Looking for a top tip for surviving Black Friday? 

Beyond the obvious suggestions to plan ahead, set a budget, arrive armed with a shopping list, compare prices and read the terms and conditions, a growing wave of retailers and consumers are now boycotting the day associated with reckless spending and buying needless things, by declaring it “Buy Nothing Day” as a backlash against rampant consumerism and wastage. 

Black Friday, the day that comes after the American Thanksgiving, has evolved into a holiday centred on charity, expressing gratitude and sharing a festive meal with family and friends.

Since first introduced to South Africa by Takealot in 2012 and appropriated by Checkers in 2014, the Black Friday shopping bonanza has been adopted by most major national retailers.

This year, Woolworths, HiFi Corp, Makro, Game and Builders got a head start on other retailers, announcing their weekly and month-long specials at the end of October. 

It’s a lucrative period for retailers, who are expecting about R7-billion more in sales than last year, according to data from the Bureau of Market Research (BMR), adding R26.6-billion to the sector in 2023, despite South Africa’s sluggish economy, the shock increase in the CPI and the impact of rolling blackouts. 

Globally, there’s a growing anti-Black Friday movement, driven by shifting consumer trends towards ethical, conscious consumption. From enticing shoppers to buy second-hand goods, re-dyeing clothing and clothes swaps, to shutting stores on the day and redirecting attention to charities, many retailers are shifting focus from heavy discounting to quality and green alternatives.

Money.co.uk estimates that the UK’s Black Friday 2021 had emitted 386,243 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – the weight of 3,679 blue whales. 

In 2017, The Guardian revealed that a diesel truck left an Amazon fulfilment centre every 93 seconds to keep up with demand. 

Black Friday doesn’t just affect the planet, but also the workers who produce, package and deliver the goods, placing them under immense pressure at this time of year, working long hours to meet targets. 

Once again, Amazon workers are threatening to go on strike. Last month, workers in 30 countries announced they would strike over Black Friday to demand better pay and working conditions. The “Make Amazon Pay” Black Friday strikes were unveiled at a summit in Manchester of trade unionists and political leaders. 

That same month, the online retailer revealed its profits had tripled to $9.9-billion.

US senator Bernie Sanders, Spain’s second deputy prime minister, Yolanda Diaz, and the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Paul Nowak, attended the summit, encouraging Amazon workers to “join the global fight for their rights”.

Last year, the coalition organised more than 135 strikes and protests across 35 countries on Black Friday. 

To dye for

Since 2018, Sydney fashion label Citizen Wolf has asked shoppers to ignore Black Friday sales and participate in its “Black Fri-dye” instead. The re-dying service is the brand’s “antidote to the endless (and mindless) back-to-back sales events that November has become,” Citizen Wolf co-founder Zoltan Csaki told Smart Company. 

For $24 to $44 depending on the item, the retailer will “over-dye” any garment black, by any brand, to give it a second life and keep it out of landfill. 

E-waste

There’s also growing concern about e-waste, due to a dramatic increase in sales of appliances such as televisions and smartphones, which contain toxic and polluting electronic waste once discarded.

Many of this ends up in the developing world, where they are stripped and components are burnt to extract copper and other metals.

South African NGO, Circular Energy warns old appliances and other electrical items that will be replaced with Black Friday deals can pose a threat to the environment if they are not discarded properly. The organisation says anything that depends on an electrical current to work or products with a plug, cable or battery can – and should – be recycled when it will no longer be used because they contain hazardous materials that are extremely harmful to the environment when they end up in landfill or elsewhere. 

For every gram of recyclable materials not recovered from these items, tonnes of raw material have to be mined or manufactured, causing even more environmental harm.

In a statement , Circular Energy said South African consumers are not yet in the habit of recycling their unwanted electrical and electronic items, as the country is a few years behind other countries with the implementation of the so-called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations. The EPR regulations in South Africa require manufacturers, importers and resellers of recoverable items and materials to fund legally compliant recycling schemes through a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO).

Waste not

A 2017 University of Leeds report said that up to 80% of items bought during the Black Friday shopping period – and any plastic packaging they are wrapped in – end up either in landfill, incineration or low quality recycling, often after a very short life. Black Friday sees about 82,000 diesel delivery vans on Britain’s streets, with plastic toys and electronic goods among the most popular purchases. 

The report, Building a Circular Economy, was produced by charity and independent think tank Green Alliance as part of a partnership with the Resource Recovery from Waste programme, based at Leeds’ School of Civil Engineering.

It found vast amounts of valuable resources were being lost to the economy but eliminating this waste requires a shift in infrastructure, with new business models, facilities and logistics to lower consumption and enable takeback, repair, remanufacture and reuse of products. A circular economic system – where long-lasting repairable products are the norm and resources are maintained, reused or recycled back into high quality uses – is the way to avoid such unnecessary waste.

It would also avoid the environmental damage caused by such resource wastage, from initial raw material extraction to end-of-life problems such as marine plastic pollution.