Stop me and don’t buy one

I believe it’s called the moment of clarity. “My name is James Kelleher, and I like buying stuff.” Not just food, soap or shoes either, but bona fide non-essentials like video games, glossy magazines, frozen hamburgers, Cuban rum, desk lamps, MP3 players, cologne, voodoo dolls, DVDs... You know, stuff. I am an arch-consumer, a sucker reborn every minute, and probably easily slotted into any number of demographic groups, marketing campaigns or target markets – and in common with most people, I rarely stop to consider the consequences of my all-consuming habits. On European Buy Nothing Day – November 24th – my wallet will spend a lonely day at home, mooching about the house and complaining about chronic boredom, but I suspect (and hope) I’ll be better off without it.

Buy Nothing Day was set up by the Canadian artist and founder of Adbusters Ted Dave in 1993, and since then has grown into something of an international carnival, now celebrated in over 30 countries. The core ideology is based less in an Us Vs. Them battle against capitalism, more in a deeply personal questioning of why we buy the things we do, and attempting to identify the excess in our purchase. The mathematics of over-consumption are straightforward, and frequently disturbing: overpackaging is placing an unsustainable burden upon the environment (20% of the world’s population are consuming over 80% of the earth’s natural resources), personal debt is soaring to historically unprecedented levels, and many of the products we buy are made by corporations with – to put it mildly – somewhat cavalier attitudes to labour standards.

November 24th has been christened Buy Nothing Day for the sake of simple explanation and ease of use, but it’s about more than that. Frequently the objects we buy are beautiful to look at, easy to use, pleasurable to the touch – so why wouldn’t we like them? The relationship between desire and satisfaction is a complex one, but too often we ignore the history of a product and its environmental legacy.

BND posits alternatives to the quick fix buy – urges you to explore the much-vaunted “freedom of the consumer” dogma that we are sold every other day, to spend your money in local businesses rather than exploitative and agressively-marketed chain stores, to stand back and consider whether something’s actually worth the money you’ll pay for it, to buy decent food at the same price you’ll pay for a 100% Irish cardboard-and-sugar burger. It also, rather elegantly, challenges you to spend no money at all for one day out of 365. You win: no purchase necessary.