In recent years, where there is greater environmental awareness and greater concern for sustainability, sustainable alternatives to “traditions” like this: Green Friday are being wagered.
Black Friday’s impact on the environment
Black Friday has a negative impact on the environment for many reasons, but here are three of the main ones:
- A large number of purchases are made online, which leads to an increase in transport to take the products to the homes, which results in greater air pollution.
- The products we buy carry packaging, so due to the increase in consumption a lot of waste is created such as plastic or cardboard. Currently, waste management is a problem, so at this time of year it gets even worse. Last week our post talked about difficulties in waste management, click here to visit it.
- The most demanded products are those of fashion and electronics, which pollute a lot during production and have a considerably short life, so they become waste soon after being replaced. In addition, they are often not recycled well and end up in landfills wearing toxic products.
With this we do not pretend to be the Grinch of Christmas, but it is important to take into account this data when consuming. However, we believe that all these problems will be reduced over the years, as we are many companies that work to make traditional polluting processes sustainable.
Black Friday vs Green Friday
In case there’s anyone left who doesn’t already know, Black Friday is an American tradition that’s been celebrated for decades the day after Thanksgiving. This is a major phenomenon of retail that represents a great increase in the retail economy. However, with the rise of online commerce and the immediacy of shopping, compulsive and unnecessary purchases are becoming more frequent, a problem of great concern to mental health specialists.
In view of this, Green Friday emerges, an initiative launched by the European Commission, ECODES, Ecoserveis and WWF that aims to mitigate this unbridled consumption and raise awareness that people are consuming responsiblely and sustainably.
Tips for consuming responsiblely
- Review your income and expenses and decide how much you want to spend on purchases.
- Before you buy, make a list of everything you need and focus on them, so you won’t fall into unnecessary purchases.
- If you already know what you want to buy, make a comparison with other sites and choose the option that interests you most (consider the sustainability and size of the shops).
- If money isn’t enough for you to buy everything you wanted, look for alternatives like exchanging clothes with friends or looking for new uses to give them a second life.
