When Black Friday and Thanksgiving Sales, Discounts, and Shopping drive the environment deeper into disaster, it’s time to stop!
Surely alarm bells should go off in a consumer’s head when an event has its own death count tracker? Born in the USA, there is now a Black Friday diaspora.
It’s not an old concept, but its frenzied, life-threatening hysteria is. It began in the 1950s to promote pre-Christmas shopping.
There is a counter-movement against it from concerned citizens. The overconsumption is exactly the opposite of what the earth needs right now.
The climate group Amis de la Terre (“Friends of the Earth”) barricaded a Paris Amazon warehouse with obstacles and a picket line, with signs reading “Amazon: For the climate, for jobs, stop expansion, stop overproduction!”
Former environment minister Delphine Bathot proposed a ban on Black Friday. She says, “we are in a situation of ecological emergency, and aggressive marketing pushing for compulsive purchases is not compatible with the fight against global warming.” Hear, hear, the team at Guanako says.
Meanwhile, the current minister for a green transition, Elisabeth Borne, criticized Black Friday by saying it creates “traffic jams, pollution, and gas emissions” and benefits “big online platforms” with big carbon footprints and damages local businesses.
Block Friday protests are growing. Youth for Climate and Extinction Rebellion plan large-scale “Block Friday” protests around the world. They have previously staged a funeral procession in Vancouver, Canada, and a ‘die-in’ at an outlet village in Swindon, UK.
Unfortunately, there was only a small buy-in from retailers, but at least there was buy-in.
Experts, such as Dr. Diana Ivanova, a research fellow at the University of Leeds’ Sustainability Research Institute, agree strongly that Black Friday is bad for our planet and, therefore, for humanity.
Millions of smartphones and TVs are bought and discarded. The world produces 50 million tons of electronic waste each year, leaking lead, mercury, and other toxins into the soil and underground water (which is piped into your houses!).
Intense delivery schedules are used, and thousands more diesel-using trucks and polluting ships. Fast fashion has a huge carbon footprint and an intensely low human rights record. Our earth’s ground is landfilled with fast fashion and graves with slave-like workers dying young, undernourished, and overworked.
Jason Mark, the editor of the environmental welfare Sierra Club’s magazine, states, “the personal-responsibility mantra… obscures the culpability of the fossil fuel giants and other industrial actors in fueling the crisis.” He quite rightly states that it is vital that the individual changes in consumption, travel, and eating habits “are (seen as) not only righteous but required.”
With the circular economy growing, nurtured by its parent Millennials and Gen Xs, the consumer is changing their behavior but not radically enough. In the United Kingdom, a survey was done by KPMG with the feedback being that 61% of respondents said they are far more aware of the negative environmental impact of their Black Friday and Cyber Monday wasteful consumerism.
Generally, the Millennials and Late Gen Xs are showing more awareness of the environment and the need to be structured and stable with financial management. They are leading the way with more planned purchases, selecting quality over price, being very minimalist, and renting things instead of buying. Aligned to that is the noted decline in the desire for credit cards and large debt.
Join Guanako, a lifestyle platform that gives you access to the best organic brands, in the Block Friday movement by putting money into your savings account every Black Friday. Every time you see something you want to buy, put that money into your savings account. Then watch yourself become a Block Friday millionaire in a better environment. Double whoop-whoop from us.
Together we can make this earth a cleaner, healthier place. If you want more of our healthier lifestyle tips, contact us, we’d love to share our insights with you. It’s the core purpose of Guanako. Helping you be healthier.
