A Day Late & a Dollar Short…
Posted by xJane on November 24th, 2007 at 9:25 am · 7 Comments
Yesterday was Buy Nothing Day, an anti-holiday to point out the consumerism that we (westerners) indulge in on a daily basis. My ability to observe buy nothing day is often predicated on who I’m hanging out with at the time. At one half of my in-laws, there’s usually enough left overs and we’re far enough from the madding crowd that I don’t even notice it was observed until it’s past. At the other half of my in-laws, and at my own parent’s, there is a mall right near by and television letting us know just what kinds of amazing deals we’d be missing.
This year, I met some old friends for breakfast [$] (although the place we wanted to go was closed so I spent less money than I had planned [-$] but that money did go to a giant corporation—Starbucks—rather than to a local eatery—Hobee’s [$]). Then I boarded a plane [$$$$$] and flew down to LA to work in a mall [$$$ assessed for simply working in a mall and facilitating consumerism]. I came home and watched some television [$$ because it's not in the spirit of of the day but -$ since I TiVo'd through the commercials], ate lunch, and then biked [-$$] to the zoo, where I took a shuttle [no assessment because it's not technically public transport] to the mall [$ again for working in a fucking mall on Black Friday!]. I bought dinner [$$] and then shuttled [$ because I was the only one in the shuttle] back to the zoo to bike [-$ to offset the personal shuttle trip] home and crash.
Not my most successful Buy Nothing Day (a total score of 12$) but for an Angeleno, probably not all that bad. The total money I spent yesterday (if we count the money spent on the plane ticket as being spent yesterday) was only around $71, but I still feel that the computers I sold yesterday should count against me somehow…
Two musings that struck me in the midst of all this: how many people actually buy Christmas gifts on Black Friday versus simply buying things for themselves at the sales? I would say that 75% of the people I saw yesterday were buying gifts but that the 25% who were self-buying ended up spending more (giftcards vs. a computer). I don’t even know how such a study might be conducted, but I’d like to see the results.
Also, and I thought this all the way from the mall to the zoo, if you’re taking public transport, the bus will drive empty if you don’t take it, so you’re “saving” gas even if you’re the only one on a regular route. But the shuttle I took was just for mall employees and, since it was late when I left, was called directly for me. Can I even think to call that action any kind of environmentalism if my car, driven to and from the mall, would have taken less gas than the one trip in the shuttle-bus?
How did each of you celebrate Buy Nothing Day? And were you more successful (or at least less complicit) than I?
Tags: Activism · Environment
