kinogirl's Blog

The Church of Pointless Consumerism

kinogirl — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:54:36 -0800

A show on this weekend that may be of interest to consumers (that's everyone) and musical theatre lovers (okay, not everyone):

The Church of Pointless Consumerism
Friday, December 15 thru Sunday, December 17, 8pm
Cambrian Hall - 215 East 17th Ave. at Main in Vancouver
tickets $10-$15 (sliding scale)

It's being put on by The Work Less Party, who promote the idea that we should "Work Less, Consume Less, Live More", and is described as a "hilarious, satirical, musical theatre extravaganza" and "a christmas pageant that will have viewers on the edge of their pews" (does that sell it to ya?)

"Traveling evangelist, Peter Proffet the Prophet of Profit, along with his gospel choir are fully prepared to storm the city of Vancouver with the good words of Consumerism, Production, and more, more, MORE! The message will stir the congregation of faithful customers, and it comes with a lifetime guarantee of conversion for the *gasp* skeptics among us.

With wild sing-a-long musical numbers, dance routines and faith healing, The Church of Pointless Consumerism comes in a sexy package of enlightening, entertaining, down-home religious rejuvenation."

Though I do "work less", it's evenings and weekends, so I don't know if I'll be able to check it out, but I thought I'd do a post on it in case others are interested. (I hope it's considered okay to mention events on this site if they're related to the change topic.)

more info including where to get advance tickets:
The Work Less Party: Church of Pointless Consumerism

Cyber Monday (or: Just Another Monday)

kinogirl — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:35:32 -0800

I'd heard of Black Friday before, but now I find that today is "Cyber Monday" -- the busiest online shopping day of the year:

Cyber Monday is the first Monday after "Black Friday" -- the day U.S. shoppers on their Thanksgiving break flood stores searching for holiday deals... retail analyst Jim Okamura noted that Canadians don't observe American Thanksgiving, so this Monday "is just another Monday in Canada."

CBC News, Nov. 27: 'Cyber Monday' launches online shopping blitz

The Commodification of Water

kinogirl — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:48:09 -0800

On November 19, I posted the following comment on the Boil Water Advisory story thread. Kate encouraged me to repost it as part of my blog, but it's taken me till the day the advisory has been lifted to actually do it.

On commodification of water .. I agree that bottled water should not be encouraged. Think of the energy to produce all those millions of single-use plastic containers and transport them to market. A market that wouldn't exist if we didn't buy into its claims of purity, hipness, convenience, being a healthy alternative to soft drinks, etc. Access to clean water should be a basic human right, not a commodity for sale. Sure, we pay for the convenience of its safe delivery to our homes by way of taxes, as we do for other infrastructure and services for the common good in our society ( the GVRD's Medical Health Officers, for example), but when we can get water out of the tap for free, there is no sensible reason for the existence of a bottled water industry. So we might have to boil our tap water for a couple of weeks. Hopefully this minor inconvenience will make us all think about where our water comes from and how lucky we are to have it. If we don't pay attention, control of this vital natual resource could soon to lost to us.

And following is an abridged additional comment I posted on the same thread, partially in reponse to other comments about plastic being perceived as "toxic" and "nassty".

Plastic not all "nassty".. Its versatility, light weight, resistence to chemicals, etc. can be useful -- think of its applications in medicine, safety equipment, food storage, electronics, etc. But most plastics come from petroleum (bottled water usually comes in polyethylene terephthalate (aka PET or recycle code 1) containers), as do most fuels to transport products made from or packaged in them. In this peak oil era, we should be reducing our reliance on petroleum products and exploring renewable resource alternatives (such as compostable plastic packaging made from corn.) On a personal level, our consumer choices (what we buy or don’t buy) can effect change -- if no one buys something, there’s no market for it. In my previous post I was wanting to add to the previous poster's two cents, as I feel that bottled water is a waste of resources and should not be encouraged (we do, after all, have running water -- we’ve just been temporarily advised to boil it prior to consumption), while also bringing up the related larger issue of control of the population’s water supply (which looks to be a concern for others too -- see Gordon Campbell looking at privatized water treatment for lower mainland.) As for Being More Prepared For Emergencies -- keeping an emergency supply of water (for when there isn’t even any coming out of the tap to boil) is indeed a wise idea, which can be accomplished by reuse of containers filled with tap water rather than buying up caselots of bottled water.

In addition, the last version of the Boil Water Advisory story (headline: "The boil water advisory is winding down") mentioned this related news:

The Greater Vancouver Regional District is planning a public education campaign to promote tap water over bottled. Directors decided just weeks ago to go to war against the water industry, condemning it for brain-washing the public into believing tap water is somehow contaminated.

So, bottled water: discuss!

Buy Nothing Day: No Purchase Necessary

kinogirl — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 15:09:32 -0800

Buy Nothing Day, the brainchild of artist Ted Dave, was first organized in Vancouver in September 1992 as "a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption." The campaign challenges consumers to go a day without buying anything -- "a 24-hour consumer detox." I remember being at the Railway Club one year on BND, when it was suggested that we wait to pay our tab till after midnight -- beer, after all, is something to buy (the irony was not lost on us that if we stayed later, we'd consume more.) Kalle Lasn and the Adbusters Media Foundation he co-founded were instrumental in developing BND into an international event, moving it from September to November's Black Friday, the day after American Thanksgiving and the beginning of the frenzied holiday shopping season. (I seem to recall there being a bit of a spat a few years back over who got credit for BND and what the date should be, but it should be the message that counts.) It's now observed by activists and citizens in 65 countries:

"Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending. Reasons for participating in Buy Nothing Day are as varied as the people who choose to participate. Some see it as an escape from the marketing mind games and frantic consumer binge that has come to characterize the holiday season, and our culture in general. Others use it to expose the environmental and ethical consequences of overconsumption... Buy Nothing Day isn't just about changing your habits for one day. It’s about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste."

So maybe my first To Buy or Not To Buy blog post yesterday, and subsequent postings here today (chalk it up to a newbie with the day off!), will be part of that commitment, as I work on the change To Be A Conscious Consumer.

Adbusters: full text of the BND 2006 press release quoted above

P.S. If you try to visit Adbusters's online "culture shop" today, you'll get a message (in a yellow circle -- the symbol of "slow down" or "caution") advising that the store is closed for Buy Nothing Day: "Give it a rest for 24 hours. Pause, take a deep breath, and regain some calm."

Black Friday

kinogirl — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 13:06:48 -0800

As soon as one heavily-marketed holiday is over, consumers are bombarded with the next. In Canada, it seems the Christmas decorations go up in stores before the Halloween candy gets discounted. South of the border, today, the day after American Thanksgiving, marks the launch of the Christmas shopping season. It is known as "Black Friday" because it is the point in the year when retailers' books move from the red to the black. The holiday season is often looked upon as make-or-break time, and can account for up to half of retailers' annual profits. In recent years the trend has been for stores to open at 5:00 or 6:00 am on this Friday, or even as the clock strikes midnight at the end of Thanksgiving Day, offering deep discounts on big-ticket items to attract customers before the competition opens. These opening day specials have apparently led to a drop in actual sales figures for Black Friday (the busiest day of the season is now the Saturday before Christmas Day) but it's still considered the "official" launch of the season. So when the Vancouver-born consumption awareness campaign Buy Nothing Day went global in 1997, it moved its annual event from September to Black Friday. [more on Buy Nothing Day in my next post]

CBC News, Nov. 24: U.S. shoppers hit stores on "Black Friday"

Black Friday: A Man-Made Monster Is On The Loose!

I Was A Consumer Zombie

kinogirl — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 08:44:23 -0800

The first thing I ever bought with my 5-cents-a-week allowance was a bag of marbles. I think it cost 69 cents. After a few weeks of having money for the first time, the burning question for this six-year-old was, "what am I going to buy?" I didn’t even play marbles as a game. It was just to have them. I liked their perfect roundness, their colours inside clearness, the way they sparkled and the sounds they made clicking against each other.

As a teenager it was all about going to the mall. Like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead. Until my friends and I discovered downtown, where there were clothing shops that were cooler than the mall and Odyssey Imports had records we hadn’t known existed. It was either you had to have what everyone else did or you wanted what no one else had. An overseas-edition 12" single was the best of both worlds.

At university all I had to do to get a credit card was fill out a one-page form at a table at the student union building. Or maybe it just seemed that simple after filling out the intricate pages of projected budgets and so on for my student loan. I didn’t really need a credit card but it was nice to have. When I moved out my parents gave me their second car. I didn’t really need a car but it was nice to have. Yeah, lots of stuff is nice to have. But is that reason enough to have it? Does having lots of stuff just encourage having lots more? Though I’d been pretty good at saving up for things in the past, before I knew it I had all kinds of debt.

A few years later, I decided to borrow money from my parents to pay everything off and cut up my credit cards. I also sold the car and tried keeping track of every penny I spent. While working with a non-profit environmental group advocating waste reduction I adopted a number of changes to my life to do my part, from getting in the habit of bringing my own bags to the supermarket to eating lower on the food chain.

Wanting to live within my means and be as socially responsible as possible, I found that instead of continuing to be a consumer zombie, I’d woken up. I’d become more aware of how much I was spending and on what and realised that as a consumer I did have choices -- and not just between brands or stores. I could choose reusable over disposable, bulk over individually-packaged, locally-made over sweatshop-produced, and even not buying over buying. Sometimes it was hard to find alternatives to what was offered by the generally-accepted disposable society’s consumer culture, but I was glad to have at least tried to incorporate my values into how I contributed to the economy.

Perhaps it’s due to the market responding to consumer demands that things like organic produce, recycled paper, environmentally-friendly cleaners, fair-trade chocolate, cruelty-free cosmetics, vegetarian menu options, etc. are more readily available at competitive prices. And maybe it’s because of that, as well as being debt-free and at a point in my life where I really have everything I need or want for myself and my home, that I haven’t had to think so much about my choices in recent years and have become a bit complacent. But over the past few months I’ve been confronted with a few choices as a consumer that have woken me up again. And so I’ve decided to make that my first "change" here -- To Be A Conscious Consumer.

To Buy Or Not To Buy

kinogirl — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 23:38:30 -0800

In the context of trying to be a conscious consumer, sometimes that is the question. Of course there are further, interrelated questions, which lead to weighing options, then making the decision To Buy or Not To Buy.

The first might be: Why? Why would I buy something? Is it necessary? Food is necessary but do I want to stock up on groceries or grab take-out? Would buying this good or service bring me enjoyment? I’m not much for shopping as a pastime but have a friend who loves it (she comes in handy when I know what I need but have no idea where to get it) so I’ll add another question related to enjoyment: Would this purchase itself make me feel good or am I just shopping because it’s something to do? Am I buying something as a reward or treat? Do I think I should get something I didn't set out to buy just because it's on sale and a great deal? And once I've figured out the why, do I feel comfortable with that reason?

Why would I not buy something? Can I do without it? Do I want to do without it? Is there a newer version coming out soon that maybe I should wait for instead? Would there be a way of accomplishing what I need or want with what I already have? -- not just things that are old yet still good or reusable, but using my skills or connections or imagination?

There are questions related to money. Can I afford it? Does it fit into my budget? Should I save up for it or get it now on credit? Is it worth it? Would it be better to pay more for something that will last longer?

And the area I probably most want to focus on in my attempt to become a more conscious consumer involves questions related to values. What are my values and how do I put my money where my mouth is? Personally, I would like to consider the effects my consumer choices have on the environment. For example, I can choose to buy organic produce (no pesticides), locally-produced products (less energy used on transportation) and durable rather than disposable goods (reduce waste). I could also consider packaging (is it recyclable? can I buy in bulk?), keep a cloth shopping bag handy (reduce and reuse), or not buy harmful or wasteful things at all. I would also like to support the local economy (which can be a challenge when the market in inundated with chain stores and cheap imported goods.) What other issues might come up that could challenge me as a consumer wanting to practise what she preaches?

These are some of the things I hope to consider more carefully and write about here related to the change To Be A Conscious Consumer. (This is my first blog post!) It may be kinda cheating by making this the first change I declare, as I already do this to some extent, but this looks to be a good forum for discussion. Future posts might focus on working through weighing options on particular purchases, sharing strategies or solutions, and investigating if and how consumers might effect social change with their spending habits.

And to really get the ball rolling -- tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day! I am going to "participate by not participating."

If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
-- William Morris, British craftsman, designer, writer, typographer (1834-1896)