As a society, we eagerly await Black Friday and the respective deals on technology, clothing, and games in preparation for buying Christmas presents. The concept originated in America, taking place the day after the national holiday of Thanksgiving. Around 2013, the UK stores began to participate in the sales of Black Friday. The savings can be so influential that websites can crash, and people storm the shops the minute they open. Initially, Black Friday was a day of sales, however as the years have progressed, brands have begun to extend their sales, with some commencing at the beginning of November and reaching their pinnacle during the last weekend of the month.
The weekend of Black Friday is known as the busiest shopping weekend of the year, and as a result, it has an overwhelming impact on the environment. A UK price comparison website has released ‘The Dirty Delivery Report’, which reveals that the Black Friday deliveries will result in 429,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. This is the equivalent of 435 return flights from London to New York. So everything we buy not only costs us money, but it has a cost on the environment as well. This is dependent on how the item was made, what it is made from, how far it is transported and how long the thing lasts. Furthermore, the weekend of Black Friday encourages society to quickly buy items because of how significantly discounted they are, without the buyer contemplating whether they genuinely need the things or not.
Fast fashion companies overproduce clothing for this weekend, using fresh water and polluting the rivers and seas with toxins. The haphazard nature of shopping results in millions of consumer waste which ultimately ends up in landfills in which they release toxins into the air, and 91% of the plastic ends up in the oceans. Although at first glance, the sales on Black Friday seem to be too good to turn down, yet it was revealed how this year the retail brand ASOS claimed there was up to 80% off their items when their clothing was reduced mainly by 20%. Advertising that their products were being reduced up to 80% encouraged consumers to overspend as they assumed they had a great deal.
There is now a collective encouragement for society to buy less to shrink your impact on the environment. There is no doubt that Black Friday has an overwhelmingly adverse effect on our environment, and there is now a campaign to turn Black Friday into Green Friday. The intention is to move away from traditional sales and focus on sustainable sales, which ultimately educates consumers to consider their impact on the environment. Green Friday provides impact-focussed promotions and deals on the stock they already have, rather than blindly producing items with the intention that they will be bought throughout the sale period.
Some brands have refused to participate with Black Friday; for example, Waterstones did not reduce their stock cost but instead offered triple points for customers. Although Waterstones did submit a form of reward for shopping on Black Friday, they did not reduce the cost of their products in an attempt to encourage customers to spend money blindly. Although originating as a day of sales, similar to the boxing day sales, Black Friday has snowballed into a month of overproducing fast fashion and ultimately further damaging our environment in the bid to save money, despite 80% of items ending up in the landfill.
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