Uncommon Ground – Good Growth, Bad Growth

A question: is this economic slowdown improving the value of the environmental economy?
As a family, we are not much into buying things recklessly. Although we live very well, we only buy things that we know will be used. My motherin-law and my son take this to a sort of extreme. They will only have limited sets of clothing which have to go through the wash regularly to serve them. No argument can convince them to create redundancy.