The Worst Black Friday Deal Ever
When a deal isn't a deal at all.
Black Friday is looming and henceforth an enormous push in overconsumption and the dark pattern of having to buy it now or never.
Fashion waste is one of the most pressing issues in the sustainable fashion conversation. And this period puts the whole topic on steroids. It was reported that last years’ Black Friday, and the 7-day period around it, generated around 1.2m tons of CO2 just in transport trucks alone, delivering all the online orders, almost 100% higher than an average week. According to Waste Managed, the logistics company, Optoro reported that returning items bought between Black Friday and Cyber Monday used over 1.2 billion gallons of diesel and emitted 12 million metric tonnes of CO2. In the U.S waste increases around 25% as a result of Black Friday, and up to 80% of the goods bought, and the (mostly plastic) packaging they came in, are thrown out after either a handful of uses or in some cases not at all, fast tracked to landfill or incineration sites.
It is expected that on this Black Friday, we will spend £258 per person in the UK, the highest since before the pandemic, totalling £7.1bn, but the watchdog Which? estimated that last years spending was £13.3bn. That is insane.
Wardrobing and overbuying when things are cheap, with the intention of returning the items anyway, also increases during this period. These items are often not re-merchandised and will be wasted by the companies anyway as it is cheaper for them to do so, amounting to an enormous waste problem on its’ own. One that has gotten so bad that France banned the destruction and wasting of unsold items.
Working conditions almost always worsen in response and preparation to Black Friday. Warehouses are under incredible strain with an increased volume of orders needing to be fulfilled, causing an incredibly intense period - of course you need to order before a certain time and day and the workers are also expected to operate in a similar fashion on their end, often working underpaid overtime and in awful conditions. A news report by The Guardian (Observer) recently found that over the course of 5 years, more than 1400 ambulances were called to Amazon’s UK warehouses. Never mind though because all of this means that businesses like Amazon experience record profits on Black Friday as transactions rocket over 350%.
The day has most recently been dominated by the likes of Amazon, Boohoo and PLT (“Pink Friday”) and now Shein are firmly in on the action - all of which currently have London Underground adverts on full show. Most weird of all is perhaps BoohooMAN’s, (pictured in the headline above) which says, “GET THE BAG”. There is no bag pictured in the campaign imagery so I assume they’re building on Temu’s “Shop Like A Billionaire” campaign, whereby you will somehow become unethically rich by buying impossibly cheap, shitty, plastic clothes?? Their other ad has the slogan “Ours is bigger than yours”, adding in some toxic masculinity while boasting they can almost give clothes away for free because they’re the best at exploiting their work force. Pretty Little Thing famously offered a 100% discount in 2021, and regularly offer 99% off, meaning some items have sold for less than 20p.
Unfortunately even some brands that people might perceive as ‘sustainable’ get involved too. Some may use it to shift some old inventory, even if it is a good product, but ultimately they engage in shady patterns of induced, impulsive overconsumption.
Everything you see is about getting a deal. Whilst it may be true for some brands, that you’ll not get the chance again, others have been found to be inflating prices in the lead up to the event, to then reduce it to a very normal price for Black Friday and claiming it is a reduction.
But the main sentiment to me is the fake deal. Not in the sense noted above, but in the sense that nothing can be a “deal” if it was something you never intended on buying. If you bought something on Black Friday that you stumbled upon while aimlessly browsing or were served an advert for, it was an unnecessary purchase. It was not money saved, it was simply just money spent. You didn’t get it for 50% off, you simply spent money on something you didn’t need. The discount is completely irrelevant. It doesn’t apply to you because you weren’t considering buying it until the day you were served it.
If you didn’t need it when it was full price, you still don’t need it when discounted.A consumer survey found that over half of them regret the purchases they made on Black Friday. So I wan’t everyone to get away from looking at the reductions and discounts placed on the items in the Black Friday sales. Look instead at the price you are paying for it and ask, can everyone in the supply chain, the manufacturing facilities, the farmers or people sourcing the raw materials and components, the transportation staff and the warehouse employees packaging the orders, all be paid a fair and legal living wage, for that price?
Can the planet afford yet another year of 100-150 billion items of new clothing again?
Do you want the item because you’ve needed it for a long while, looked secondhand, tried repairing what you have, asked to borrow it from a friend, and is something you will keep a long time and regularly use? Or do you want the item because an algorithm told you you needed it?