The Real Cost of Black Friday Deals
Black Friday excess and "retail therapy" costs both people and the planet. Repair and re-use are antidotes. Plus: EU backs new repair rules & artist makes R2R exhibit with 5k lbs of e-waste.
71% of people in the U.S. will shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. This massive number far surpasses the number of people who voted in the off-cycle elections earlier this month. It will also be more than three times the people who will watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Black Friday is a reminder that the scale of our collective consumption is staggering. And while endless commercials will show happy people smiling using/wearing/eating different products, a piece is missing. What happens before those products reach us and after we trash them can be far more consequential than we realize. People in rich western nations are typically insulated from those impacts, hence they are invisible to us.
Cheap clothes = cheap labor
Clothing items are a good place to start, since they are the item people are most likely to buy during these shopping holidays. Literal tons of clothing will be bought this week just in the U.S. by people who are looking for cheap goods in the face of rising costs of living. It’s understandable to want these products, and why we purchase them, but fashion is a stark example of the need for a foundational change in how we choose to produce goods.
Just take abysmal wages of garment works in Bandladesh, who make $75 USD a month. They are currently protesting to receive higher wages, and have shut down the production of global fashion brands H&M and Levi’s to increase their pay. A quick review of Levi’s site shows the listing price of their jeans at $98, far above what they pay their workers for a month’s labor.
This is the dark underbelly of low quality goods. The savvy marketing we will see over the next week promises to make us happy by purchasing a pair of jeans. It purposely avoids what it costs our planet to produce and sell those goods or the conditions faced by the people making those clothes.
Then when the clothing we buy on Black Friday is dumped, it ends up on foreign shores, ensuring the problems of pollution and waste from the clothing is far outside our view. And, as fast fashion continues to be normalized, the quality of clothing is dropping while so does the number of times people wear each garment.
One way to fight these destructive trends is to put more information in the hands of consumers. GoodOnYou and Remake rate brands on their labor and sustainability practices, so if you’re buying something this week you can get a better idea about how companies treat their workers and the environment. These organizations are putting pressure on companies to commit to labor standards and transparency around their production and waste, and often have petitions and causes to ally with.
Repair as a form of healing
Another solution is to skip shopping for new stuff altogether and instead mend a piece of clothing you already own. Repairing clothing - especially as a group activity - can both increase lasting feelings of happiness and connection with others. And that’s a great alternative to the retail therapy narratives flooding our feeds.
Environmental advocate, and expert on craft, Katie Treggiden says that while we might lose convenience when we slow down to repair things, we gain an abundance of meaning and value each time we repair and mend the things we already have. By resisting this convenience, we also resist the violent actions against workers and the environment caused by fast products. Appreciation of the things we already own can make us happier, and benefit the world.
Sometimes slowing down is the best thing to do, and there’s no better way than practicing repair.
Artist Turns 5K lbs of E-Waste Into Art
Fight to Repair readers: its time to book your tickets to Toronto so you can check out artist Benjamin von Wong’s amazing E-Waste Generator, an immersive art installation calling for a right to repair, and built with more than 5,000 pounds of salvaged e-waste. Von Wong has a history of building exhibits highlighting issues like ocean plastics, fast fashion, and electronic waste, with his work often sponsored by firms like Dell, Nike, Starbucks as well as Greenpeace.
The latest exhibit, highlighting the need for a “right to repair” is part of Arcadia Earth, an immersive art exhibit that will next week in Toronto. Von Wong wrote that he set out to create an installation that would “make the boring topic of ‘Right To Repair’ a little more unforgettable.” (Hey!!)
He received a trove of salvaged e-waste from Uni-Recycle a local e-waste recycling facility including 1,500 lbs of cables, 800 lbs of motherboards, 800 lbs of. keyboards, 1500 lbs of computers, and 800 lbs of household appliances. The result is impressive: a kind of e-waste Iron Throne that is selfie-ready and that conceals numerous easter eggs. A sound-activated broken mirror greets visitors as they survey the empire of electronic waste we rule over, inviting us to reconsider our role and reliance on technology.
Those who sit on the installation will hear the “soft voice and words of Amber Herzo…inviting people to buy more and upgrade quicker.” The artist notes that message is “reminiscent of the toxic advertising industry we face every day.”
And QR codes hidden within the room let you call up information that teaches visitors about the right to repair movement. And there’s sound too: “two immersive and ethereal soundtracks designed by Dave Hodge help set the mood and tone.”
The exhibit opens December 1st. You can check out Acadia Earth and buy tickets here.
Other News
EU Parliament backs new right to repair rules by officially adopted a negotiating position on new measures to strengthen the right to repair and reduce the environmental impact of mass consumption, voting with 590 votes in favor and 15 against. The proposal would make it easier to repair defective goods, reduce waste and support the repair sector. Sellers of devices would be required to prioritize repair if it is cheaper or equal in cost to replacing a good, unless the repair is not feasible or inconvenient for the consumer. MEPs also propose to extend the legal guarantee by one year once a product has been fixed.
The Repair Economy Summit is a free virtual event courtesy of Repair Economy Washington. The two day event starts on December 5th, and sessions will cover policy, community engagement, project showcases, repair education and more.
Most people (80%) in the UK believe companies make repair difficult on purpose. The survey from PIABLOG also found:
1 in 5 upgrade their phone every time a new model is available
4 in 5 upgrade their phone every two years
3 in 5 would repair instead of replacing
There is currently no standard diagnostic system for electric vehicles, but California is proposing a law that would require EV manufacturers to standardize these systems. EV repairs are expensive, but ideally this standardization would democratize repair for independent repairers and owners.
Degrowth, circular economy, and social equity are not mutually exclusive, says Ole Hendrickson at rabble. Ideas like circular economy and green business practices can often be coopted by companies looking for good marketing, but degrowth is not. Hendrickson believes we need to achieve degrowth to save the planet—which he says is both possible and neccessary.
Don’t call Apple’s backpedal on repair a 180 says Karl Bode at TechDirt. Bode says that while the company can say its pro-repair, subtle tactics like part pairing and watering down repair bills will be the new standard for the company that realized open opposition to right to repair wasn’t quite working.
Circular economy startup Reboxed® lands €1.8m to tackle e-waste: Reboxed, a sustainable tech startup that is looking to rehome 100 million electronic devices by 2030 secured €1.8 million in seed funding led by ACF Investors. Reboxed provides an online platform that sells premium refurbished and pre-owned devices including phones, laptops, tablets and smart watches through a “like new” experience that focuses on quality, consistency and a genuinely circular approach.
📚 Weekend Reads
📙 How bad business broke the smart home: In an excellent piece, journalist Stacey Higginbotham, writing for The Verge, talks about how restrictive business practices and arbitrary decisions to “end of life” smart home products have hurt consumers and are souring demand for smart home technology. Higginbotham cites recent examples like smart home controllers losing compatibility, companies changing their subscription terms arbitrarily, and devices losing features or functionality when the manufacturer is sold, pivots their business model or goes out of business. She calls for reform, including greater regulatory oversight by agencies like the FTC and FCC's, as well as right-to-repair laws that can ensure that connected devices remain functional even if manufacturers discontinue support.
📕 The Great Washing Machine Scam: The decline in the reliability and repairability of modern washing machines can be attributed to unnecessary “high-tech” functions, plastic components, and electronic systems that make them more prone to breakdowns. The author interviews appliance repair professionals who argue that older machines were simpler, more durable, and easier to maintain, lasting up to 20 years compared to the 8-10 years expected from new washers.
📘 Motorized Ox-Carts: Just because something is new or modern doesn’t neccesarily make it better. Technologies that were once considered modern and innovative can become obsolete, such as short-wave radios, electrically powered devices for summoning servants, speaking tubes in cars, and now answering machines. Our ideas of what makes something "modern" is more complicated than we think. While technologies like Edwardian bathtubs, slip-coaches on trains, and electrified streetcars were lauded as technological innovations at the time of their invention, they have since been ditched.