Results tagged “buynothingday”

Pity the poor shopper just trying to muddle through a holiday checklist. As economic and environmental issues continue to dominate the news, shopping is becoming an increasingly fraught experience—how and where we spend our money is now a subject of moral analysis. In the last few days we’ve been buying artisanal, buying a lot, and buying nothing at all. This week’s message: buy local. Cities across North America are celebrating Buy Local Week from December 1–7. Toronto’s participation is co-sponsored by TABIA, the association of business improvement areas, and Green Enterprise Toronto. The goal is to encourage Torontonians to purchase items that are produced locally, and to make these purchases at local independent retailers. The idea is that local businesses employ and spend locally in turn, thus creating a positive feedback loop that strengthens Toronto’s economy.

Today is Black Friday, the day most Americans take off work to begin their annual holiday shopping sprees and one of the busiest on the retail calendar. In a noteworthy bit of culture-jamming counter-programming, it has also recently been repackaged as Buy Nothing Day, an Adbusters-inspired occasion to refrain from shopping at all. Torontoist is not particularly impressed: most people will simply buy tomorrow what they forego buying today, and the net effect will be zilch. As we learned in an interview with The Rebel Sell author Andrew Potter, Buy Nothing Day doesn't really address the root of the problem with excess consumption, namely that we are all producers as well as consumers and thus have a hand in creating things that other people buy. If we want to make a real dent in the problem we all need to be willing to not just buy less but also produce, sell, and earn less, too.

Okay Adbusters, we get that it's Buy Nothing Day, but what's the harm in supporting some local designers and craftistas who make their own merchandise from the comfort of their hip Cabbagetown apartments?

In the United States, the day after Thanksgiving has come to be known as Black Friday, during which retailers offer huge discounts and usher in the Christmas shopping season. Not to be outdone, the chic anti-chic magazine Adbusters introduced its own event on the same day: Buy Nothing Day. And while American Thanksgiving is limited to the United States (for now), Adbusters assures us that Buy Nothing Day should be celebrated globally.