Interesting takes on Black Friday

Since today is Black Friday, it is no surprise that in these times of concern for the climate and the environment, people come with their takes on this big sales promotion day.

I found two interesting articles about the topic. One is from The Netherlands and the other from France. I find these articles interesting because they seem to connect to what I have mentioned in some of my previous articles about a new economic model and how economy and ecology compare.

The Dutch article is Pleidooi tegen ‘wegwerpmaatschappij’ op Black FridayPleidooi tegen ‘wegwerpmaatschappij’ op Black Friday (Plea against “throw away society” on Black Friday)

It focuses on the sectors of fashion, furniture, and electronics, or more precisely on what they call the wegwerpmaatschappij, or in English the throw away society, being all about products that have a cheap price tag but do not last and end up in no time in the landfills. The article hints toward moving away from fast fashion and fast furniture and at looking at buying better products of much higher quality. It is interesting to notice that while food and agriculture are often presented as the source of all evils, they are not mentioned in this article. Yet, there certainly is a lot to say about food waste, overconsumption, crappy, unnecessary and useless products. Anyway, I will let you read it and as there is a chance you cannot read Dutch, just translate the page with Google and you will find the content.

The French article is Surconsommation ou sobriété ? Quand le Black Friday divise au sommet de l’État (Overconsumption or sobriety? When Black Friday causes division at the State’s top)

It describes a difference of opinion between the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Ecological Transition. The latter criticizes Black Friday, presenting it as a symbol of hyperconsumption. He is not wrong although there are also people who take advantage of the Black Friday discounts and offers to buy products that they actually need. Even though we buy and consume way more than we should, and therefore waste of lot of resources to produce these items, sometimes purchases are about necessary stuff. There is a risk in brushing everything with the same brush. The Minister of Economy is, of course focused on the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and does not fancy the idea of refraining from buying stuff (the essence of GDP) all the much. Anyway, they bicker at each other. In the conversation, other aspects are brought in, such as online sales versus brick-and-mortar stores. Online sales are a regular pet peeve of French governments, and Amazon in particular, or anything that has to do with American corporations. Overconsumption is overconsumption, and cheap crap is cheap crap, regardless of where you buy it. Nonetheless, this is an interesting article to read, as it shows the struggle of how to reconcile economy and environment. Both the Dutch and the French articles touch the concept of quantitative growth vs. qualitative growth, and the need of always enough vs. always more, about which I wrote earlier on this blog.