It's not entirely our Fault....

Some thoughts on how corporations make us buy more and how we can buy less

I’ve had Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy on my Watch List on Netflix* for a long time now, but had delayed watching it, as I thought it would be heavy viewing. I finally got round to watching it last night and indeed it is heavy viewing, but one I definitely recommend.

The film looks at how corporations encouarge people to buy more, through for example creating demand for new clothes to fit in with the latest fast fashion trend; built in obsolescence that means that electronic items fail relatively quickly and can’t be repaired (and these days, there’s a new must-have phone every few months as well, so who wants to keep their old, unfashionable model anyway?) and lies about the carbon footprint of products and companies that make people feel less guilty about getting rid of stuff.

Though it doesn’t really give us any new facts, the film is hard hitting and cleverly made, openly using some of the tricks of marketing to keep you viewing. It really is sickening to see footage of rivers and beaches covered in waste and mind-boggling to see cityscapes overflowing with computer generated images of stuff, both of which really give an impression of just how much stuff we really produce.

The film interviews several people who used to work in marketing and producing excess stuff for several major corporations, but who have since left their positions to try to address the problems. Also featured in the film were:

Anna Sacks a waste expert focused on passing waste legislation in NYC and raising consciousness on social media. Known on social media as thetrashwalker, Anna documents the usable items that she finds in both corporate and residential waste to raise people’s consciousness about waste and consumption. The film shows her opening up trash bags to show large amounts of packaged food and other items, just dumped on the streets.

ifixit is an international repair hub, offering step by step guides for fixing all sorts of things, quality tools and materials and an international community of people who can fix things. The company has also had a positive impact pushing for a ‘right to repair’, which is taking hold across the world. You can read about Right to Repair Europe here.

The main argument of the film was that consumers aren’t entirely to blame for over-consumption. Companies are very clever at trying to make us buy more. However, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make our own individual efforts. We all need to think carefully about what we buy - do we really need that T-shirt, that new phone, that new gizmo? Can we repair this item? Re-use it? Re-purpose it? How much can we avoid plastic packaging? (Here’s an excellent article on how difficult it is to avoid single use plastic by Emma Beddington writing in the Guardian newspaper).

And here’s a sobering article, also in the Guardian about the impact of international waste being dumped across Turkey with an oinvestigation of the difficulties of recycling plastics.

What I’m Reading

Groundbreakers by Chantal Lyons (2024) - an appreciation of wild boars and an investigation of their reintroduction into the UK.

He Used to Do Dangerous Things by Gaia Holmes (2024) - en excellent book of short stories on a variety of topics including environmental protest and our relationships with other living things.

* I am by nature a cinema-goer, but the COVID lockdown lead to us getting a Netflix subscription, which we keep renewing as there is a surprisingly good selection of non-mainstream films and programmes there. Plus our favourite cinema closed and won’t be re-opening until later this year, at which point I’m looking forward to becoming a cinema-goer again.