Maryhope knows that her love for shopping might seem a little questionable in light of her new, more sustainable lifestyle. But she's a loyal Craigslist user, and she's already bought and sold secondhand clothing. Isn't that kinda green?

If retail therapy is a learned behavior, then call me a straight-A student. As a kid, when I went to the doctor or dentist, the visit was always followed by a trip to the toy store. In adulthood, this has translated into my using any relationship breakup or subway breakdown to justify spending my rent money on the shoes I've been eyeing. More than that, I find shopping fun. In the absence of some stress I can use to justify shopping, I start buying for my friends, or for Ethan. I know he thinks I'm crazy, but it's one of my guilty pleasures. Lately, however, much of the pleasure I used to find in tearing the tags off new clothes or opening a package from Amazon has diminished-all of my reading about excessive packaging and creating waste is ruining it for me.

When I read that Americans spent an estimated $100 billion online in 2006, it was hard not to hide my head in shame. (Shouldn't we be putting all that money toward a needy cause?) As someone with a grad student's income, I am probably helping to drag that average down. But student or not, I'm a sucker for new stuff, and I cast a wide net. I am just as likely to crave new cross-country skis (I'm moving to Minnesota-I need them!) as I am a new pair of jeans (I'll wear them every day, so they're worth it!).

When it comes to clothing-which, if you're like me, takes up a large percentage of your retail dollars-the notion of buying items that are good for the planet evokes images of one-note fashion: baggy drawstring pants, earth tones, and shapeless hemp T-shirts. I'm short, so bagginess and drawstrings are clothing features that make me look like a 10-year-old boy. And for better or worse-I grimace as I write this-nine years in New York turned me into a little bit of a clothing snob.

But it turns out that producers of hemp and organic cotton clothing have come a long way since I last looked. Greenloop and Earth Speaks offer some highly wearable stuff. And as the green movement continues to gain traction, even the clothes that write their Earth-friendly message across your chest are getting cooler, like Zooey Tees, which are made to fit well and are printed with sayings like "The world has a fever, be the cure." There may not yet be sexy hemp lingerie, but we might not have to wait too long for it, either.

Crissy Trask, in the book It's Easy Being Green, offers another tip for shopping for clothes without guilt: Use consignment and vintage-clothing stores. I had never thought of consignment as recycling before. After a closet-cleaning frenzy, I went to a local chain of consignment stores, Second Time Around, my arms full of impulse buys from college and Christmas gifts I never wore. The deal is that you take home 50 percent of what the store sells your clothes for. While I was thumbing through the racks, another customer bought one of the items I had just dropped off. I walked out of there $50 richer-I actually made money on my clothes-buying habit, which helps with the Ethan eye-roll factor when I come home with stuff I don't need.

Another shopping addiction is technology; according to CNET.com, the average American adult spends $1,200 a year on electronics. Sites like iTunes have made it easy to spend this money in an eco-friendly way. Apart from digital-music downloading, though, we tend to be stuck with our slow, aging computers and our 1-megapixel digital cameras as technology improves at frustratingly fast pace.

Searching for recycled electronics turns up a number of helpful hints about getting rid of the stuff no longer being used. But apart from tips for conserving energy when using your electronics, there seems to be a dearth of advice on how to buy them in an eco-friendly way. Then I realized that the last devices I purchased actually were reused-I bought my TV and DVD player through Craigslist.

I've used Craigslist for years as a way to make my life cheaper and more convenient, but it wasn't until writing this that I realized it was also good for the planet, and not a bad source for relatively new already-bought items. I have used the community-based site to buy and resell a bookshelf and sofa and collect free, used moving boxes when I was living in New York. It connects people for rideshares and allows people to peddle their used goods all online-what can be more environmentally sound than that?

When it comes to buying things and reusing things that aren't food, aren't seasonal, and aren't dependent on farming, there's a lot less planning ahead needed, just a little more creativity. Like most of being more eco-friendly, being a better consumer doesn't seem to have a black-and-white solution.

I am not going to stop shopping. I am still occasionally going to go to retail therapy after finishing my final exams. But I will also try to replace items with experiences. (Note to Ethan: Next time I say I am going shopping, how about you give me a backrub instead?) And the great part is that, like many other aspects of this whole being-green experiment of ours, I find that doing the eco-right thing actually saves us money-another blow to the "I can't afford it" rationale of being better to the planet.

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