28th November 2024
This is the week of Black Friday, followed by Cyber Monday. Are these the Feast Days of the Consumerist faith? Are they not something that we should be challenging as they encourage people to spend money on things they don’t need and further deplete our limited world resources?
Here is an informative piece from the Ethical Consumer.
24th November 2023
Black Friday seems a good day to reflect on what it might mean to be a good consumer. Certainly shopping ethically – https://greentau.org/2023/11/07/counting-on-day-1-210/ – but maybe also consuming more slowly. How often do we need a new dress or new duvet set? Maybe consuming more locally so that we support the local economy – buying from the local bookshop not Amazon, the local green grocer not Tesco’s. Maybe for some of us it means consuming less. Maybe it means campaigning so that others can afford to consume more so as to live in comfort.
For more thoughts – “Sustainable production and consumption must therefore replace undifferentiated economic growth as the goal of 21st-century political economy. And making the case for this means challenging the belief that sustainable consumption will always involve sacrifice, rather than improve wellbeing.”
Read the full article here –
21St November 2022
This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the USA. Since at least the 1950s the day after Thanksgiving has been a popular shopping day with many people starting their Christmas shopping. Now actively marketed as Black Friday any businesses and stores use this advertising medium to encourage sales of their goods. Black Friday has expanded to include not just the Friday after Thanksgiving but the preceding days – and even preceding weeks. This pressure to buy is not helpful for the environment nor for our purses. We should be looking to buy and consume less and when do buy things we should be able to consider carefully what we need rather than being hustled to ‘buy now!’ For more on this do read this article from The Ethical Consumer.
26th November 2021
Today is the feast day of St. Egelwine, a 7th century prince who became a hermit and lived in Athelney. He was noted for his prayerfulness.
Today apparently is also Cake Day. Combine the two: bake a cake and then take some time out to sit quietly and appreciate the calm of not being drawn into the commercial whirl wind of Black Friday.
25th November 2021
Black Friday is a curious name.
Is it black as in the opposite of ‘being in the red’, ie financially overdrawn? Certainly not if you are tempted to spend more than you can afford.
Is it black as in doom and terror? Definitely if you see it as a seductive snare designed to encourage us to buy more than we need and more than the earth’s finite resources can sustain.
And who gains?
The customer because they can buy things at a discount? Yes but only if they buy now. Customers who buy later will have to pay more if the producers are to recover their costs over the balance of the year.
The producers because they will sell more? But will they sell more or will the majority of their sales just be concentrated in this one weekend? (Black Friday has become Black Weekend). Does this frenzy of sales cause a hiccup in the supply chain? Goods will have to be stockpiled ready for this one weekend; delivery operations will be overwhelmed by short term demand for extra delivery vehicles and drivers; and presumably a peak in pressure in recycling services the following week.
At the end of the day, Black Friday is a marketing strategy and we are not obliged to drawn in by it. We can maintain our independence and shop when we want to shop and only buy what we want to buy.
The Green Tau 