Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy is a documentary that was released on Netflix a week before Black Friday. The movie reveals the shocking truth about how large corporations manipulate consumers to increase their profits at the peril of the consumer's wallet and the planet's health.
In this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, host Andrew Lewin discusses the recently released Netflix documentary, Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy. The episode focuses on the themes of consumerism, overconsumption, and their environmental impacts, especially in the context of the holiday shopping season.
Major Points Discussed:
Consumer Culture and Overconsumption:
The documentary critiques how companies like Amazon, Adidas, and Apple use persuasive marketing techniques to encourage consumers to overspend.
It raises questions about whether society has prioritized material possessions over experiences and relationships.
Environmental Impacts:
The film highlights the ecological damage caused by excessive consumption, including the disposal of unsold clothing, which contributes to environmental degradation in countries like Ghana.
It discusses the issue of e-waste, revealing how discarded electronics are often shipped to developing countries, leading to health hazards for workers who dismantle them without proper protection.
Textile Waste and Fast Fashion:
The documentary examines the fast fashion industry, showcasing how companies produce millions of items annually, resulting in significant textile waste that pollutes ecosystems.
It emphasizes the harmful effects of synthetic fabrics, which release microplastics into waterways.
Carbon Footprint and Resource Depletion:
The production and transportation of goods are linked to high fossil fuel consumption, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
The extraction of raw materials for consumer goods leads to deforestation and loss of biodiversity.
Plastic Waste and Ocean Pollution:
Excessive packaging, often made from non-recyclable plastics, exacerbates the plastic waste crisis, harming marine life and ecosystems.
The episode stresses the urgent need for sustainable consumption practices to mitigate these issues.
Consumer Responsibility vs. Systemic Solutions:
While the documentary raises awareness about consumer manipulation, it also questions whether the onus of change should solely fall on consumers.
Lewin argues for the need for systematic solutions and corporate accountability to address the root causes of overconsumption and environmental degradation.
Personal Reflections:
Lewin shares his own struggles with impulse buying and the societal pressures to consume, especially during the holiday season.
He encourages listeners to think critically about their purchases and consider sustainable alternatives, such as thrift shopping.
The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to reflect on their consumption habits and engage in discussions about sustainability and environmental protection.
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By now, the shopping conspiracy is a documentary that is just released on Netflix last week, a week before Black Friday, the day this episode is being published. Right now, you're probably looking for deals, and I don't blame you. It's expensive to buy things out there, and to find deals for getting ready for the holidays, to buy gifts for your loved ones, is really great. And maybe some stuff for yourself. You deserve it, you've worked hard. But are we over-consuming, and is it our fault? That's gonna be the subject of today's episode. We're gonna be reviewing the documentary by now, the shopping conspiracy, because it needs to be talked about. We need to talk about our consumption of goods. This is a documentary, and it's something that we need to discuss right now on this episode. So let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of The How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Loon. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about consumption, about buying things. And are we buying too much? Have we put too much of a focus on having things rather than experiences, like spending time with people? And has our striving for consumption, and buying things for people, and receiving so many materialistic things, has it gone too far, and is it hurting the environment? That was the question surrounding the Netflix special, the Netflix documentary, by now the shopping conspiracy. Now this is an interesting documentary who's released the week before Black Friday, a time when people are buying like crazy. There used to be a time where Black Friday was one day, and it was one day where people lined up in person, lined up early, early in the morning, sometimes the night before to get, to take advantage of all the crazy deals that were happening the day after Thanksgiving. It was a time where people bought gifts for the holidays. It was a time where people trampled over each other, just to get the deal they wanted, and to make their family members or friends happy. That's a crazy time. Now, things have kind of really gotten out of hand, maybe not so much the in-person shopping, and the violence, I think that's kind of subsided a little bit, because online shopping has really made way to make it easier to get deals. And it's not just one day, it's not just Black Friday, it's not just Cyber Monday, it's all about the week, or even two weeks surrounding Black Friday. There are deals that I've been receiving for pretty much two weeks before Black Friday. Now, this episode is gonna be released on Black Friday, so it's really timely to have this documentary discussed on a day where it's probably the biggest shopping day in North America, let's be honest. It's a huge, huge day. There are a lot of companies who are making quite a bit of money. So today, what I wanted to do was go over what this consumption's about, how it's impacting our lives, not only from a human perspective, but from an environment perspective, and how we're getting through the holidays, right? The holidays are a time where you're supposed to have experiences with family, with friends, and spend time with your loved ones. But a lot of the times, when we get to the fall, it's late fall, it's gonna be early winter coming through soon, and it can be a very great time for a lot of people. And you wanna make sure that your mind is right. You wanna do whatever you can to make sure that you have a good time during the season, whether you're buying stuff for family and friends, whether you're spending time with family and friends, I know not everybody's family and friends situation is the same and is the best, but you wanna make sure that your mind is right. And to be honest, something that I've been doing on and off recently is, and really more recently, especially as it gets a little grayer, so I wanna make sure that my mind is right. And so what I've been doing is I've actually been, I've been talking about it for the last year, called Magic Mind. It is an Alexa that has a lot of healthy things in it. It has ginger, it has a bunch of things that I use, it's a little shot that I take every morning, and I basically take the shot, I use it, and it basically gives me the ability to start my day off right. It gets my mind right, it gets me focused, it has some caffeine in it, but what I love about this caffeine is it, it gives you the caffeine fix throughout the day. It's not just one shot, you feel like you're up here, and then once that caffeine goes away, you crash down like you would with sugary drinks that have caffeine or coffee that have caffeine. This is just a quick shot, I take it, and I'm focused and awake for the rest of the day. My working day, whether I'm doing a video, whether I'm editing videos, whether I'm doing research, whether I'm interacting with you, the audience member, it's just a bunch of things. One thing that I love about it is it's not expensive, it's very environmentally friendly, and the company continues to become more and more environmentally friendly where they can, and you can get it through my affiliate link and get 20% off using this affiliate link. So if you go to www.magicmind.com/luen20, that's L E W I N 20. So it's www.magicmind.com/luenL E W I N 20, all one word. Check that out, I'll put that in the show notes so you can click on it, you can get 20% off, you can get to your holiday season right, make sure you're focused, get all that work right to keep that job, to keep going and trying to protect the ocean, I use it and it's fantastic. I think it's, I recommend it to anybody. I am not a big fan normally of elixirs. This is something that I love. So check out the link in the description below and in the show notes, if you're listening to this on audio and let me know what you think about it. So it's www.magicmind.com/luenL E W I N 20, that's my last name, LuenL E W I N 20, and let me know what you think. All right, let's get back to the show. I wanna talk about this documentary because something that I feel like this documentary highlights. I wanna talk some of the different highlights, some of the key highlights that have come out of this documentary. Now, the overall goal of this documentary is to show the consumption and how companies are taking advantage of consumers to make sure that you have the latest and greatest of all the products that are out there. It's all about mass consumption so that they can make a ton of money. That's really what it's about. And so what we're trying to do here is highlight the movie. I highly recommend that you watch the documentary on Netflix if you have Netflix. But what I wanna talk about is what it really looks like. So the film examines how companies like Amazon, Adidas, and Apple use persuasive marketing techniques to encourage consumers to overspend. That's really what it comes down to. It goes over environmental impacts, which I'll go into in just a second. It highlights ecological damage caused by the excessive consumption such as the disposal of unsold clothing leading to environmental degradation in countries like Ghana and Africa. And it has some inside perspective. So these are people who have worked for Amazon and Apple. And it talks about sort of the culture there about, hey look, it doesn't matter what we think of the consumers. It's not about taking care of the consumer. It's about making sure that they buy as much as possible and making it as easy as possible to buy. So for instance, like Amazon on their app has a button where you can add to cart. You can add your product to the cart if you decide. And a lot of people that used to put that will do a cart and then at the end will buy everything that's in the cart. A lot of people use a cart to just kind of save the item and go into a cart I know my family does. And then now they have a button that you can say, let's just buy now. So you go over the cart and you say, you know what, I don't want to buy a thing in my cart right now. I want to just hold onto that. I'm just going to buy this product right now so I can get it as fast as possible. So they're making things that are easier to shop and making that impulse buy. That's what it's all about. It's all about the impulse buy. Then there's also they talk about e-waste concerns. So it exposes the grim reality of electronic waste recycling. And how it's really just not really out recycling. Show how, showing how discarded electronics are often shipped to developing countries where workers dismantle them without proper protection leading to health hazards. You got to remember that in North America and Europe and a lot of other places, they have like occupational health and safety at warehouses, at work, any type of work should have occupational health and safety. Some countries don't have it and their workers are actually suffering because of it. It's basically a critical examination of the modern consumer culture and its far reaching impacts. It is really enlightening. A lot of the stuff you've probably known for quite some time, but some of the intricacies of how they manipulate the consumers is really interesting. So I want to dive deeper into the type of pollution that they talk about and what it really discusses. So the textile waste and pollution. So we're looking at fast fashion here, how it drives over production. It talks about companies like Sheen, how they create millions of new items per year because they just want to sell as much as possible. And then with unsold or discarded clothing ending up in landfills and being exported to develop countries, for example, massive amounts of textile waste accumulate in places like Ghana's Cantimento Market where the discarded clothes often pollute rivers and harm local ecosystems. Synthetic fabrics release microplastics into waterways during washing, which contributes to marine pollution and ends up in the food chain. From a fashion perspective, it covers that, which we've, again, we've known, but it really shows how many items are discarded per year. It's an insane amount. You have to watch the documentary to really figure it out, to really understand it. Electronic waste. So e-waste from discarded electronics is frequently exported to developing countries in proper dismantling and disposal release, hazardous substances such as lead, mercury, and cadmium into the soil and water. And that will get into the water of people, like drinking water, people who live locally there. In formal recycling facilities, in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and India face significant health and environmental challenges due to the lack of proper waste management systems. So again, we're seeing the fact that e-waste can cause hazardous waste for people that have to dispose it or live in around the area that are disposed of. A lot of the times, we're told about recycling, like electronic recycling or other recycling. Unless you're in the right program, it doesn't actually take out all the metals or all the things that need to be taken out in a properly recycled. It gets shipped off to other countries where we know the occupational health and safety standards are not as high, and then they have to deal with the repercussions. We don't deal with the repercussions. We just use electronics as we please. As we say, hey, I need the new and latest, greatest tablet or phone or whatever, even though we don't really need it, but they're built so that we actually need it. It's just a weird situation here. Then we talk about carbon footprint of production and logistics, the production and transportation of goods require significant amounts of fossil fuels contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. So for instance, factories powering mass production rely heavily on coal and oil. That's always not good. Shipping goods globally contributes to carbon emissions and air pollution. Now, we know from a fossil fuel and plastics production point of view, which I'll talk about in just a second, a little bit more. We know that the fossil fuel companies, a third of their business is done through plastics. Plastics is a petroleum product. So we know fossil fuels are going to be created for the plastics industry, and a lot of plastics end up in our product packaging or even in our product. So that can be really bad. Deforestation and resource depletion, the extraction of raw materials for consumer goods leads to deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and ecosystem disruption. Examples include logging for furniture and packaging, mining for precious metals, using electronics, often destroying wildlife habitats. There are a lot of regulations in North America, but not other places where mining happens. So a lot of not only environmental impacts happen, but also human rights impacts are not good in a lot of places like Africa, going for some of these diamonds and metals that are used in electronics. Plastic waste, you know, some pollution. So excessive packaging always has plastics in it. Much of it is non-recyclable, exacerbates plastic waste problems. Plastics break down into microplastics, which accumulate in marine environments, harming wildlife and threatening marine ecosystems. Hundreds of thousands of animals die a year in the ocean because of plastics. It's really simple. It is not hard to get that concept. However, if you look around, everything we do has plastic, and even companies who say, "Hey, we're gonna put in our values "that we don't wanna have plastics in our containers," or anything like that, down the road, like we're gonna work towards using less plastics, they continue to use plastics. It's all greenwashing, and it's all for nothing. And it's really frustrating when you look at the harm that plastics do to the ocean, not just in big forms. This is microplastics, like nanoplastics, that are everywhere. It's like a soup in the ocean. It's just, you know, you just sit there and you just get frustrated. As a biologist, as a conservationist, as someone who wants to protect the ocean, it's a frustrating process, and it's getting worse because of our consumption, our overconsumption of goods and materials. Over exploitation of water resources, so industries like fast fashion electronics consume vast amounts of fresh water. Producing a single pair of jeans can require up to 10,000 liters of water. Waste water from dying and processing textiles is often discharged, untreated, contaminating rivers and groundwater, especially depending on where these products are made. Again, regulations aren't as good in certain countries that are in like European and North American countries. I only say that because that's what I know, but there's a lot of standards around that. And even then, sometimes they get broken. So that's something that we have to look at. Climate change impacts. We kind of talked about it a little briefly with fossil fuel industry, but increased consumptions, accelerates resource use, energy demands, and pollution contributing to rising temperatures, ocean acidification, and more frequent weather, extreme weather events. The impacts underscore the urgent need to, for sustainable consumption practices, better waste management systems and more transparent corporate accountability. Now, one of the things that I wanted to gather, and I put this in chat GPT because I wanted to find out what people think. Like, obviously this is really harmful, but I feel as though the movie was talking to consumers. It was trying to make consumers aware of some of these practices that these companies will play to manipulate us. So there's that awareness. Oh, we're being manipulated. This is not about consumption. It's almost like you want to keep up with the Joneses, right? You want to keep up with your neighbor to say, hey, they have this or your friends and say, hey, they have this, I want to have this. I see this a lot in my kids and teenagers where there's a peer pressure based on, not necessarily like I have this, you don't. Sometimes it happens, but it's more of, oh, this person has this. This person, I need to have three or four pairs of shoes. I need to have this. I need to have that. I need to have that. These are young children who have been taught about environmental sustainability since they were young in class, and they were taught, and they wanted to protect the ocean. They wanted to protect the planet. They want to be environmentally friendly, but they fall into these peer pressure tactics and marketing tactics that they don't have any control over because their minds just fall into the trap. And as adults, we do the same thing. I mean, you look at influencers on any kind of app, on any kind of social media platform, and they're talking about their Amazon haul or their Sheen haul, or just a variety of different companies and what they got from there. And in the movie, they really go to the extreme where they're showing influencers, talking about I bought a hundred iPhones, and I bought a look at my Amazon haul and all this kind of stuff. Let's go with what I bought. We still have people, like friends of mine, like Erica Hernandez, who talks about, hey, look at my thrift haul because she went thrift shopping 'cause it's more sustainable. And so there are influencers out there who are sending out the message that, hey, you know what, going thrift shopping, being sustainable is actually better than buying new. And you can still look great. You can still feel great. You can still go to professional conferences or go to an office with thrifting, like thrifting, like buying clothes, like used clothing is what it is. But you kind of make it cool and kind of make it nice to be. So there are influencers like that. But most of the people still fall into the trap of buying you, I have to buy new, right? Even to the point, like I was having discussions today at work, I was having at lunch. I was having a discussion. We were talking about the movie. And we're discussing how, you know, we try and up everybody. We try and even like, you know, there's no repairing anymore. They even talk about this in the movie. You know, there's no repairing of clothes. There's no, like, I heard when I was a kid, if I had like a hole in my pants, my parents would sew a patch onto it. Like you had patches on your pants all the time. You didn't just go out and buy new clothes. You actually got your parents sewed a patch on it or they taught you to sew a patch on, right? You fix things. If something broke, you would fix it. If something was too old, you would take it apart and you would put it back together. You would maybe make something new out of it because it wasn't working as its primary function. So we're talking a lot about that at lunch. And we just don't have that anymore. You know, when you're trying, like a friend of mine was trying to fix his vacuum cleaner. You're looking for a part. The part was so expensive, it was almost the same price as buying a new vacuum. So why fix something that's broken when you can get something brand new, right? You get warranties where it's like, hey, you know what, if you do a warranty, we'll just send you something brand new if it breaks. Companies don't even care if it breaks or not, right? They may have a program where they sell like refurbished, but a lot of times you don't really see that. You see mostly new stuff, right? Appliances, kitchen appliances and appliances for the home. They're not built like they used to be. They're built to break down earlier so you'll buy another thing. It used to be, and sometimes it still happens where appliances that were built in the '70s, '60s and '70s are still working today. They're still being used today, but now you get like a dishwasher or something. It lasts for maybe three to five years. They used to last for like 10 to 20. And so it's just like these companies that keep making these products that are not as good just so that you'll buy new ones. And you know, this movie kinda gives that light words like, hey, you know what, this is your fault, it's consumers. Like we kinda get that hint where it's like, you gotta stop buying. And in a way, we have to stop buying. We have to stop thinking about how much can I buy and start thinking about what can I get out of this product that's of value for a long time, right? Get away from that impulse buy. Think about your purchases, think about our purchases. And I follow within this as well, right? I am not good, I like impulse buy all the time. I see something like, I want it, I have the money, I'm gonna get it. Not everybody's like that 'cause times are tough. So we're starting to like, you know, penny pinch a little bit more, but it's really easy to buy when you don't have to worry about giving up cash, you don't have to see your cash leaving your hand. You're on an app and all you have to do is just press one button and it comes to your door within a couple of days, sometimes within the same day, depending on where you live. It is crazy to think that we as consumers can just buy all this stuff, but we also have the power not to buy all this. But on the other hand, we're kinda stuck because things are really expensive. If I can buy something for cheap, I will buy it for cheaper, especially if I can buy it online and I don't have to go in person. There are places like Amazon, Walmart, all these big box stores and these online stores that have a lot of purchasing power that can buy things for cheaper and therefore sell things for cheaper compared to like your local supermarket or your local store or variety store where if you go in and buy it, it's gonna be more expensive because they don't have the purchasing power as these huge franchises. I was just talking to somebody about a company, like that's local to us, it's local to the area, it's like a deli meat company. And it's great, it has great food sausages, food is like a supermarket, but a smaller supermarket. A little bit more expensive, but there is a box store that moved in almost right beside it. And it probably sells things for cheaper, very similar, maybe not as good quality of what we're used to, but we have to make that choice now where do we wanna just go to a place that's gonna sell it for cheaper or do we wanna go and go to a place that's more local to us, right? That's not in many cities, it's maybe in like two or three cities around the area, it's family owned, it's smaller, and it sells a great product. But right now they're struggling because there's other big box stores that are coming in and undercutting them. So are we gonna see the demise of a family owned business that's local that will spend money locally, like within the area? Or are we gonna see the success of another big box store that makes a lot of money, the money goes to the headquarters and goes to some billionaire or somebody who's soon gonna be a billionaire, and we never see the money back in our community. It's a very difficult position to be in because we're as consumers, we're balancing what we can afford, and especially these days, it's not very much, and what we wanna support, from a value perspective in our local community. So I think the difficulty thing and many viewers, although they appreciate the in-depth exploration, they're kinda like, hold on a second here, is this our fault? Like, is this really our fault? Or it would be great to see more with the systematic solutions to the problem, not just put it on us. They do the same thing with climate change, if you've noticed. It's all about us, all about the individual consumer. Like, when I speak up about climate change, somebody will be like, well, do you do this, do you not take this, or you like that phone, or we've heard senators say that, the US or congressmen say that, in the US, you know, at an actual committee meeting. It's like, well, you're talking about how to we have to reduce climate change, but that phone was made through fossil fuels and through plastics and things like that. 'Cause yes, 'cause the system made it that way. There's no other alternative that we can buy that's more sustainable, right? Hopefully that's coming down the road, but we don't see that because there's no incentive to do that. So it shouldn't be on the consumer who has no choice. You have to get in with technology, you have to get in with what's happening, right? You just can't, you can't just rebel, even if you want, if you want to be successful, if you want to have a good life in this world, there has to be a systematic solution to help control some of these products are coming out. It's very easy to pick a product that's not sustainable or not environmentally friendly. Those are all around. Everybody that I've talked to on this podcast and talked to off this podcast about building a business that's more sustainable, the amount of difficulty they have creating a product that is sustainable, it is so difficult, it is not easy. A lot of times you're starting from scratch. And so I wanted to highlight this film and kind of give you that message that it's not really about the individual. It's about what government can do, what businesses can choose to do, and they choose not to do that. And there's certain ways that you can help by not purchasing from certain places, but other times you kind of have to. So it's really difficult situation. The best way to do it is you can have a solution with your wallet by not paying for those products and going more sustainable. If you have the money, spend a little bit more for the sustainable product. Or what you can do is talk to your businesses, talk to your government, and hopefully they will help with that, right? It's a very difficult situation. A good solid, from what I know, documented that's on Netflix. I highly recommend that you watch it on Netflix, but I want to go through with you and talk to you about it because I think it's something that we really need to talk about, right? We need to talk about this consumption at the best time when we're talking about probably the most intense consumption time of the year we're buying so many products. So I would love to hear what you think. Hit me up on Instagram @HowToProtectTheOcean or you can hit me up on various platforms. People have hit me up on LinkedIn recently. People have hit me up on YouTube in the comments or Spotify in the comments. I respond to as many as possible as soon as I can. So please feel free to drop a comment in the YouTube comment section or if you want to comment on Spotify or if you want to just hit me up on Instagram, please do so @HowToProtectTheOcean. It's @HowToProtectTheOcean. I want to thank you again for listening to me. I would love to hear again your thoughts on the movie, but thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of The How To Protect The Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lohan. Have a great day and we'll talk to you next time and happy conservation. 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