Tamara DiMattina, founder of Buy Nothing New Month. Credit:Simon Schluter Chat live with Tamara DiMattina for an hour from noon today. Leave your questions here. This week's guest in The Zone is seeking to empower and inspire people to unshackle themselves from fashion and to embrace eclectic second-hand shopping, as well as to foster greater connection to communities and neighbourhoods. Tamara DiMattina is a former purveyor of fashion herself, having worked in public relations crafting consumer messages. Two years ago, she launched Buy Nothing New Month, an idea that is spreading to Europe and the US. Buy Nothing New Month happens in October. It is an enchantingly simple concept, as DiMattina explains in our interview. ''It's taking the month of October to reassess how much we buy, what we buy and why. It's saying every time you're going to buy something, think to yourself 'Do I really need it?' If you do - bingo, proceed to the cash register. It's really trying to get people to think: 'Do I need it? Are there alternatives? Can I reuse something at home? Can I get it second hand? Can I borrow it or can I swap something for it? How can we really maximise the stuff that we already have instead of constantly acquiring new stuff?' ''

It is gaining momentum but, perhaps unsurprisingly, not everyone likes it. Even though DiMattina stresses she is not saying people should never buy anything new, some retailers are aghast, given the importance to them of people feeling the need to ''keep up with the Joneses''. A storm has been unleashed in Sydney, with Premier Barry O'Farrell attacking lord mayor Clover Moore for supporting Buy Nothing New Month by providing space for an associated initiative called The New Joneses. The New Joneses involves two people living for five days in a pop-up apartment outside Customs House, near Circular Quay. They will enter with nothing but underwear and bathrobes, and their challenge will be to use traditional and social media to source from the community and second-hand retailers clothing, furniture and all they need to live. Their temporary apartment will also showcase sustainable building elements including water storage and capture, solar panels and composting. Moore's support has retailers threatening an October rates strike and O'Farrell fulminating that Moore is ''nuts'' for backing Buy Nothing New Month.

DiMattina finds the attackers gormless. ''There are hundreds of campaigns with huge budgets out there saying 'buy this, buy that', and the City of Sydney supports those, too. We don't object to their campaign. Ours is a no-budget message simply saying support the second-hand economy, which in the City of Sydney contributes $35 million to the economy. ''It's been a shame the message of thoughtful, conscientious and collaborative consumption has been lost in political messages and short-term thinking. Ironically, in the same week, outdoor retailer Patagonia is calling on customers to reduce their shopping, with the Australian launch of their Common Threads campaign. The campaign asks shoppers not to buy their jacket unless it's really needed.'' Tamara DiMattina is a stylish woman whose campaign is being maliciously misrepresented as a bolshie, anti-retailing radical idea. Indeed, she supports a bit of retail therapy: she loves shopping, and thrills to the serendipitous finds she regularly comes across in second-hand shops, of which there is an increasing number throughout the land. ''Buy Nothing New Month is not at all against retail; it's not anti-capitalist … It's suggesting you buy as much as you like during Buy Nothing New Month, as long as it is second hand. If you want to get into the Brotherhood of St Laurence stores or Sacred Heart Mission stores, they have great stuff. But if you wouldn't set foot inside a charity store, then there are also plenty of second-hand designer stores, as well. ''You can get a second-hand Gucci dress or whatever you may want … Nearly everything I buy, I buy second hand. And it's not as though I live in a house with one thing in it. I have got plenty of stuff, but it's all second hand. It's just looking at how we can do things differently, and maximise the resources that we have.''

The genesis of Buy Nothing New Month was concern about resources and a commitment to waste minimisation. Years ago, DiMattina worked as a waitress, and felt disquiet about the hundreds of bottles she'd hear being dumped at the end of each night. That got her thinking more broadly about waste and recycling. Other work she was doing augmented the angst. ''I worked in a consumer PR agency, strangely enough, which couldn't have been more of a shocking choice, but I think it probably led me to being here.'' The breakthrough came when she successfully applied to study at the Centre for Sustainable Leadership (CSL). ''Buy Nothing New Month would not have happened if it wasn't for CSL, because that was the thing that took me out of being a PR person working in isolation to all of a sudden having this tribe of great people who were really passionate about creating a better future for everyone … ''That is where the idea really came from. It was from years of just really feeling stressed at waste everywhere and people not really being thoughtful about how lucky we are to have the things that we have, and then getting to CSL and realising that I could do something about it.'' The project has nurtured her passion for community and relationships. Through the Buy Nothing New Month website, she is flooded with feedback. One person sent her a photo of themselves in a dentist's chair, giving the thumbs up and holding the Buy Nothing New Month poster, having saved a sufficient sum last October to afford a much-needed visit to the surgery.

It has plugged her into the activities of people who share her philosophy. She believes that although social media and other technologies are ostensibly connecting people, many people feel lonely and isolated. ''There are groups of mothers who are sharing all the kids' clothes, and have been doing so for years and years. There are groups of friends who have swap parties - 10 of them will all come around with five outfits that are in their wardrobes that they don't use and they will swap them among themselves. ''There are plenty of people who are actually living this way and have been for a long time. But it just doesn't seem to be represented in the media very much … There is another way, a more collaborative way and a less wasteful way, for us to still have a great life. If you love stuff you can still have stuff, and Buy Nothing New Month is really about how we can do that in a more conscientious way.'' Buy Nothing New Month taps into the widely shared notion that accumulating more and more possessions does not make us happier or more content. Loading

''Most of us would know that there is more joy in giving something than receiving it. Most of us have probably experienced that situation where you must have that thing and then as soon as you have bought it and it's in your wardrobe, you've forgotten about it already. Most of us would agree that happiness comes from our connections with family and loved ones and community - the happiness that we can't buy.'' Read a full transcript of Michael Short's interview with Tamara DiMattina here.