But instead of adding to global degradation by buying over-packaged, over-manufactured, overpriced shoes, we could take a leaf out of award winning science writer Leonie Joubert’s book and go shopping for trees instead.

Scorched! That’s how many of us gals feel after we head for some retail therapy and scoop up a hot little black dress and peep-toe shoes. Month end when we see the damage on our credit cards it’s ouch time. Burn, baby. Maybe, but as they say in the classics, if the shoe fits, wear it. Or in Leonie Joubert’s case – if the tree fits into the pot in the living room – buy it. When Joubert is down in the dumps she buys trees. The Cape-based science writer recently scored when the judges of the 2007 Sunday Times Alan Paton Non-Fiction prize awarded her an Honorary Award at the Cape Town Book Fair for her book Scorched – South Africa’s changing climate (Wits University Press).