By Clare Morgan
November 29 2002

Must have. Hot new look. Improved formula. Great new flavour. Latest styling. New shade. Buy one, get one free. The message is relentless: buy more stuff. It’s hard to resist, with advertising slapped on everything from food-court tabletops to railway ticket barriers to the sky.

Few show any desire to resist. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, households spend an average of nearly $100 a day on goods and services. Some of it is unavoidable: food, shelter, utilities … that cute beaded handbag for the Christmas do. Plenty though, is totally avoidable, especially at Christmas: candles, candle holders, wine glasses, those do-hickeys that click onto the glasses so guests don’t pick up the wrong one.

What do you do if you want to get off the consumer merry-go-round? Could you get off, even for 24 hours? What would it be like to spend a day without spending?

But wait, today there is a way. It’s International Buy Nothing Day, a brave attempt to wean people off so they can stop and think about what they buy and why, and if they can do without – or with less – for a day … or even longer.

It was created by the Canadian consumer activist group Culture Jammers, best-known for its send-ups of big-brand advertisements in its magazine Adbusters and on its website, http://www.adbusters.org. There’s the True Colours of Benetton spoof, featuring an executive with his mouth stuffed with greenbacks. Or the Gap ad for the latest fashion look: “Hitler wore khaki.”

Since the first Buy Nothing Day in 1993, supporters say it has blossomed, with 30 countries celebrating consumer awareness and simpler living.

This year International Buy Nothing Day is November 29, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, its biggest shopping day in the year and the start of the Christmas retail frenzy. (In Britain it is being observed on November 30.)

Over the years non-shoppers have marked the day by handing out stickers and leaflets with the don’t-buy message, unfurling banners on buildings and encouraging spenders to give to charity instead of shopping. Street theatre has included credit card cut-up services and even the opening of stores that sell nothing.

The movement has been slow to take off in Australia, but this year supporters from a number of states have posted messages on the Adbusters website.

A Melbourne teacher plans drawing attention to her students’ consumption habits and having them report on the quaint experience of not buying anything for the day. In Brisbane several groups are targeting the Christmas shopping frenzy. Ben, from Castle Hill, says he will visit his supermarket and read aloud products’ nutritional ingredients.

Pranks aside, the day has a serious message: over-consumption causes long-term ecological problems as more resources are used to make disposable products.

While some, like Ben, start small, Linda Newnam, of La Perouse, is aiming big: she says State Government plans to dredge Port Botany and massively expand its cargo facilities are a perfect example of consumerism hurting the environment. “We could be trading Botany Beach for a container terminal full of even more things we don’t really need,” she says.

Newnam says a garage clean-out made her realise it was time her household changed its habits. “All this stuff we’d accumulated over the years really made me think. Buy Nothing Day will be the starting point for a year of buying less,” she says.

Her family and other supporters will gather at Botany Beach at 9am tomorrow with banners declaring their stand in the face of over-consuming consumers: “The irony is there’ll probably be just a few of us at the beach while Eastgardens, nearby, will be crawling with people shopping.”

Newnam knows that buying less will be a challenge for her sons, aged eight, 10 and 15, and says getting her message out has brought some interesting responses.

“Even raising issues, emailing people about Buy Nothing Day, I had a bit of hostility, as if it was an attack on their lifestyle. But I think it’s a bit like Clean Up Australia Day – it’s just saying let’s think about what we’re doing, whether it’s rubbish or recycling or spending.”

Rampant consumerism drove John Brisbin out of the United States 12 years ago. “I was having spiritual convulsions,” he says. After a stay in Japan he settled in Australia, hoping his new home would not be such a slave to acquisitiveness.

Brisbin, from Wollongong, has observed Buy Nothing Day for about 10 years, designing posters and taking part in internet-based action. This year he will join other South Coast supporters in a “whirl-mart”, an anti-shopping ritual where participants dress in identical clothing, move their empty trolleys in silence through shop aisles and buy nothing. Quite quixotic.

Thanks,
Portable Storage
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