The first "Buy Nothing Day" was organised by the magazine Adbusters, in Vancouver in September 1992, based on an idea by artist Ted Dave, as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption.Since then, thousands of activists have held public events in over 65 nations, including the UK, as well as the US Canada, Israel, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Norway and India.
If everyone on Earth were to consume at the same rate as the UK, we would need three planets to live on.
What other political parties, the "grey" parties of Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems, don't understand is that the very ideas of "economic success = growth" or that "more consumpton is good" is a problem.
Is Britain successful since we can go into a supermarket and choose between 15 kinds of toothpaste? Or 20 kinds of breakfast cereal?
Buying and consuming and buying and consuming is not the answer. We won't be able to make our society sustainable through endless growth.
"The economy of the future is based on relationships rather than possession." - John Perry Barlow
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