Save big money! Buy Nothing on November 23!

Salt shakers
November 2001

Save big money! Buy Nothing on November 23!
Organizers of the Ninth annual "Buy Nothing Day" say people in the industrialized countries make up just 20 percent of the world population but consume 80 percent of the world's resources and produce 80 percent of the toxic wastes.

Buy Nothing Day (BND) is a 24-hour consumer "fast and celebration of sustainable living." Over one million people around the world are expected to "help BND 2001 break through First World denial about the consequences of overconsumption."

"Is our level of consumption moral and ecologically sustainable? I challenge the media to put that question to their communities and their experts," says Kalle Lasn, one-time marketing artist and founder of Adbusters Media Foundation, the Vancouver-based group that has been promoting Buy Nothing Day since 1993.

The Buy Nothing Day message is especially important this year, organizers say, because of constant media and political messages aimed at the American public meant to portray accelerated consumerism as a quick fix for the ailing U.S. economy and as practically a patriotic gesture during the campaign against Osama bin Laden's network.

"If each of us must shop at a fevered pitch every day just to keep our economy
moving, how secure are we, really?" a BND press release asks. "Consumption is being cast as 'fighting the good fight,' but for many of us that rings a little hollow. Yes. It's time to grieve, it's time to reflect. But it's certainly not time to stifle discussion and reverse progress on what, though it has been bumped from the news agenda, remains the world's biggest long-term problem: the unsustainable consumer binge of Western nations. In fact, now may be the time to take the sustainable consumption debate to a new plane. Family, friends, freedom: these are things money can't buy. And at heart, that's the point of Buy Nothing Day."

For more information:
Adbuster's Buy Nothing Day

CHECKLIST FOR (NOT?) SHOPPING

The Buy Nothing Day campaign distributes this checklist to let shoppers evaluate things they were thinking of buying.

-Do I need it?
-How many do I already have?
-How much will I use it?
-How long will it last?
-Could I borrow it from a friend or family member?
-Can I do without it?
-Am I able to clean, lubricate and/or maintain it myself?
-Am I willing to?
-Will I be able to repair it?
-Have I researched it to get the best quality for the best price?
-How will I dispose of it when I'm done using it?
-Are the resources that went into it renewable or nonrenewable?
-Is it made or recycled materials, and is it recyclable?
-Is there anything that I already own that I could substitute for it?

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