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Buy Buy Bye by David Tusing
It’s been quite the week, with a buying frenzy born out of Black Friday, Sofa Sunday, and Cyber Monday mayhem. The pressure to make the most of sales brings out the inner bargain hunter in us all, but as the commercial haze clears we are left with a myriad of pointless purchases. One such customer summed it up: “I got a Dyson but I don’t even know if I want it”.
Everything that we buy comes with its own environmental footprint, an extra which is by no means cheap. Greenhouse gases are emitted from every stage of the lifecycle of your household goods, from extracting, refining, transporting and processing the raw materials, right through to landfilling the finished product. Globally, we are estimated to spend over £2.4billion on unwanted and unused Christmas gifts a year.
It’s easy to neglect local businesses and rely on Amazon and high street giants because of the time it saves. But this dependence on national and international one-stop shops mean that our goods travel great lengths to get to us. We get our bananas from Brazil, our blouses from Bangladesh and our books from Beijing, and they all leave a hefty climate footprint on their way. Making the switch from big business to local specialist shops is quite the adjustment. But it’s time to become curious and climate conscious consumers by saying bye-bye to big business.
What you can do: Visit the Small Business Saturday Facebook page and look out for shops in your area. Not a social media whizz? Go for jaunt and check out what your area has to offer.
