We Can’t Buy Ourselves Out Of These Problems

Earth Day, 2020! This week marks the 50th anniversary of the 1st Earth Day. Fittingly I spent it in the garden; there aren’t many other options at the moment! 

It’s also seven years since the devastating Rana Plaza disaster occurred. For those who don’t know, a garment factory building in Bangladesh collapsed through negligence. The garment workers were the ones who suffered; the final death toll came to 1134 people with thousands more injured.

Every year, the media bring these topics up. However, it is twisted into a consumerism pitch. Any brand or media outlet who use Earth Day or the Rana Plaza disaster to sell products need to be avoided. Moreover, the high level of consumption and consumerism is a large part of the problem. For both environmental issues and garment workers in Bangladesh and other countries.

We can’t buy ourselves out of these problems. 

Celebrating Earth Day by buying a new ‘sustainable’ item that you don’t need is contradictory and pointless.

Instead, an option could be to think of the ways we can fight for our planet. How we could keep the vast oceans from rising further, how we can keep the trees standing and how we can keep our ecosystems alive and flourishing.

Earth Day is supposed to inspire change for the better and we won’t do that by shopping for more things we don’t really need.