Some embraced a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, others just opted for saving money.įor many people in the 1970s, clothes were bought more sparingly and, significantly, were repaired, if a dress needed taking in or a hole appeared. In the 1970s, only a generation after the second world war, many who remembered deprivations and shortages still happily practised the “make-do-and-mend” mentality that had been promoted by the government in their childhoods.
With the first theatre production of The Good Life just starting a UK tour, a look back at the environmental activists of the 1970s reminds us that those trying to cut their carbon emissions today aren’t the first to aim for a greener lifestyle. They grew vegetables in their back garden, milked a goat, tried to knit their own clothes and collected their animal’s waste to create methane to generate electricity. Cult 1970s BBC TV show The Good Life examined Tom and Barbara Good’s experience of attempting to opt out of the rat race by becoming self-sufficient.
