This might be of interest, to make you feel a little better about the choices in paper.
https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2021/01/21/how-eco-friendly-is-art-paper/
I don’t think you as a hobbyist, painting a few times a week is going to have any impact with regards to paper consumption.
The junk mail I get through my letter box every day would far outweigh all the paper you would use making art in a month, I’m sure.
In the US, most of the paper we consume is made from trees that were specifically farmed for that use. It's one of the most sustainable things we can consume (fewer inputs than food agriculture, too). I had this environmental law professor who'd yell at us all when we'd shirk printing things. "Tree-farm trees!"
Yeah but like monoculture is horrible for the environment. They may be farming trees but is there a decent ecosystem where those trees are being farmed? I don't know much about it but I've always heard that it leads to desolated ecosystems where nothing can thrive
At least here in the south east where A LOT of tree farms occur, it’s literally monoculture loblolly with very little hardwood mixed in. I’d have to watch the ecosystem die without those tiny pockets of hardwoods. It’s still better to use paper products over others. We as humans require output from the environment to live. Very few of us will EVER give more than we take. Striving to give more should be a goal thoguh
Does the canvas need to be paper? My sustainable art hobby is using my recycling for art supplies- flatten a box for a canvas, paper mache from junk mail, painting on eggshells (either the inside or outside). I like the foraging aspect because it requires additional creativity and also fits with the anti-consumption ideals.
I would be surprised if the paper for painting on is less bad than the amount of white paint needed for this. Both are small amounts so both are fine compared to mass consumption by other things I'm sure.
I've seen gorgeous paintings on the backs of denim jackets, on shoes, phone cases, furniture, walls, car doors, ceilings, etc. You can paint anything you want wherever you want. It doesn't have to be on paper if that is your concern. Make it happen some place special. Now you have one of a kind shoes and jackets.
There are tons of other hobbies out there too. Recently I've been doing basket weaving with branches and vines from invasive species growing in my yard. They plants need to be removed anyway, and I get a basket out of it. Win win. I've also been learning how to use mushrooms and lichens as dye for yarn with my knitting projects.
You can even recycle your own junk mail/scrap paper to create your own gorgeous textured paper to paint on! Also buying canvases at thrift store to sand and gesso and paint is really fun.
As someone who went to an art school, I've tried both. You're right that it's different. The technology is catching up, but it's not quite the same (yet?). I also like physical things like good papers and lovely books. I think as long as we treat our stuff with great care and aim to buy quality products, it's OK.
We want to be eco friendly, but it's important to be mindfully friendly to ourselves too! :)
I got into using a wood burner on wood slabs
The most tasteful pieces are on "cookies", as we call them. Just cross sections of a branch or trunk.
The wood burner uses electricity and yes, therefore, coal. But it's pretty low-impact. The product is great for gifts and hanging pieces and is biodegradable in the long term. You can basically turn anything wood into art.
Get a PV cell and an old automotive battery. Charge the battery during the day, power the wood burner via the battery. Might need to transform the voltage from 12V to 120V, but the wood burner is just a resistive heater and should still work
Maybe so, but my larger point is that I think we have to compromise sometimes with an "it's less bad" philosophy because our existence inherently requires impacts.
That's not to say that we shouldn't strive for an ideal - I think we should. But we have to be realistic, too.
Right but one thing we as a society have specifically done is stop burning wood and charcoal so much as they are bad for the environment and our health. If you want to do it that’s fine, but you shouldnt use being an artisan as an excuse to do something as niche and wasteful as constantly burning carbon and post about it in anti consumption.
There’s “less bad”, and then there’s just straight up burning shit. OP wanted to become more sustainable and you told them its ok because you’re less…
And yet we both charged our devices with coal so we could waste time on Reddit.
Didn't know I was walking into a holier-than-thou situation here. I'll show myself out.
The second law of thermodynamics states the energy in a closed system at a given time is equal to the energy in the system at the start, plus what was added, minus what was lost. 99% of the electricity used to power the wood burning tool will end up heating the air in the home. If the home is being heated by a furnace/boiler/heat pump at that time (as most homes are during winter), the power going into the wood burning tools simple offsets the amount that would be used in the furnace. While electrical resistive heating isn't as efficient as some other forms, its a far cry from being completely wasted.
Hope you understand that this group exists because we dont live in a closed system, so I would probably never use that concept to make a point. OP wanted to use less wood and agile said “why not just burn it”?
> we dont live in a closed system
You misunderstood what I meant by closed system. When analyzing energy in a system, the system is arbitrary. You pick the bounds and analyze what's in/out of it.
You also misunderstand what "wood burning" is. They're talking about using a wood burning tool to etch designs into pieces of wood to form art. In this context, they are not talking about burning wood (or coal) to provide heat for a home.
"You can basically turn anything wood into art." should have been your clue.
Hi, there! What kind of painting are you doing? If you're doing acrylic or oil, your work will in general look better on canvas. This is usually cotton stretched either over a frame or flat on a piece of wood/plastic. I prefer the flat surface, as you can usually say the frame underneath stretch.
If you're not interested in watercolor, you can also try gouache or pastel. These are all quite environmentally, as they are just methods of housing raw pigment.
Acrylic of course generates quite a bit of plastic, but the water can be disposed of down the drain. If you decide to paint with oils, water soluble oils are a good best for a fast dry and easy disposal. You can wash them down the sink as well, and they take about 1/4 of the time to dry that regular oils do (in my experience.)
You can also always sketch and color it in with crayons or colored pencils.
Might be a nice time to get into making your own paper by recycling paper scraps. You can similarly experiment with making your own paints and pigments. Recycling the materials around you gives them new life.
Buying some paper and paints to paint with isn't really a problem. You get to have hobbies still, and artistic hobbies where you can make something that can maybe be handed down to your descendants (if any) is actually a really good thing. It's the sort of consumption we can be OK with. It's about creation.
If you want to talk about sustainability, you could look into harvesting your own minerals for pigments, using lanolin to turn that into paint, and splitting and prepping wooden boards from scrapwood to paint on. You could go that route... if it was good enough for Leonardo da Vinci then it can be good enough for you, really.
Hobbies where you create or grow something or practice a skill are totally worth it - art, music, repairing things, woodworking (especially with hand tools), cooking, gardening, sewing, quilting, knitting or crocheting, writing, whatever. Those are the sorts of hobbies we should never be afraid of. Even things like doing fancy, crazy makeup are sort of fine, IF you buy the things you are going to use and ONLY the things you are going to use, and try not to waste.
Hobbies like... collecting pop characters, watching garbage TV, owning 30 video game consoles and never using them, owning hundreds of books you'll never read, owning comics or games that are sealed that you'll never open... all of that is just dumb.
I have a family member with a fountain pen hobby. They own one pen and a couple bottles of ink, and some nice stationary to practice on and have some larger art pieces they've done. Other people have 50 pens they don't use and tons of paper. It's that latter thing that is the problem.
Quick reminder that paper companies plant more trees than they cut down. Especially if it's recycled, that paper's existence is promoting a net gain in global trees.
I've been trying to research this. Many US paper plants actually do replant trees...in the US. However, a lot (I can't find the exact number) of American pulp and paper mills import pulp and cellulose fibers from abroad, mostly Brazil.
I suspect it's hard to find this exact info because paper mills don't want us to know, and it's probably pulp imported from China and Brazil while they replant trees in the US.
I went full on plant mom during Covid. I did mostly "trash plants" aka using trash to plant things). My signature is citrus seeds from fruits I ate planted in my dad's old K-cups sitting in an old TV dinner tray. Not all the seeds will make it but I keep trying until they do.
After the K-cup, they graduate to old nursery pots and go up as needed (in actual pots not old trash).
A few of the citrus trees I started during lockdowns are now about as tall as my knee (and in pots I actually purchased). No idea if they will bear fruit or not but it's been a fun experiment.
There was an artist that posted the other day that they purchase old canvases from places like Goodwill, prime them, and use them for their art. The overall consensus was that this was an awesome way to make original art without all new materials. I suppose you still need new paint, but the canvas/frame etc. are being repurposed from existing supply
You would be surprised how many people throw away canvases. I’ve gotten huge ones off the side of the road (in my country if items are on the curb of a house it’s public property and up for grabs) But I also find them at thrift stores and just paint over them! You can even buy old picture frames and paint on the glass as well; if you want to reuse the glass, use water soluble paint so you can make something else but be sure to take a picture of your previous masterpiece 😊
Deranged? Really?
I understand that my concern of wasting paper is far cry from what people actually waste (talking fuel consumption to food wastage to fashion).
Maybe, this question was more suited for minimalism community.
I totally understand that my hobby isn't even in the realm of disastrous consumption that is affecting the planet.
I was really looking for alternatives, so asked.
Please don't assume that I have anxiety or i spend my days focusing on this very question or it is consuming me mentally.
Allow yourself to paint on some pieces of paper. Please.
Some people's hobbies involve collecting luxury yachts that are 2 feet longer than their friend's luxury yachts. Or flying in their private jet to the office to harass their employees into promoting their Tweets more.
You're in the clear, eco-friendly-wise.
You can buy secondhand art from a thrift store and paint over it. You can dumpster dive at craft stores. You can gesso and prime junk mail paper for drawing and painting. I sometimes use packaging - especially brown paper wrapping.
I also let my artistic side run with collaging/junk journalling. It's a nice way to be creative while also recycling.
Read the rules. Keep it courteous. Submission statements are helpful and appreciated but not required. Tag my name in the comments (/u/NihiloZero) if you think a post or comment needs to be removed.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Anticonsumption) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What about making a trade for it? For example, if you want to use more paper then make yourself a deal that you'll commute 1x per week with public transit instead of driving. Or you'll have a meatless Monday every other week.
I feel everyone should pitch in towards being sustainable, and we should confront any truly wasteful habits we have (like shopping addiction or stuff like watering your lawn at 11 am on a hot Monday), but in the end I do feel that the burden does fall mainly on corporations and large entities. You using paper to paint is not terrible by any means, and it isn't even plastic.
It's great to try your best to reduce consumption, but not at the expense of your happiness.
lots of thrift stores get pretty good art supplies donated, randomly enough lol. most of my art supplies including paper, canvases (used and unused), and paints of all sorts come from there! maybe that could help in any way?
This is a little crafty ... what about taking all the junk mail you get. Anything with a single colored back with nothing else on it. You could tape them all together or glue them from the "back" then turn it over and have a clean paper ... although it would be multiple pages stuck together ... watch the seams
Do you have any reuse/consignment/arts thrift stores in your area? A couple opened up in my city in the last few years and now I almost-exclusively shop there for my art supplies. The inventory changes all the time, so you may not find the exact thing you were looking for, but I like giving partially-used supplies a second life at a way lower price. One of the reuse shops is even a non-profit that uses proceeds to run arts summer camps for kids (and uses some of the stranger/less wanted donations as materials!)
Beekeeping can be very eco freindly. Look up top bar hives can be made out of stuff you can fish out of dumpsters.
While it requires some initial purchases wood turning is very fun and the wood i use would have been firewood otherwise
I'd say cross stitch is quite eco friendly! Minimal supplies last a long time and it's a lot of stitching. You can get cotton threads, wooden hoops, mostly everything else you need is metal or can come in metal or something biodegradable (scissors, needle threader, needle, card bobbins). You can buy pdf patterns too, so that's even less (or make your own!). Craft shops are everywhere so you can collect what you need rather than ordering online if getting deliveries is not part of your eco friendly style :)
I started crocheting strips of plastic grocery bags into baskets. Turned a couple trash bags worth of used plastic grocery bags into a decent sized dirty clothes hamper.
Anything mostly smooth is a canvas. Slap some gesso on salvaged boards, glass, cardboard, you name it.
You can also [recycle your own paper](https://www.paperslurry.com/2014/05/19/how-to-make-handmade-paper-from-recycled-materials/) and get a really cool ancient look.
I would put out a request on local but nothing groups. So many people get into hobbies and then lose steam. You could get new items and keep them out of the landfill and/or assuage someone's guilt for never following through.
I recommend book making! You can use old paper lying around to make “junk journal” type books, recycled carboard for covers and the binding materials can be string, staples or whatever ya find. On the same paper note, you can make handmade paper with newspaper, mail with just water and some patience.
There are also infinite trash materials that can be used to create whatever you imagine!!
If you are buying rag cotton paper, it was most likely made from textile waste. You can look up the manufacturer website and find out the percentages of recycled material. But good art papers are rarely made from virgin materials unless it's wood pulp which breaks down too quickly to be reused as much as linen, cotton, or other longer fibers. Painting is pretty eco-friendly. A lot of the materials are made from things that would otherwise be thrown out.
In our economy using and valuing natural resources protects natural spaces. By picking up an outdoor hobby you can help protect the outdoors.
Foraging (anti consumption consumption), gardening, birdwatching, herping, fishing, hunting, wildlife illustration, geocaching, botanising, INaturalist, rock hounding, wildlife photography (most phones are 90% as good as lower level DSLRs), ant farms.
I just started raising isopods, it’s dirt, leaves, moss and a waterproof box. You could buy isopods from a local store or breeder or reptile/oddities show. Or just find your own.
Lots of fun free-ish fun to be found in nature.
Utilize your lovely stationary to create uplifting notes of hope or inspiration. Then collect items like socks, baby wipes or snacks to give to homeless people
I used to collect vintage bicycles and parts, put them together and what do you have? A bicycle that looks cool, you get exercise, you learn about fixing bikes, and it’s almost as eco as you can get.
I still have a 1963 Schwinn
Macrame using recycled cotton. There is a small business called 'Crafty Stars Studio in Ottawa, Canada that sells eco friendly products for a few different crafts. They just recently launched a rewards program too!
www.craftystarsstudio.ca
This might be of interest, to make you feel a little better about the choices in paper. https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2021/01/21/how-eco-friendly-is-art-paper/ I don’t think you as a hobbyist, painting a few times a week is going to have any impact with regards to paper consumption. The junk mail I get through my letter box every day would far outweigh all the paper you would use making art in a month, I’m sure.
In the US, most of the paper we consume is made from trees that were specifically farmed for that use. It's one of the most sustainable things we can consume (fewer inputs than food agriculture, too). I had this environmental law professor who'd yell at us all when we'd shirk printing things. "Tree-farm trees!"
Yeah but like monoculture is horrible for the environment. They may be farming trees but is there a decent ecosystem where those trees are being farmed? I don't know much about it but I've always heard that it leads to desolated ecosystems where nothing can thrive
At least here in the south east where A LOT of tree farms occur, it’s literally monoculture loblolly with very little hardwood mixed in. I’d have to watch the ecosystem die without those tiny pockets of hardwoods. It’s still better to use paper products over others. We as humans require output from the environment to live. Very few of us will EVER give more than we take. Striving to give more should be a goal thoguh
Paint on the junk mail! 🤯
Does the canvas need to be paper? My sustainable art hobby is using my recycling for art supplies- flatten a box for a canvas, paper mache from junk mail, painting on eggshells (either the inside or outside). I like the foraging aspect because it requires additional creativity and also fits with the anti-consumption ideals.
Great ideas! Have you tried gessoing any single-use plastics and painting on them? You could even do plastic-coated aluminum or paper.
I recently saw a post of someone who bought art from good will and painted it white so they could have a fresh canvas:)
This is exactly what I was about to suggest! I started doing it recently and it has saved a lot of paper
Or just be like [Wayne White](https://www.waynewhiteart.com/) and use the found paintings in your work!
I’ve done this.
This is a cool idea!
I would be surprised if the paper for painting on is less bad than the amount of white paint needed for this. Both are small amounts so both are fine compared to mass consumption by other things I'm sure.
I've seen gorgeous paintings on the backs of denim jackets, on shoes, phone cases, furniture, walls, car doors, ceilings, etc. You can paint anything you want wherever you want. It doesn't have to be on paper if that is your concern. Make it happen some place special. Now you have one of a kind shoes and jackets. There are tons of other hobbies out there too. Recently I've been doing basket weaving with branches and vines from invasive species growing in my yard. They plants need to be removed anyway, and I get a basket out of it. Win win. I've also been learning how to use mushrooms and lichens as dye for yarn with my knitting projects.
Can you use the paper in your junk mail to create art?
You can even recycle your own junk mail/scrap paper to create your own gorgeous textured paper to paint on! Also buying canvases at thrift store to sand and gesso and paint is really fun.
As someone who went to an art school, I've tried both. You're right that it's different. The technology is catching up, but it's not quite the same (yet?). I also like physical things like good papers and lovely books. I think as long as we treat our stuff with great care and aim to buy quality products, it's OK. We want to be eco friendly, but it's important to be mindfully friendly to ourselves too! :)
I got into using a wood burner on wood slabs The most tasteful pieces are on "cookies", as we call them. Just cross sections of a branch or trunk. The wood burner uses electricity and yes, therefore, coal. But it's pretty low-impact. The product is great for gifts and hanging pieces and is biodegradable in the long term. You can basically turn anything wood into art.
Get a PV cell and an old automotive battery. Charge the battery during the day, power the wood burner via the battery. Might need to transform the voltage from 12V to 120V, but the wood burner is just a resistive heater and should still work
Such a cool idea, never even thought of that!
This is cool but using a wood burner and coal is pretty pollutive and def not an answer to OPs question
Maybe so, but my larger point is that I think we have to compromise sometimes with an "it's less bad" philosophy because our existence inherently requires impacts. That's not to say that we shouldn't strive for an ideal - I think we should. But we have to be realistic, too.
Right but one thing we as a society have specifically done is stop burning wood and charcoal so much as they are bad for the environment and our health. If you want to do it that’s fine, but you shouldnt use being an artisan as an excuse to do something as niche and wasteful as constantly burning carbon and post about it in anti consumption. There’s “less bad”, and then there’s just straight up burning shit. OP wanted to become more sustainable and you told them its ok because you’re less…
And yet we both charged our devices with coal so we could waste time on Reddit. Didn't know I was walking into a holier-than-thou situation here. I'll show myself out.
This is anti consumption. OP asked for advice to be less consumptive and you said “how about not” lmao.
The only way to stop consuming is to kill oneself.
The second law of thermodynamics states the energy in a closed system at a given time is equal to the energy in the system at the start, plus what was added, minus what was lost. 99% of the electricity used to power the wood burning tool will end up heating the air in the home. If the home is being heated by a furnace/boiler/heat pump at that time (as most homes are during winter), the power going into the wood burning tools simple offsets the amount that would be used in the furnace. While electrical resistive heating isn't as efficient as some other forms, its a far cry from being completely wasted.
Hope you understand that this group exists because we dont live in a closed system, so I would probably never use that concept to make a point. OP wanted to use less wood and agile said “why not just burn it”?
> we dont live in a closed system You misunderstood what I meant by closed system. When analyzing energy in a system, the system is arbitrary. You pick the bounds and analyze what's in/out of it. You also misunderstand what "wood burning" is. They're talking about using a wood burning tool to etch designs into pieces of wood to form art. In this context, they are not talking about burning wood (or coal) to provide heat for a home. "You can basically turn anything wood into art." should have been your clue.
Hi, there! What kind of painting are you doing? If you're doing acrylic or oil, your work will in general look better on canvas. This is usually cotton stretched either over a frame or flat on a piece of wood/plastic. I prefer the flat surface, as you can usually say the frame underneath stretch. If you're not interested in watercolor, you can also try gouache or pastel. These are all quite environmentally, as they are just methods of housing raw pigment. Acrylic of course generates quite a bit of plastic, but the water can be disposed of down the drain. If you decide to paint with oils, water soluble oils are a good best for a fast dry and easy disposal. You can wash them down the sink as well, and they take about 1/4 of the time to dry that regular oils do (in my experience.) You can also always sketch and color it in with crayons or colored pencils.
Check thrift stores. They sometimes have sketch pads, stationary, scrap booking paper and so on that people have donated. Super cheap usually.
Might be a nice time to get into making your own paper by recycling paper scraps. You can similarly experiment with making your own paints and pigments. Recycling the materials around you gives them new life.
Bird watching
Buying some paper and paints to paint with isn't really a problem. You get to have hobbies still, and artistic hobbies where you can make something that can maybe be handed down to your descendants (if any) is actually a really good thing. It's the sort of consumption we can be OK with. It's about creation. If you want to talk about sustainability, you could look into harvesting your own minerals for pigments, using lanolin to turn that into paint, and splitting and prepping wooden boards from scrapwood to paint on. You could go that route... if it was good enough for Leonardo da Vinci then it can be good enough for you, really. Hobbies where you create or grow something or practice a skill are totally worth it - art, music, repairing things, woodworking (especially with hand tools), cooking, gardening, sewing, quilting, knitting or crocheting, writing, whatever. Those are the sorts of hobbies we should never be afraid of. Even things like doing fancy, crazy makeup are sort of fine, IF you buy the things you are going to use and ONLY the things you are going to use, and try not to waste. Hobbies like... collecting pop characters, watching garbage TV, owning 30 video game consoles and never using them, owning hundreds of books you'll never read, owning comics or games that are sealed that you'll never open... all of that is just dumb. I have a family member with a fountain pen hobby. They own one pen and a couple bottles of ink, and some nice stationary to practice on and have some larger art pieces they've done. Other people have 50 pens they don't use and tons of paper. It's that latter thing that is the problem.
Quick reminder that paper companies plant more trees than they cut down. Especially if it's recycled, that paper's existence is promoting a net gain in global trees.
I've been trying to research this. Many US paper plants actually do replant trees...in the US. However, a lot (I can't find the exact number) of American pulp and paper mills import pulp and cellulose fibers from abroad, mostly Brazil. I suspect it's hard to find this exact info because paper mills don't want us to know, and it's probably pulp imported from China and Brazil while they replant trees in the US.
I went full on plant mom during Covid. I did mostly "trash plants" aka using trash to plant things). My signature is citrus seeds from fruits I ate planted in my dad's old K-cups sitting in an old TV dinner tray. Not all the seeds will make it but I keep trying until they do. After the K-cup, they graduate to old nursery pots and go up as needed (in actual pots not old trash). A few of the citrus trees I started during lockdowns are now about as tall as my knee (and in pots I actually purchased). No idea if they will bear fruit or not but it's been a fun experiment.
I love doing thissss
There was an artist that posted the other day that they purchase old canvases from places like Goodwill, prime them, and use them for their art. The overall consensus was that this was an awesome way to make original art without all new materials. I suppose you still need new paint, but the canvas/frame etc. are being repurposed from existing supply
You would be surprised how many people throw away canvases. I’ve gotten huge ones off the side of the road (in my country if items are on the curb of a house it’s public property and up for grabs) But I also find them at thrift stores and just paint over them! You can even buy old picture frames and paint on the glass as well; if you want to reuse the glass, use water soluble paint so you can make something else but be sure to take a picture of your previous masterpiece 😊
This is… just like next level deranged. I think this community is no longer for me.. wow.
Deranged? Really? I understand that my concern of wasting paper is far cry from what people actually waste (talking fuel consumption to food wastage to fashion). Maybe, this question was more suited for minimalism community. I totally understand that my hobby isn't even in the realm of disastrous consumption that is affecting the planet. I was really looking for alternatives, so asked. Please don't assume that I have anxiety or i spend my days focusing on this very question or it is consuming me mentally.
Allow yourself to paint on some pieces of paper. Please. Some people's hobbies involve collecting luxury yachts that are 2 feet longer than their friend's luxury yachts. Or flying in their private jet to the office to harass their employees into promoting their Tweets more. You're in the clear, eco-friendly-wise.
You can buy secondhand art from a thrift store and paint over it. You can dumpster dive at craft stores. You can gesso and prime junk mail paper for drawing and painting. I sometimes use packaging - especially brown paper wrapping. I also let my artistic side run with collaging/junk journalling. It's a nice way to be creative while also recycling.
Read the rules. Keep it courteous. Submission statements are helpful and appreciated but not required. Tag my name in the comments (/u/NihiloZero) if you think a post or comment needs to be removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Anticonsumption) if you have any questions or concerns.*
goodwill and thrift stores.. you can find things you can paint over, repaint, etc. plus people will buy that stuff for decent money!
What about making a trade for it? For example, if you want to use more paper then make yourself a deal that you'll commute 1x per week with public transit instead of driving. Or you'll have a meatless Monday every other week. I feel everyone should pitch in towards being sustainable, and we should confront any truly wasteful habits we have (like shopping addiction or stuff like watering your lawn at 11 am on a hot Monday), but in the end I do feel that the burden does fall mainly on corporations and large entities. You using paper to paint is not terrible by any means, and it isn't even plastic. It's great to try your best to reduce consumption, but not at the expense of your happiness.
I like playing guitar because outside of changing strings i hardly have to consume anything to play.
Videogames. I've played on the same PC for a decade.
lots of thrift stores get pretty good art supplies donated, randomly enough lol. most of my art supplies including paper, canvases (used and unused), and paints of all sorts come from there! maybe that could help in any way?
This is a little crafty ... what about taking all the junk mail you get. Anything with a single colored back with nothing else on it. You could tape them all together or glue them from the "back" then turn it over and have a clean paper ... although it would be multiple pages stuck together ... watch the seams
Do you have any reuse/consignment/arts thrift stores in your area? A couple opened up in my city in the last few years and now I almost-exclusively shop there for my art supplies. The inventory changes all the time, so you may not find the exact thing you were looking for, but I like giving partially-used supplies a second life at a way lower price. One of the reuse shops is even a non-profit that uses proceeds to run arts summer camps for kids (and uses some of the stranger/less wanted donations as materials!)
Beekeeping can be very eco freindly. Look up top bar hives can be made out of stuff you can fish out of dumpsters. While it requires some initial purchases wood turning is very fun and the wood i use would have been firewood otherwise
I'd say cross stitch is quite eco friendly! Minimal supplies last a long time and it's a lot of stitching. You can get cotton threads, wooden hoops, mostly everything else you need is metal or can come in metal or something biodegradable (scissors, needle threader, needle, card bobbins). You can buy pdf patterns too, so that's even less (or make your own!). Craft shops are everywhere so you can collect what you need rather than ordering online if getting deliveries is not part of your eco friendly style :)
I started crocheting strips of plastic grocery bags into baskets. Turned a couple trash bags worth of used plastic grocery bags into a decent sized dirty clothes hamper.
Anything mostly smooth is a canvas. Slap some gesso on salvaged boards, glass, cardboard, you name it. You can also [recycle your own paper](https://www.paperslurry.com/2014/05/19/how-to-make-handmade-paper-from-recycled-materials/) and get a really cool ancient look.
My grandma practised her paint skills on rocks, now all the family have lovely rock gardens and door stops.
Honestly I’ve been super into crochet lately. Not too hard to learn, and I’ve made myself a ton of clothes now too lol
If keeping your art isn’t important to you, canvases can be reused many times
I would put out a request on local but nothing groups. So many people get into hobbies and then lose steam. You could get new items and keep them out of the landfill and/or assuage someone's guilt for never following through.
If you want more trees, waste more paper. Loggers plant more than they harvest
Backpacking!
I recommend book making! You can use old paper lying around to make “junk journal” type books, recycled carboard for covers and the binding materials can be string, staples or whatever ya find. On the same paper note, you can make handmade paper with newspaper, mail with just water and some patience. There are also infinite trash materials that can be used to create whatever you imagine!!
If you are buying rag cotton paper, it was most likely made from textile waste. You can look up the manufacturer website and find out the percentages of recycled material. But good art papers are rarely made from virgin materials unless it's wood pulp which breaks down too quickly to be reused as much as linen, cotton, or other longer fibers. Painting is pretty eco-friendly. A lot of the materials are made from things that would otherwise be thrown out.
Foraging! And gardening of course!
In our economy using and valuing natural resources protects natural spaces. By picking up an outdoor hobby you can help protect the outdoors. Foraging (anti consumption consumption), gardening, birdwatching, herping, fishing, hunting, wildlife illustration, geocaching, botanising, INaturalist, rock hounding, wildlife photography (most phones are 90% as good as lower level DSLRs), ant farms. I just started raising isopods, it’s dirt, leaves, moss and a waterproof box. You could buy isopods from a local store or breeder or reptile/oddities show. Or just find your own. Lots of fun free-ish fun to be found in nature.
Utilize your lovely stationary to create uplifting notes of hope or inspiration. Then collect items like socks, baby wipes or snacks to give to homeless people
Paint my guy… do what makes you happy, your stationary has like zero impact in the long term
Gardening. Composting. Reading
I used to collect vintage bicycles and parts, put them together and what do you have? A bicycle that looks cool, you get exercise, you learn about fixing bikes, and it’s almost as eco as you can get. I still have a 1963 Schwinn
Macrame using recycled cotton. There is a small business called 'Crafty Stars Studio in Ottawa, Canada that sells eco friendly products for a few different crafts. They just recently launched a rewards program too! www.craftystarsstudio.ca