nyamrup
ONE WORLD. ONE DREAM. FREE TIBET!
’Tis the Season for a Boycott
26 Nov 2007 01:00 EST
’Twas the night before Thanksgiving, and I spent the late hours browsing through graphic design, jammed logos, and discussion threads on Buy Nothing Day in anticipation of Black Friday. This year, after all the toy recalls, safety fears, and general disgust with China, I found a lot of people saying that they would not buy things made in China to give as Christmas gifts, and looking for alternatives.
This article is the beginning of what I hope to make into a ‘holiday series’ on responsible purchasing and ways to find good stuff that’s not Made in China.
Of course we’d be a lot better off if people would stop buying so much stuff to begin with, but in a way that goes hand-in-hand with boycotting Made-in-China goods.
I guess I’d been living in a sort of cave, shielded from the nastyness of consumerism, so when I finally did need to do some shopping in mid-October, I found myself disgusted by the number of “Halloween superstores” littering suburban strip malls. I even had to go in one to ask for directions, and what struck me about the sort of stuff being sold was that:
- It’s all junk.
- The designs were dictated not by any sort of aesthetics, but rather based on what Chinese junk-factories are equipped to produce at costs so low people don’t even have to think about spending.
This second point gets to the core of the economic system we’re living in: rather than designing products to meet what people need or want and relying on their utility and quality as the guarantee that production will be profitable, we instead have products designed to maximize senseless consumption, with more money spent on convincing people to buy the unneeded product than on making the product itself. This kind of product comes almost exclusively from China.
So, onward to something practical. The first topic for non-MIC products is shoes. Here’s some of what I’ve found:
- Blackspot Shoes - a project of Adbusters, produced in a sweat-free union factory in Portugal.
- New Balance - athletic shoes. Many are produced in the United States but apparently they now have factories in China as well, so research before buying. Coop America has a profile on New Balance including information on submitting comments to them on labor/manufacturing issues.
- Asolo - very high-end trekking-type footwear. I have a pair from them made in Romania, which I used heavily in Tibet and loved. Some of their shoes may be made in China so check before buying.
Of course, for any product where the selling point is not “non-MIC” (and sometimes even then! — more on this in a later post, perhaps) there’s always a need to check before you buy. Sadly lots of companies quietly move production to China even when they’re claiming to be labor-friendly, progressive, anti-mainstream, or whatever.
If you have more non-MIC buying tips, please share them for inclusion in my next post!