BUY NOTHING TODAY

This November, environmentalists, social activists and concerned citizens in as many as 65 countries will hit the streets for a 24-hour consumer fast in celebration of the 15th annual Buy Nothing Day, a global cultural phenomenon that originated in Vancouver, Canada.

Featured in recent years by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Wired, the BBC, USA Today, The Age and the CBC, the international event has been gaining mainstream momentum as the climate crisis drives average people to seek out greener alternatives to unrestrained consumption.

Timed to coincide with one of the busiest shopping days on the US retail calendar, as well as the unofficial start of the international holiday-shopping season, Buy Nothing Day has taken many shapes, from relaxed family outings, to free, non-commercial street parties, to politically charged public protests. Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending.

In past years, street activists have proven particularly imaginative in their celebrations, bringing zombie marches, credit-card cut-ups, and shopaholic clinics to malls and public squares in an effort to expose the environmental and social consequences of First World over-consumption.



Thus Adbusters magazine has managed to turn their annual “Buy Nothing Day” into a global phenomenon, currently celebrated in over 55 countries. The problem is that cutting back your spending, without cutting back your income does absolutely nothing to combat consumerism. Your total income gets spent, whether you like it or not. Either you spend it, or else you put it in the bank, who then loans it to someone else who will spend it. This is not an accident - total spending and total earnings in the economy always add up to the same amount, because your spending is someone else’s income, and your income is someone else’s spending. That’s because the economy is fundamentally a system of exchange. So the only way to make a dent in that is to withdraw from the economy completely, which means neither providing services nor consuming them. Yet somehow, an annual “Earn Nothing Day” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Another activities during this day include:

-Volunteers stand in a shopping mall with a pair of scissors and a sign offering a simple service: to put an end to extortionate interest rates and mounting debt with one considerate cut. Be careful though: in some first-world countries, carrying scissors in public can get you arrested as a "terrorist".

-The cheerful dead wander around malls, marveling at the blank, comatose expressions on the faces of shoppers. The zombies are happy to be among their own kind, but slightly contemptuous of those who have not yet begun to rot.

-The activity has the advantage of being most likely to piss off security personnel. You and nine of your closest friends silently drive your shopping carts around in a long, inexplicable conga line without ever actually buying anything.