Living the Buy Nothing Life

[Guest guest]

Breaking the Consumer Habit: Living the Buy Nothing Life

 

 

San Francisco, 1951.

A living room fills with warm laughter and the aroma of fresh-baked

goodies. Suburban housewives walk around the room exchanging smiles,

telling stories. It's like any other casual gathering, except for one

twist: this is a Tupperware party, everyone is here to shop.

 

Painting over gray decades of war and depression with bright pastels,

products like Tupperware ushered in a new era of prosperity, renewal

and superabundance. Consumer goods like the television set and the

Cadillac became more than just necessities for life: for millions of

consumers, they were the essence of life itself.

 

Fast forward to 2005. A group of friends in the San Francisco Bay Area

are meeting over a potluck dinner. Disillusioned by the endless

consumer rat race, they are here to discuss how to not shop, to put an

end to needless consumption. Taking the concept of Buy Nothing Day to

the extreme, they have decided to attempt a full year without buying

new products. Dubbing themselves " The Compact " after the Mayflower

pledge at Plymouth Rock, the group vowed to limit their shopping to

food, medicine and basic hygiene products, buying used wherever they

could. Since the local news began covering them, their story has

exploded, appearing everywhere from the Today Show to The Times of

London. Today, with 8,000 new members and 55 subgroups worldwide -

from regions as varied as Singapore and Iceland - the Compact are

finding themselves at the forefront of the turning tide against

consumer culture.

 

What the Compacters are doing is neither radical nor revolutionary;

millions of people around the world live this way, and have lived this

way for generations. Yet the Compact threatens and challenges

everything that people have come to believe about " the good life " in

the industrialized world. Reactions to the movement have been

passionate, ranging from applause to outrage. Compact members have

been accused of being " self-congratulatory braggarts " who are

" destroying America's economy. " One Compacter in Chilliwack, Canada,

recalls friends reacting as if she had joined a Satanic cult. Love it

or hate it, the Compact has made people question and the real motives

behind their daily purchases.

 

" I used to shop to entertain myself, " confesses Lori Wyndham Jolly, an

American expat and Compacter living in Berkshire, UK. " I'd go into a

record store and buy a whole load of discount CDs, or into a chemist

and get a lot of cheap cosmetics . . . I didn't do this because I

needed any of that stuff, but just to fill the emptiness. I read a

throwaway line in paperback once, but it's stuck with me: People shop

because they're lonely. "

 

" We're constantly on the drive to consume more stuff, " says Rachel

Kesel, a Bay Area Compacter who keeps a closely followed blog about

her experiences. " It becomes a habit and not necessity. "

 

The reasons why people join the Compact are varied. Some join to cut

back on spending, others to reduce waste, still others to escape

materialism and focus on spiritual values. One thing they all

recognize is that shopping is not the solution to their problems - in

fact, it may very well be the cause to many of them.

 

" Money and debts seem to be ruling our life, " observes Rúna Björg

Gartharsdóttir, a Compacter in Iceland. She explains to Adbusters that

she joined the Compact to escape what she calls the " vicious cycle " of

consumerism - the chronic overwork to be able to spend more; the

social disintegration resulting from overwork; the environmental

damage caused by consumer waste; conflict over resources to supply

consumer demand. In other words, a myriad of problems loosely bound by

the innocent desire for an iPod or a luxury car collection.

 

It is no coincidence that the emergence of the Compact coincides with

the rising popularity of the down-shifting and environmental

movements. People throughout the developed world have realized that,

unlike our psychological desires - which are infinite - our physiology

and environmental resources have limits. Our body can't handle 80-hour

workweeks on a 6,000-calorie-per-day diet, no more than our earth can

handle cities like New York producing 12,000 tons of solid waste every

single day, or the hundreds of millions of discarded cell phones that

release cancer-causing toxins into the air. Something, someday, will

have to give.

 

For now, most Compacters defensively state that their choice is a

strictly " personal " one and that they have no political agenda. Yet

they continue to stir up discontent by turning their back on a sacred

ideal, the belief shared by billions around the world that " more " is

better than " just enough. " Marketers are hoping this is a fringe

movement. The signs point elsewhere. According to recent surveys by

sociologist Juliet Schor, 81 percent of Americans believe their

country is too focused on shopping, while nearly 90 percent believe it

is too materialistic. Newspapers such as USA Today received record

reader responses when columnist Craig Wilson swore off shopping for a

full year. Radical anti-consumers such as the Freegans (people who

survive on discarded food and products) are proving that people can

survive off the waste of affluent consumers.

 

Gartharsdóttir, for her part, speaks with some pride when people tell

her that her refusal to shop will shake her country's economy. " It

shows clearly the strong influence the marketing forces currently have

on the nation, " she says. " We should rule our lives and decide what

comes first. "

 

_Jenny Uechi

 

http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/71/Breaking_the_Consumer_Habit_Living_the_Buy_\

Nothing_Life.html

 

 

 

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