“Turning Black Friday into GREEN Friday”
This blog focuses on one of our pet hates…
Black Friday!
With Bonfire Night now behind us, it is the perfect time to give some thought to (and have a bit of a rant about) one of the biggest marketing campaigns of the year which tries to convince us all to buy even more stuff we don’t need, at supposedly ‘bargain prices’, in the guise of Christmas.
Christmas can be such a lovely and joyful time, but the huge undercurrent of consumption means it is also a very wasteful time which has a negative impact on our planet, and Black Friday feeds this wasteful consumer beast.
Now this blog isn’t just a full on rant about not succumbing to the marketing bullshit that is Black Friday, although if you’d like that version then we’d be happy to oblige, just head over to our ‘Contact Us’ page and book a call!
Instead, this blog helps you navigate the lunacy of Black Friday and gives you 5 tips on how to avoid falling into the clever marketing traps which get us to part with our hard earned cash.
Just the concept alone is baffling! One day of the year, where everything we could possibly want to buy, is available at a limited time bargain price, to get consumers into a frantic panicked buying frenzy! We’ve all seen the now famous scenes of people losing their shit in shops and fighting over ‘reduced’ wide screen TVs!
To be clear, Black Friday is yet another US import, it was first trialled in the UK by Amazon in 2010 but didn’t really take off until 2013 when other big retailers jumped on board, and since then it has snowballed year on year, with some retailers planning their whole year around it!
Did you know it was estimated that £9.2bn would be spent over the Black Friday weekend in 2021, with £2.5bn splurged on the actual day? That is a crazy amount of money!
By succumbing to the media and retail induced hype on Black Friday, not only are we being convinced to part with our hard earned cash, but the negative planetary impact from this one day alone is HUGE!
And don’t get us started on the added planetary impact of all the returns!
Everything we buy from a box of chocolates, to a stocking filler toy, to a new TV, has an impact on our beautiful planet, and has its own individual carbon footprint. By consuming so much stuff, at such an alarming rate, on one day of the year, we, as consumers, are currently voting with our wallets and saying YES to climate change!
So instead of succumbing to the ridiculous ‘consumption day’ this year, we, as consumers, with a huge amount of buying power, need to take action, side step the Black Friday marketing machine and CHOOSE to spend differently.
Try to turn Black Friday into GREEN FRIDAY.
Ultimately it is all about choice.
We as consumers have so much choice.
Now we need to CHOOSE the GREENER option on how we spend our money, and start voting with our wallet and saying NO to climate change.
So to help you navigate some of the Black Friday spending traps, this blog gives you our 5 Tips to turn Black Friday into GREEN Friday this year.
1 – Boycott Black Friday – the first way to turn Black Friday into GREEN Friday is to boycott the consumer monster. By choosing to not spend your money on so called deals, offers, and bargains during the biggest consumer spending day of the year, you are sending a clear GREEN message.
Instead, avoid the frenzy of one day, spend your money in a more considered way, with independent stores, on ethical and green products.
2 – Try not to be sucked in by spending messaging and advertising – just because the marketing machine of Black Friday is bombarding you with spend, spend, spend messaging everywhere you look, doesn’t mean you actually have to spend your money.
3 – Don’t buy anything before you’ve taken a look at what you actually need – everything seems to go on special offer for this day/weekend of consumption, making it feel almost impossible for us to resist when we see something we’d like to buy or think we might need.
If you do get tempted, try to remember that impulse buying often only results in us adding to our ever increasing mountain of stuff… Instead of diving straight into the ‘bargains’ the moment they go on sale, take some time beforehand to think about presents and items you actually need to buy. Something is only ever a bargain if you really needed to buy it anyway.
4 – Do your homework – research the products and items beforehand – grabbing a bargain item which actually isn’t any good is pointless. By ‘buying cheap’ you often end up ‘buying twice’ which results in double the waste, double the carbon footprint, and double the negative planetary impact.
You may as well set light to your credit card or cash and add a little bit more carbon to the atmosphere…
If you do really need to buy something and it coincides with Black Friday, then it really does pay to do your homework, there is a reason why some items and brands only crop up in a sale.
There has been much debate in recent years about whether or not consumers are getting real deals during this frantic buying frenzy, research in 2021 showed that more than 60% of so called deals were available at the same price or cheaper at other times of the year outside of Black Friday!
And lastly, our favourite tip…
5 – Stop buying shit you don’t need! – if we all choose to stop buying so much unnecessary stuff, not only would we save ourselves a fortune, we’d also stop the demand for all the stuff. As long as we continue to provide a demand, there will continue to be companies cashing in on this demand, and making us the shit…
So there you have it, our top tips to navigate Black Friday.
Ultimately it is all about choice. Its all about how we choose to spend our money, it’s as easy as that.
Take some action and help turn Black Friday into GREEN Friday.
For more green tips and inspiration pop over to Instagram or LinkedIn and check out @achievinggreenness where we provide you with the motivation, evidence, and tools you may need to become greener.
If you are a business and want help to become greener and have been looking for someone to help you start then get in touch, we offer Mini Green Audits all the way up to helping you obtain green accreditations and ISO certifications, and we provide bespoke Green packages for all your requirements.
