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This summer, a curious trend took hold on social media. People started posting content about items like five-year-old water bottles, sweatshirts from high school and old shoes that had been mended and remended. “Underconsumption core,” they called it — because any trend worthy of an algorithm needs a “core” suffix.
The goal was to enjoy using existing belongings, as well as to repair and repurpose items instead of buying new. Those who were thrifty and environmentally minded rejoiced. But now, with Black Friday sales heralding the holiday buying season, are we now over underconsumption core?
A new Netflix documentary aims to keep the concept alive. Now streaming, Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy explores tactics companies use to make you purchase ever more stuff. Industry insiders reveal the manipulation methods at brands such as Adidas, Apple and Amazon.
“You’re being 100 per cent played, and it’s a science,” says Maren Costa, a former designer at Amazon who helped develop the site. She says marketers even use testing and data to determine which colours on the “click to buy” and “free shipping” buttons will make the most money.
In response, an Amazon spokesperson told U.K. newspaper The Mirror the company was left out of the film’s production process. “Amazon wasn’t given an opportunity to respond to or fact-check the claims in this documentary, and the assertions that we encourage or hide product waste are false,” the spokesperson said.
From writer-director by Nic Stacey (an Emmy nominee for The World According to Jeff Goldblum), Buy Now! also explores the environmental costs of overconsumption. Footage shows a beach in Ghana buried under discarded clothes. A repair expert also explains how companies make products unmendable so customers keep buying new things — and creating waste.
We produce about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste globally each year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. We also make 92 million tonnes of textile waste annually, per the World Economic Forum. And, in 2022, we produced an estimated 62 million tonnes of waste globally from electrical and electronic equipment (e-waste), says the World Health Organization.
Nirav Patel, a former Apple software development engineer, says in the film that the latter fact seems far from the minds of those in the tech industry — and, we might guess, other industries.
“In my own personal experience, if you’re a designer or engineer in one of these companies, waste never enters the conversation,” he says. “There is no meeting within a company building a laptop or phone or other device that’s, ‘Let’s talk about what happens as the end of life.’”