Buy Nothing This Year!

By Michael I. Niman, AlterNet. Posted November 25, 2002.

During a recent visit to my local five-and-dime, I purchased a "motion pig," a small plastic pig with an electronic heart and soul that produces a sickly oink. It cost me $1 and was produced in a Chinese factory by workers who probably earned less than 15 cents an hour.

To make this pig, they first had to injection-mold its plastic body, a process that under the best of conditions produces neurotoxic fumes. Chinese sweatshops are not governed by the same worker safety laws that apply in the United States. Much of the respiration and ventilation equipment workers here take for granted is unknown to our Chinese counterparts, who often slave under these conditions for 12 hours, six days a week.

After the pig is molded, workers airbrush it and later hand-paint it with similarly toxic oil-based paints. Another crew in another sweatshop creates the pig's electronic innards, making the silicone-based chips, screening and acid-dipping circuit boards, and finally, soldering all of the components together. All of these production steps result in the creation of chemical and heavy metal wastes that are often sloppily disposed of in the communities near the production plants.

The actual producers of the pigs probably sell them for around 15 cents each. The pig's final sale price to consumers includes a wholesale and retail markup as well as transportation costs for moving the pig from one side of the earth to the other. All of this energy and effort goes into the production of what is essentially a useless item, to be purchased by American, Canadian and European consumers who often give no thought to the social and environmental costs of its production.

It doesn't take much analysis to see that there is something radically wrong with this system.

Consumerism Detox

This year, as we potentially embark on what critics justifiably call a war for control of the world's largest oil resources, many Americans will be out shopping on Nov. 29, the Friday after Thanksgiving and the unofficial opening of the Christmas shopping season. It's the busiest shopping day of the year.

Nov. 29 is also Buy Nothing Day (celebrated in Europe this year on Nov. 30). The holiday, initiated in 1993 by the Adbusters Media Foundation, has grown rapidly and is now observed in more than 40 countries. Its success is driven by an impromptu coalition of environmental activists, labor organizations, church groups, global democracy proponents and social justice groups.

While Buy Nothing Day is primarily about getting people to think about the impacts of their conspicuous consumption, it's also a holiday celebrating personal liberation. One British Buy Nothing Day activist explained, "you'll feel detoxed from consumerism."

For many people, consumerism is an addiction. In the United States, the average household now pays $1,000 per year in interest and fees servicing a credit card debt that averages around $7,000. The average American generates one to one-and-a-half tons of trash per year. Municipal governments in the United States pay approximately $25 billion to landfill, incinerate or otherwise dispose of last year's motion pigs and other assorted pieces of trash. Our highways are abuzz both with Wal-Mart trucks bringing garbage to the market, and municipal waster haulers, taking it to the landfills.

In order to pay for this consumption frenzy, Americans now work longer hours than our parents did, and longer hours than our counterparts in any other developed country, while saving less money than in any recent generation. We've seen consumption-driven tax revolts, which put more consumption power into the hands of the upper classes, while starving public education, social services and the arts. Consumerism is poisoning our very ethos.

Buy Nothing Day helps us break free from this self-destructive cycle of consumption. And much like other holidays, it's often done as a loud rowdy celebration. Last year, Ruckus Society activists celebrated by unfurling a boxcar-sized banner from the rafters of the Mall of America, America's largest shopping center located in Minnesota.

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