This Saturday is Buy Nothing Day!

We are being asked to consider our immersion in the stuff of commercialism and over consumption as Christmas approaches, by stopping buying stuff for one day.

It might be harder than you think.

It’s time to lock up your wallets and purses, cut up your credit cards and dump the love of your life – shopping.

Saturday November 24th 2012 is Buy Nothing Day (UK). It’s a day where you challenge yourself, your family and friends to switch off from shopping and tune into life. The rules are simple, for 24 hours you will detox from shopping and anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending!

Everything we buy has an impact on the environment, Buy Nothing Day highlights the environmental and ethical consequences of consumerism. The developed countries – only 20% of the world population are consuming over 80% of the earth’s natural resources, causing a disproportionate level of environmental damage, and an unfair distribution of wealth.

We know all this of course- we the middle class, the former activists, those tired by the tension between a moral imperative and western lifestyle.

Will one day make a difference? This is of course up to us- but we have to start somewhere…

I liked this from the Guardian;

So perhaps it’s time for a new kind of materialism, based on an economy of better, not more: one that is rich in the good-quality work created by providing useful services, that makes things which last and can be repaired many times before being recycled, allowing us to share better the surplus of stuff we already have. It is emerging now in things ranging from furniture to tools, cars, fridges, clothes and food. “Repair, reduce, re-use, recycle”, long a mantra of green economists, could be the basis of a new economic model that performs the neat trick of boosting demand without increasing consumption