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Maddie Heiner

Ms. Woelke

APEL

03 December 2019

Buy Nothing Day Essay

In this day and age, our society is ingrained with the continuous practice of excessive

consumerism, where individuals choose to purchase more than what’s needed. Many people

become trapped in an endless cycle of chaotic consumption, and for this reason the implication

of an annual Buy Nothing day should be taken into consideration. On this day of reflection,

individuals would be strongly encouraged to purchase no goods, therefore creating awareness

of the overwhelming habit to purchase goods in our society. Through annually holding a Buy

Nothing Day in our country, individuals could potentially begin to realize their habit of excessive

consumerism and begin to change for the better, but this day could simultaneously have a

negative impact on the business industry and could be a useless endeavor.

The concept of excessive consumerism is shown dramatically on the Friday after

Thanksgiving, a day commonly known as Black Friday. On this day, businesses drastically lower

their prices and create amazing deals in order to lure unbelievable amounts of people into their

stores, and urge them to buy more for less. My aunt is one of these people who get sucked into

the deception of Black Friday, and by Saturday morning she owns a whole new set of furniture,

enough sharpies to fill seven drawers in her cluttered house, and two new sets of gardening

tools for her hopeful future garden. This day can be seen as a mirage; causing people to believe

that stealing unbelievable deals and purchasing unbelievable amounts is beneficial, but in
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reality it is only creating more overconsumption in our society and causing more harm than

good. For this reason, an annual Buy Nothing Day would be very useful for the purpose of

creating awareness on the aspect of buying more goods than what is truly needed in life.

Individuals would have the opportunity to slow down and realize their bad habits, therefore

motivating more people to change their mindset on consuming. Also, excessive consumerism is

harming the precious environment we live in by causing more material waste. For example,

Amazon and other online stores use an insane amount of plastic wrap and cardboard to deliver

their products. These materials are then going to waste when individuals constantly shop online

for various, unnecessary items. The implication of a Buy Nothing Day would help reduce the

amount of waste and environmental consequences in our society by allowing truck drivers to

save their gas, and decreasing the amount of cardboard boxes that eventually get thrown away.

It would also allow customers to stop and reflect on their actions, causing a ripple effect among

individuals to decrease excessive consumerism in our society today.

Although Buy Nothing Day seems to hold many positive factors, it also raises some

concern about whether it could even benefit society. This day is an annual event, so the idea of

buying nothing would be encouraged 1 day out of 365 days. One day is not nearly enough to

lower the consumption rate of products as a whole. In order for this day to successfully raise

awareness on the issue, we need to consider applying its principles on our lives weekly or

monthly to effectively limit our purchase levels and fully impact our society for the better. One

day is not going to persuade the mindset of millions of people. Also, the implication of a Buy

Nothing Day could potentially harm businesses by limiting the amount of people that purchase

items from their store. My dad is a regional pharmacist for Costco, and he oversees the
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pharmacy business and monitors its success. In one instance, the pharmacy had to close early

due to an emergency and as a consequence they lost a whole year of sales. Businesses like this

can lose a great amount of money that they desperately need to pay employees and keep the

company up and running. Like this situation with Costco, companies could potentially lose

money when a large population of people decide to stay home and limit their spending for the

annual Buy Nothing Day. In this case, this day would come with a cost that could most likely be

the outcome of a useless attempt to change the excessive consumerism aspect of our country.

Through the establishment of an annual Buy Nothing Day, positive understanding of

excessive purchasing could potentially imprint on the environment in a positive light and

change people for the better, but it also holds a risk of being misused by society and having

people choose to neglect its message the rest of the year. It could also harm companies and

deprive them of money when large quantities of people choose to stay home instead of buying

more products. In some cases, the implication of an annual Buy Nothing Day can be seen as a

benefit to our society as a whole, while different perspectives could expose this day to be a

harmful investment.