#theproblemwithshopping

[shopanon]

The Problem With Shopping - The Environment (Part 2)

I stumbled upon a bit of inspiration this week. At the 2020 Oscars, the lively actress-activist Jane Fonda made a strong statement on fashion and its impact on the environment when she rewore a dress that she’d first donned for the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. She paired the dress with a red coat that she’s declared would be the last article of clothing she’ll ever buy. Why? Because she recognizes the harmful effects of fashion on climate and she wants to do something about it, starting with her own consumer habits. She’s walking her talk.

Ms. Fonda’s sentiments echo and find resonance in my own brain, even if I’m still struggling to fully manifest them in my own life: “We don’t really need to keep shopping. We shouldn’t look to shopping for our identity.” Especially when doing so makes such a negative and lasting impact on our environment.

Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact of my own shopping habits on the environment. So it was amazing to see some of that impact actually quantified in Hasan Minaj’s Patriot Act episode on “The Ugly Truth of Fast Fashion.” In the episode, Minaj breaks down the staggering water, emissions, and waste impact of clothes purchased at fast fashion retailers such as Zara and H&M. I don’t shop at H&M, but I do occasionally shop at Zara, and I’m sure many of the statistics shared also apply to clothing purchased at my favorite non-fast fashion retailers, which include Anthropologie and Madewell. After all, non-fast fashion clothes don’t simply grow on trees in our own backyards, and they don’t evaporate into thin air once we’re done rotating them through our wardrobe.

Here are some of the statistics that stuck out to me:

In 1980, the average American bought 12 new articles of clothing per year; now it's 68 new pieces/year. And of those 68 items, half of them are worn 3x or less. (I’m not sure how I measure up on this stat - I don’t think I buy that much, but we’re often terrible estimators of our actual behavior. You can trust I’ll be keeping track this year though - so far, my count is at 13. I do think I’m pretty good at wearing things more than 3 times. My Stylebook app will eventually help me keep track of that too.)

Progress

I am so pleased to report the great closet inventory of 2020 has begun! 18 items cataloged, only somewhere around 150+ or so to go....(I hop

Viscose is made up of (on average) 33% ancient or threatened forests. 70% of the wood harvested for viscose ends up dumped after processing. Yikes! 😱

In 2015, the greenhouse gases from textile production were more than the emissions of all flights and maritime shipping combined.

The average American throws away more than 80 lbs of clothes each year.

And donating clothes doesn’t seem to be a much better alternative. In June 2012, Slate reported that one Salvation Army in New York alone generates more than 18 tons of unwanted waste every three days. The clothes that aren’t trashed directly by charities are often sold by the ton to buyers in developing countries like South Africa or Kenya, where most of them end up in landfills anyway.

The cycle of fashion production, distribution, acquisition, and disposition is far from benign. Knowing this makes me want to be so much more mindful of the clothing I choose to invest in. As an almost 34-year-old, I don’t think it’s realistic for me to adopt Jane Fonda’s commitment to never buy another article of clothing in my lifetime. But I’d at least like to minimize and optimize what I do purchase. Can I buy clothing that is more sustainable so that it’s creation is less impactful on the environment? Can I buy clothing that is higher quality so that it lasts longer, perhaps even for decades? My mom has many pieces in her closet that date back as far as the 1980s and still look good. After all, it seems if fashion does recycle one thing, it’s the trends of yesteryear that always seem to come back around eventually.

Sometimes I get discouraged though that even if I’ve awoken to the reality of fashion’s environmental harm and change my habits, I’m only one of billions of people on this planet. Will the changes I make even move the needle if no one else makes the same changes? We need massive, population-level behavior change if we hope to make a meaningful difference. But at the end of the day, I can only control what I do and trust in the good in that. I know there are others doing the same, even if it’s not all, or even many of us yet. And that’s really okay. We have to start somewhere, and like Jane Fonda, I’m starting with myself.

[shopanon]

The Problem With Shopping - The Environment (Part 1)

Remember this? My “Circles of Impact.” I use these circles as a framework to understand the indirect impacts of my unhealthy shopping habits. Last time we encountered these circles, we dove into the personal circle, taking a close look at the time I’ve unwisely invested into shopping. Today, I want to zoom out to consider the impact of shopping in the community circle. Community can mean my friend groups, my neighborhood, my city, or even a larger scale community, from the state I live in to the global community. And today’s focus is indeed a concern of the global community - because ultimately, my decision to purchase a clothing item doesn’t affect just me. Every purchase I make also has some amount of impact on the global environment. 

Now I know my power to wield a credit card and buy clothes is no rival to the power of Mother Nature. But I also know my purchasing habits are not beneficial, let alone even neutral when it comes to cumulative impact on the environment. And I’m not the only one shopping! So whatever environmental impact my shopping has is only amplified exponentially when we consider all the people simultaneously and successively scratching their own shopping itch. 

It wasn’t even clothing purchases that got me started thinking about the impact of my purchasing decisions on the environment. It was multiple Amazon purchases in the course of a day or two of now-who-knows-what household goods. It struck me that due to the ease and “freeness” (thanks, Amazon Prime) of accumulating stuff through Amazon, I could almost effortlessly overlook the waste involved in multiple purchases. But each purchase would be delivered in its own cardboard box, protected in its own pillow of bubble wrap, after having been driven across and around town, and perhaps after being driven and flown across the country before that. What impact does all that have on the environment? What lesser impact could I have made if I’d just thought more critically and made a shopping list before checking out the first time so that instead of making multiple purchases, I managed to buy everything we needed in one purchase; or better yet - realized maybe we didn’t need all or any of that stuff in the first place? 

Of course, this phenomenon is not peculiar to Amazon. Everything I purchase online is mired in this packaging and distribution muck. And it’s also not peculiar to the times when I complete a poorly planned online shopping trip only to realize I didn’t purchase everything I needed in the first go. One time I made a single online transaction at Target.com, purchasing five pairs of undies. Can someone please tell me WHYYYYY one pair of those undies arrived individually, packed in its very own luxuriously spacious medium-sized box, even despite the fact I’d checked the box at checkout that said I’d rather have my multiple items arrive in one box even if that meant they’d arrive later than if I allowed them to show up in multiple shipments??? 🤦🏾‍♀️#exasperation

Even aside from these purchasing and shipping mishaps that I can only hope are aberrations, every online purchase is accompanied by packaging, shipping, and distribution that are net-negative for the health of our environment. The impact is further multiplied anytime one of those items is subsequently returned. 

I haven’t even scratched the surface on the environmental impact of shopping but I recognize this post is already growing dangerously long. So think of this as a mere teaser, a tempting appetizer, of the discussion yet to come. We’ve got a lot of unpacking to do (weak pun fully intended)...

[shopanon]

The Problem With Shopping - Time

Shopping doesn’t have to be problematic. Whaaaat? Most people don’t have a problem with shopping. According to various internet sources, somewhere between 5-8% of people are compulsive shoppers or shopping addicts, and men and women are just about equally as likely to be affected. While 5-8% might net out to a objectively large number of people, it’s a relatively small proportion of the population - just 1 in 20 to 1 in about 13.

I haven’t yet measured myself up to the criteria for shopping addiction, which was apparently removed from the psychiatrists’ bible of mental health diagnoses (the DSM) in 2013 for lack of research. Rather, I’ve labeled myself a shopaholic because I’ve recognized that I don’t feel good about my shopping behavior, I don’t have proper control over it, and I can no longer handle this situation with kid gloves if I want to change it. It’s time to call it for what it is.

But the diagnostic criteria are not what I want to get into in this post. Instead, I want to use today’s post to start unpacking some of the collateral damage of an uncontrolled shopping habit. Why? Because I’m typically a rather rational and value-driven being, and I think taking a hard look at the indirect or unintended impact of a nasty shopping habit may help me break the compulsion cycle that often leads up to a purchase.

What does the Shopping Compulsion Cycle look like?

I see something I like.

I visualize how that something will look on me, how I’ll feel wearing it, how I will style it, the places and situations in which I’ll wear it, and how others will perceive me as I wear it.

I obsess over the something I like and all the visualizations I’ve built around it.

I obtain the something I like and feel TRIUMPH! 🙌

This cycle has both direct impacts - the acquisition of the item itself and the costs of obtaining it (item cost + tax +/- shipping) - and indirect impacts. It would be easy to just measure my shopping behavior by its direct impacts on my closet and my bank account, but stopping the assessment there fails to account for the full lifecycle of a shopping act. I want to start dissecting the indirect impacts of my shopping from the innermost circle of impact - the personal circle.

The most insidious personal indirect impact of my uncontrolled shopping habit is the consumption of my TIME.

Let’s look at steps 2 and 3 of the Shopping Compulsion Cycle: between visualizing and obsessing over the something I like, I may spend HOURS searching for the item online, scouring the internet for a coupon or sale on the item, turning over every internet stone for a satisfying alternative if it’s a really expensive item, and then sometimes continuing to monitor after the purchase to ensure I didn’t buy prematurely and miss out on a better deal on the item. It’d be one thing if someone was paying me to do such thorough and detailed shopping sleuthing, but NO ONE IS! I’m spending my own precious time sniffing out every nook and cranny of the shopping rabbit hole to satisfy the burning desire set ablaze by my habitual visualizing and obsessing. Time I could be spending working on something more productive, constructive, fulfilling, expanding, etc.

The potential time suck doesn’t stop there. The Shopping Compulsion Cycle isn’t the happily ever after story it wants you to think it is. Like any fairy tale, the story doesn’t just stop after its written conclusion. The triumph of step 4 of the Cycle isn’t always everlasting. Once acquired, the item may fit poorly or otherwise not meet the expectations created during the visualization phase of the cycle. (One thing I’m actually really good about when it comes to shopping is not purchasing or keeping something that I don’t absolutely love without qualifications. If I have to tug at it, constantly adjust it, only wear it with a belt, etc. then it’s not for me and it’s going back.)

When reality throws cold water on my triumph, I often enjoy a commensurate wash of warm relief and satisfaction. Why? Because I get to return the item and recoup most if not all of my direct costs while also perversely reassuring myself that see? I do have some control. Of course, what I won’t get back is the indirect time cost I’ve already invested OR the time (and often fuel or public transpo) cost I will invest to return the item. The time spent returning a shopping haul can again add up to hours in some cases.

How much time have I spent visualizing, obsessing over, searching, monitoring, and returning clothing items over the years? I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know. What I do know for certain is that I’ve spent entirely too much time engaging in these activities and I’d prefer to use my time more productively going forward. Whether that’s time spent working on myself, my business, or my relationships, the ROI is sure to be exponentially better compared to time spent in the shopping lifecycle.