Can You Buy Nothing for A Day?

Posted on November 23, 2016

Sometimes it can feel as if there are so many things to buy all the time. But how much of the stuff you buy really brings you joy? So many things that we think we “need” we often don’t end up even using. There are an average of 300 000 items in a home, and many of us will spend 8 years of our lives shopping. As humans, we need to consume to live. Air. Water. Food. And all those things are provided by a planet with seemingly inexhaustible resources. But we know that we are taking more than we actually need and the planet cannot replenish resources as fast as we are consuming and polluting them.

This past October, we screened a film called Minimalism: A documentary about the important things. And now we are challenging you to think about those important things this Buy Nothing Day, Nov. 25th. Things like nature, family, friends, time, financial freedom and what really makes your heart light up. Often the things we think we need to buy are actually taking up space, money and time that could be spent on what really matters.

That’s why on Nov 25th, people will choose to buy nothing in order to bring awareness to our planet’s limited resources and the fact that we often don’t need to buy anything to have what’s really important to us. We invite you to participate by spending your extra time with the people you love and giving instead of receiving. You can do something nice for someone - shovel a sidewalk for a neighbour, do the cooking and dishes when it’s not your night, just something that doesn’t involve purchasing more stuff.

You can also give to a worthwhile charity. As a local environmental charity, we're fueled by YOUR support. Every dollar you donate to Green Calgary enables us to deliver hands on environmental programming to empower Calgarians to green the way they live, work and play. You can make a gift to support our local environmental work in 2017 here.

Taking a day off shopping can help us realize that most of the stuff we buy doesn’t contribute to our happiness. Buy Nothing Day helps us make better consumer decisions in the future and save our planet from overconsumption.