Goodbye to January, catch ya later! If 2020 was the year of isolation and the internet, 2021 will hopefully be the year of advancement and returning to our former lives. As many have certainly come to experience at some point during the pandemic, online shopping has begun booming across the world. Big companies like Amazon, Shein, and other brand name retailers have brought products straight to your front step in a matter of days from you pressing the order button. By July 2020, Amazon “had doubled it’s quarterly profits $5.2B compared with $2.6B at the same point in 2019.” (1) Bringing money back into the economy is great but sadly the accessibility and almost monopoly like effect large corporations have, has in many cases meant we as consumers have started caring less about the sustainability and care that has gone into our products.
This isn’t necessarily the consumers fault of course, we are trying to work with a system that does not inherently want us to always search for sustainable and cruelty-free goods and yet by continuing to give into the system, we only contribute to unethical practices of clothing production and consumerism. The most important thing to remember in all of this is that every little thing has an impact and that no one person is responsible for holding big companies accountable but there are a few changes you can make in your everyday life to support small and local businesses and the environment!
Staying mindful is one of the biggest changes you can make to your lifestyle. Keeping an eye out from more organic produce, recycled and organic cottons in clothes, and reusing old containers to store food bits and leftovers are some really easy ways you can start getting into the mindset. For some of you those could already be everyday practices in which things like purchasing clothes second hand, upcycling old furniture and items around your house, and even going vegan or vegetarian for a few days a week are some more earth conscious changes you can make to your daily life. (2)
As good as our intentions are as consumers, we are often deceived by claims of ethical sourcing and ecofriendly labels when in reality we are not receiving the sort of product or service we have paid for. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that we aren’t perfect and often there will be times when we have to compromise our own values because certain things aren’t accessible to us, but that’s okay. The goal is to move towards a more ethical, local, and sustainable future with the help of all of us.
Next time you’re thinking of buying a cute new pair of pants or if you’ve run out of shampoo consider buying from sustainable brands and more earth conscious products like a shampoo bar! Now head out there and make your impact count!
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1 John Harris, “How Amazon became a pandemic giant - and why that could be a threat to us all,” The Guardian, November 18, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/18/how-amazon-became-a-pandemic-giant-and-why-that-could-be-a-threat-to-us-all.
2 “Ethical Clothes Shops,” Ethical Consumer, accessed January 30, 2020, https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/fashion-clothing/shoppingguide/ethical-clothes-shops.