagsvedt has launched two networking sites to link India’s vast pool of potential workers with organisations that need labour. — AP