Ashlee Piper talks “conditioned consumerism” at the Penn Libraries Book Prize in Sustainability award ceremony

Every year in October, the University of Pennsylvania holds Climate Week, during which groups from around campus offer numerous events and other opportunities to learn about and act on the climate crisis.

The Penn Libraries supports both Climate Week and Penn's broader climate research and educational efforts in a variety of ways. One of these ways is through the Penn Libraries Book Prize in Sustainability. Now in its third cycle, the Penn Libraries awards one noteworthy book on environmental sustainability annually. Winners receive an $8,000 cash prize and come to campus to talk about their books during Climate Week.

Combating climate change by fighting back against "conditioned consumerism"
 

This year’s Book Prize in Sustainability winner is No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity by Ashlee Piper. Piper is a sustainability expert, author, and speaker who works with people to achieve their sustainability goals. Her book helps people reflect on their spending and consumption and gives them tools to break free of what she calls “conditioned consumerism.”

Piper accepted her award at our Book Prize in Sustainability Reception and Ceremony on October 7, 2026. In her accompanying talk, Piper traced the origins of No New Things back to her early days as a sustainability consultant in 2012. “When I would talk about sustainability, almost always, without fail, people would ask me, ‘What do I need to buy to be more sustainable?’ We are so conditioned, especially in the United States, to think that if we're going to undertake something, we have to buy brand new stuff. We look at consumerism as a salve for everything.” As a result, the average American spends about 400 hours a year shopping.
 

Inspired by these questions, she set herself a personal challenge. “In 2013, I said, okay, for 30 days, I'm going to buy no new things.” Two years later, she was still holding herself to the challenge. In the meantime, she had paid off debt, made new connections in her community, found more time to do things she enjoyed, and reduced her stress. Soon, she began talking about her experience on Instagram, and people started to ask her how they could join her challenge.
 

In her book, Piper explores the history of consumerism and marketing in America and the way it has fueled our obsession with acquiring things. She also describes the “SUPER System,” of her No New Things challenge: shopping secondhand; upcycling what you already have; paying nothing for consumer goods by swapping with friends or joining community Buy Nothing groups; spending resources on experiences instead of stuff; and renting, sharing, and borrowing instead of buying.

Piper loves hearing from people whose lives have been changed, in big ways and small, by the No New Things challenge. “I think it's really amazing when people take the time to write me and let me know that something this simple has actually changed the way they see consumerism, changed the way they see marketing, changed the way they see their power they have to be part of the solution to climate change, and just made their lives better.” 

No New Things is available to borrow through the Penn Libraries and your local library.
 

Beyond No New Things: Resources for sustainability research and teaching at the Penn Libraries

No New Things focuses on what everyday people can do to live more sustainability, but that is just one aspect of combatting climate change. Accordingly, Piper's book is just one piece in the Libraries’ larger collection of books, journals, databases, and other resources that support research and education in sustainability, climate change, environmental science, and related fields. We created a guide to help the Penn community find and access these and the many other resources we have on sustainability. This guide is filled with information about resources related to sustainability, including physical materials held by the Libraries, links to electronic resources we provide access to, and publicly-available datasets from federal agencies.

One noteworthy resource is the Journal of Visual Experiments, or JOVE. JOVE offers a multimodal database with over 30,000 peer-reviewed videos that demonstrate experiments from many different disciplines, including environmental science. JOVE believes that videos like these can help improve the reproducibility of these experiments by helping future researchers understand and replicate them. 

Additionally, JOVE contains educational materials that can help students understand various concepts and experimental methods. JOVE offers approximately 8000 videos and 53,000 multiple choice questions across 11 subject areas.

The Libraries also has several collections of primary source materials in environmental studies and sustainability in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. Two interesting examples are Atomic Age Collection pamphlets and the Zinman Atomic Energy Collection. The Atomic Age Collection includes materials from three sources: the library of Major Sir Patrick Wall, a Royal Marine and member of the British parliament; The Institute of Defense and Disarmament Studies, a think-tank in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the library of Professor Melvin Calvin, a  University of California at Berkeley chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project. Meanwhile, the Zinman Atomic Energy Collection comes from private collector Michael Zinman and contains materials about atomic energy and the atomic age, including early American imprints, trade bindings, canvassing books, World's Fair publications and ephemera, and more. Researchers at Penn and beyond can make an appointment with the Kislak Center to view these materials.

The Penn Libraries is excited to contribute to Climate Week and sustainability studies and research at the University of Pennsylvania. Our librarians are happy to help support your educational or research needs in this or any field. Please reach out to a librarian for help.