Does buying nothing do anything?

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It just might be the most well-known holiday on the activist calendar.

Across North America on Nov 23, and around the world a day later, thousands of activists will take part in mass Santa meditations, credit-card cut-ups, zombie walks through malls and conga lines of non-shoppers with empty carts in the aisles of Wal-Mart.

It’s all part of Buy Nothing Day, the annual celebration of anti-consumption that asks consumers to spend an entire 24 hours without reaching for their wallet, which from its humble beginnings in Vancouver in 1992 has spread to over 65 countries.

But despite its global reach, the event, which is scheduled to coincide with “Black Friday,” the unofficial start of the US holiday-shopping season and one of the busiest retail days in North America, has come under criticism from both shoppers who say its proponents are asking the impossible to activists who say the event is nothing more than a token gesture.

“I think there’s a great deal of stigma surrounding Buy Nothing Day with the average consumer,” admits Tyler Collins, who is organizing both a zombie walk at South Edmonton Common and a free store at the westend MacEwan campus to mark the day. “They think, ‘There’s a bunch of hippies out there trying to get us to stop buying everything because they want to crash the system or something.’ So we’re trying to move away from that stigma rather than moving away from the holiday of Buy Nothing Day itself.”

Collins says that widespread mainstream knowledge of the day makes it an ideal opportunity to raise questions about our excessive consumption with shoppers, which is what his group is aiming to do, even if people keep on buying.

“It’s a promotion of conscious consumerism. So the idea isn’t to get the people to stop buying stuff, the idea is more to get them to make responsible choices about the things they buy. Because everybody’s purchase is a vote.”

Michael Kalmanovitch has marked every Buy Nothing Day in the city since it started in 1992, despite the fact that, as the owner of Earth’s General Store, the more success he has in spreading the message, the less money he makes, at least for one day.

He agrees with Collins that Buy Nothing Day isn’t so much about stopping people from buying as it is to make people think before they make a purchase.
“It’s an abstract idea. Nobody’s going to penalize you for purchasing something that day. Nobody’s keeping track. It’s just a personal thing,” Kalmanovitch explains.

“It’s just a raising of consciousness. A lot of us, myself included every now and again, unconsciously consume. Because we’re waiting for the merchandise to press the buy button that we have exposed on ourselves somewhere—usually close to the wallet—and it’s just saying, ‘Hey, stop and reconsider this.’ If you feel you need to buy it, go ahead, but at least you’ve hesitated.”

Kalmanovitch adds that thinking in terms of encouraging consumers to take the time to think about their purchases rather than prevent them from making a purchase has meant a change over the years in the approach he takes with customers in his store on Buy Nothing Day.

“One year what I did was that I had the store open but I didn’t put the cash drawer in the till. People would come in and I’d say, ‘Well, you can’t buy anything because we’re not doing any transactions today.’ About halfway through the day I realized that I wasn’t empowering the consumer, I was actually disempowering them.”

Now, Kalmanovitch says, they simply inform customers and let them make their own choices.

“The staff tells the person, ‘Do you know it’s Buy Nothing Day? We’d appreciate it if you didn’t buy anything from our store or anywhere else for that matter,’ but we respect that it’s your right or your decision to do whatever you feel is appropriate.”

Criticism has also come from activists who say that Buy Nothing Day is nothing more than a feel-good event organized by privileged individuals that simply delays purchases by a day. Some have gone so far as to promote Steal Something Day as a more radical alternative.

“I’ve heard a lot of critiques and I understand there can be a lot of criticism of, ‘Oh, it’s only one day’ or ‘People are going to buy more the next day,’” admits Laura Bercovitz, the assistant campaigns manager with the magazine Adbusters, which has promoted Buy Nothing Day since 1992.

“But really what we’re hoping is that people will take this one day and use it kind of as a catalyst for a lifestyle change altogether and really think about what they need and why they’re buying something. It doesn’t have to just be that one day, it can carry on throughout the holidays and that’s why we have Buy Nothing Christmas. It can go beyond that [one day] and start trickling into all parts of your life when you start asking yourself critical questions of what your consumer habits’ impact is on the environment and the world,” she says.

”We definitely want to promote ethical consumption and local consumption and there are many benefits from shopping locally versus shopping from big box stores. We just want people to start asking the questions and becoming aware of what they’re doing when they’re shopping.” V

Does buying nothing do anything?

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