Read the original in French. Margaret Morrison is a British translator of literary and commercial texts from French. She was awarded a French Voices Award in , and her translation of some short stories from Cameroon won the Gabo Prize in We were part of that world. On average, we consumed over litres of clean water per day per person—and over 3, litres of oil per year. We had 2. Our households were contributing to the production of hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste per year.
We were supporting destructive mass consumption and contributing to the devastation of the world. We knew this. To salve our consciences. To take responsibility, we favoured wholegrain bread over white bread, free-range chicken over intensively farmed, healthy drinks over sugary sodas, and alternative snacks over industrial crisps.
We signed up our children for music, for writing, for age-appropriate dance, we wore them in slings till they weighed 15 kilos and went with them to exhibitions on gender issues for the seven to twelves. We signed up for organic food boxes, followed a zero-waste philosophy and frequented refill stores—even though, for consumables like light bulbs, ink cartridges or dishwasher salt, we caved in to the convenience of supermarkets.
We belonged to the so-called upper professional classes, and our superior purchasing power made us willing customers of niche products; bit by bit we made sure that no one came to birthday parties toting tat from Shanghai sweatshops.
In the past five years, twenty million jobs had vanished from our markets, a quarter of them in Europe. Unemployment was exploding exponentially.
