I moved to New York a few months ago.
One of the first things that caught my attention was the obsession Americans have with shopping,
while everyone is talking about recycling and leaving green.
The waste produced here is about four times more than the amount in Europe.
It gets crazy.
Several people have actually been trampled to death on Black Friday, the biggest sales
day in the U.S.
It gets very tempting when you see sales, when you see two for the price of one, when
you see 25% off only today, and so they're doing everything to tempt people to come
and shop.
People write books supporting consumerism.
They claim that shopping is actually good for society.
If investment no longer drives growth, which it did for more than a century, that means
that consumption, consumer spending, becomes the crucial determinant of economic growth.
We've reached a stage in human development, in human civilization, where we don't have
to withhold resources from the present.
We don't have to withhold economic resources.
We don't have to withhold emotional resources.
We can live in the moment.
That's the stage we're at.
An activist group called the Freegans protest on Black Friday by not shopping.
Yeah, this world is an activity to oppose shopping.
And we live in such an abundant society that we've gotten into the habit of shopping just
for the sake of shopping, buying gifts, just really for the sake of buying gifts, not because
people need things.
We really have closets that are filled and people are starting to buy garages and storage
just to keep all their stuff.
There are a lot of real focused zombie shoppers and they're walking around, I need stuff,
I need stuff, you need stuff.
And we were, I don't want to say mocking the people, but just that activity and the behavior.
The hottest shopping destinations in Brooklyn are the flea markets, but they are very different
to the dodgy secondhand stores I knew back in Europe.
I wonder if people here actually choose fleas in order to reduce waste.
Creative people shop here.
Also a lot of people who are kind of redesigning their homes on their own and so they come
to the Brooklyn flea to get something that's eclectic and that's different.
I think the bulk of people are shopping here because it's trendy.
That's my honest opinion, I think there's a small percentage of people who actually believe
in recycled materials and I personally believe in using things that already exist because
I enjoy it, it makes me feel good.
I'm a big advocate for sustainability because I think that we spend too much time and money
on buying things that just get thrown away.
So I think buying vintage is one way to keep things being recycled back and if you take
care of them, then they can have three or four or five owners and it has a real history
to it.
I love vintage because it's the most unique stuff because I don't really like shopping
mass market because I think I want my money to stretch and I want to wear unique clothes.
I'm an image consultant and a personal shopper and stylist so I love to shopping as an art
form.
I enjoy the thrill of the hunt and so it's not just going into store and clothing myself.
I need to cover my naked body, it's more like what am I collecting?
At the really, really free market, no money is used at all.
Now that's a true hip experience.
The really, really free market is a way for people to share freely and we try to empty
our closets so for things that have accumulated, it's absurd to have all of these things sitting
in closets for years, not touched, while there are other people who could use them.
A lot of people need to be padded on the back and they need to tell people when they're
recycling and they need to proclaim what they're doing and they don't do it unless
they're being watched maybe.
I mean we can see that all over the city every time we look at garbage, we see that it seems
to me that most people really are not recycling.
Is there a way off the grid?
Is there a way to like not participate in commodity production exchange?
I think for most of us not.
Another big thing here are the green markets.
You can buy products directly from the farmers, prices, however, can be ridiculous.
Last time I shopped there I bought the most expensive tomato in my life, eight dollars.
I think that at this point more we spend, more jobs we provide, you know.
I don't think anti-consumerism has anything to do with being green.
I think the idea of like sustainable living is not in opposition with consumerism or anti-consumerism.
Just because people are interested in recycling and buying local and buying sustainable agriculture
doesn't really have anything to do with not buying, it has to do with buying more consciously.
The night after visiting the posh green market I decided to follow the opposite extreme, a
friggin' trash store.
We're going to be going for about an hour and a half through this neighborhood mostly
finding food but also as you see finding other disposed items that shouldn't be in the trash.
People who can afford to buy food basically go out on the street and eat trash.
It sounds completely insane that anyone who could choose to buy food would ever dumpster
dive for it and yet we see people coming night after night after night.
In my time with the group I've seen thousands of people come on a trash tour and obviously
not all of them become friggin' but there is this resonance.
There's this idea that waste is something almost intrinsically wrong, like the very
idea that we would be throwing away 50% of food production in this country which is what
we throw out.
Like the very idea that we throw out that much when there's as much need as there is
not just around the world but in this country and in this very city, I think that idea really
resonates with people.
On every trash tour that we do we find perfectly good things.
It's not a strange night, this is not an unusual night, this is six nights a week that we can
find an abundance of excellent goods that shouldn't be in the garbage that are in the
garbage and so what we can do now while this is happening is save it, save the food from
being trashed, save the clothing, save the toys, the games, the books, the music, the
entertainment, all of these things that shouldn't be trashed, we save them but really we're
looking to a better alternative than just rescuing and we're hoping to form more community
and encourage more community and encourage more local living and conserving living and
living that's more sustainable to our planet and we have a long way to go.
You'll find few freegans who actually say like freeganism is a perfect lifestyle, it's
more just accepting that we need to continue to be critical and we need to keep thinking
about these things and keep kind of adapting our lifestyles and like not just accepting
that oh we've jumped on the most recent green fad and therefore we're living perfectly.
Nobody knows that we have the consumers need to start spending otherwise there's no recovery.
I think it's a common belief really that people keep encouraging people to buy that it's George
Bush called it patriotic to go shopping after the Twin Towers were bombed and to me it's
laughable and absurd.
Yes, it's true that if we shop and buy new that it's good for the economy but I don't
believe that we need to be good for the economy.
I think that being good for the economy as it is is being bad for the ecology and our
economy and our ecology should not be at odds the way they are that it doesn't make sense
to have an economy that profits off the destruction of our planet and it's very short-sighted.
For my short time in New York it seems that there are people who genuinely care but they're
definitely not the majority.
One thing I do know is that we need to be more careful about what and how much we buy.
