Commentary: 11.11 sales are a symptom of the greater disease of mindless consumerism
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Commentary: 11.xi sales are a symptom of the greater illness of mindless consumerism
Big sales events like ten.x or 11.xi singles twenty-four hour period sales may excite shoppers and net billions in profits for online retailers only if nosotros don't end this insatiable need to consume, all of us are in trouble, says climate activist Ho Xiang Tian.
Workers sort out parcels for delivery in Beijing on Jul 14, 2021. (File photo: AP/Ng Han Guan)
11 Nov 2022 06:22AM (Updated: 12 November 2022 01:29PM)
SINGAPORE: In that location is a little-known tracker called Earth Overshoot Day, and it gives us a sense of resources humans use.
Data is calculated based on how fast people swallow resources such as energy, timber and paper, and food and fibre. Consumption and waste products generated are then compared with how fast nature can absorb our waste and generate new resources.
Based on this, it gives a engagement where we've gone over the threshold – and used up the unabridged twelvemonth's worth of resource.
In a way it tells us when we've used upwardly all the rice in the larder which were meant to concluding a year.
In 1970, World Overshoot 24-hour interval was on December 30. This twelvemonth, information technology happened on Jul 29.
The date has been trending before ever since.
It also tracks individual countries and Singapore's resources consumption per capita ranks at 24 in the globe, with our 2022 Overshoot Day falling on Apr 10.
It ranks 2d in Association of southeast asian nations, just backside Brunei whose Earth Overshoot Day falls two days earlier. In comparison, Malaysia's is more than a month subsequently Singapore's, on May 30, while Indonesia'southward is December 18.
What this shows is in that location'due south huge room for reducing Singapore's resource consumption, and to me, online shopping platforms are a good place to start.
Unlike about other business activities needed for essential living (driving, eating, using energy), retail shopping tin encourage mindless consumerism considering at that place's a possibility, nosotros buy things we don't demand.
ENTER THE RISE OF ONLINE SALES
Over the years, the 11.11 sales in Singapore have been doing better year on twelvemonth. Even in 2020, when COVID-xix hit hard. Shopee for example saw 200 million items sold on 11.11 last year compared to lxx meg items in 2019.
Alibaba's gross merchandise volume on 11.11 from 2022 to 2022 has been exponential, from US$0.82 billion (South$1.ane billion) in 2022 to U.s.$74.i billion in 2020.
Aside from these big events, wink sales happen every calendar month – new jingles from various online shopping platforms appear regularly, enticing consumers to "shop now" and "add to cart".
There are attractive lucky draws. Some involve million-dollar condominiums and social media influencers go all out to go their followers to play games and then they tin win prizes.
Of course, the marketplace works as it does – the aim of concern is to make money and online shopping platforms will practice whatever they tin can to drive up sales and increment market share.
It is good for the bottom line and it pays for hundreds of thousands of jobs. Just this exponential growth on the back of a new age of mindless buying comes at a huge expense to the planet and unfortunately, nosotros take started paying for information technology.
WHEN It'S BAD FOR THE PLANET, IT'South BAD FOR US
Some platforms effort to reduce their environmental impacts through "green packaging" options, but "dark-green packaging" can differ according to each country's context.
In Singapore, where all waste is sent for incineration, biodegradable packaging or other "eco-friendly" packaging in place of plastic packaging for online purchases is not necessarily more environmentally friendly.
A written report commissioned past NEA showed that the lifecycle costs of plastic numberless and other biodegradable bags take different impacts, and ane is not improve than the other in Singapore's context.
Here, when waste is incinerated first before landfilling, the benefits of biodegradable items literally go upwardly in fume, and it's the upstream impacts in the item'southward lifecycle that determines how environmentally damaging it is.
The other consequence is many online shopping platforms do not have a sustainability policy or a sustainable procurement policy, and do not rails and report on their carbon emissions and environmental footprint.
When y'all purchase a mass-produced piece of jewellery or a blouse which costs S$20 or less, information technology is a bargain because of the price. But consider all the other things that we don't see. The plastic and paper packaging information technology comes in is one.
So summate the route a typical item like that takes to reach you. Likely produced in an Asian factory, information technology sits on a transport for weeks which requires fuel which in turn releases harmful pollutants and greenhouse gases.
Then it goes into a distribution centre to be sorted, then into a delivery vehicle, to exist sent to your home.
In other words, each particular has an environmental impact, including water and chemicals used to create the raw fabric, carbon emissions from energy to create and transport it, and land employ impacts from mining or growing the raw material, and from disposal of the item.
Granted, these apply to other goods and services nosotros consume too – simply hither, it is the sheer volume of items produced, sold and shipped that adds emissions to an already stressed planet.
Most online platforms as well have a generous return policy and this tin compound wastefulness – yous can buy x things and return ix of them for low or no cost.
Typical e-commerce render rates are most xx to 30 per cent, and in the US, an estimated 20 to 30 per cent of that is dumped. In Singapore, these numbers aren't available, only it is difficult to imagine the items existence returned to their overseas sources and being resold again.
How practise staggering 11.xi sales figures sit down with a growing consciousness near waste and sustainability? Nosotros inquire a marketing professor and Lazada'south Main Business Officer on Heart of the Matter:
THROWAWAY CULTURE
There is a phrase that goes "You can't manage what you don't mensurate", and it applies to online shopping platforms.
Without a clear sustainability policy, companies tin can't measure their environmental impacts and consequently cannot reduce them although many are at present seeing the need to change practices where they can.
Just people are besides a contributing factor to this.
Many of the products are bought for novelty or in the spur of the moment just rapidly discarded or prepare bated.
Or things are poorly manufactured and of low-quality, which ways they stop functioning every bit intended and eventually end upwardly in the bin. In Singapore, once thrown out, these items are incinerated, and their ashes are sent to Semakau landfill.
WHAT Tin WE Exercise?
According to the Singapore Green Plan 2030, Singapore aims to reduce the per capita waste to landfill by 30 per cent past 2030. Increasing recycling rates will help but reducing the amount of waste generated in the get-go place is even more important in reaching this goal, especially equally Semakau Landfill is expected to be full by 2035.
It may be an impossible idea, but perhaps limiting the amount of advertising from online shopping platforms may help. In improver to offer greater recycling options, making returns less convenient could be another way to discourage excessive purchases.
1 visitor worth considering is Patagonia. Instead of encouraging consumers to buy more on Blackness Friday in 2013, it encouraged customers to repair its products instead, and has previously run advertisements maxim: "Don't buy this jacket".
When information technology comes to a capitalist economic system, it is wishful thinking to promise businesses will change their practices if it means less revenue. So, regulation could exist key to reducing the impacts from online shopping platforms.
Higher carbon taxes in places where the items are manufactured could lead to increased costs even though it is possible that factories would exist relocated to more affordable places unless a global agreement on carbon taxes is made.
Just if businesses are taxed based on their emissions and footprint – and costs cascade down to consumers, and then people may think twice before buying.
The concept of Extended Producer Responsibility could as well be another fashion to adjourn excessive sales. If companies were responsible for collecting and ensuring proper recycling of products, the items listed and promoted on the platforms would quickly shift to those that are easier to recycle.
Unfortunately, the current Extended Producer Responsibleness framework in Singapore is merely limited to e-waste now and packaging waste by 2025, though that may change in the future.
For now, we can exercise our office to scale back resource consumption and push our World Overshoot Day to Dec 31 or beyond, and to extend Semakau'south lifespan to beyond 2035.
Only societal mindsets about our consumerist culture must shift and online shopping platforms can play a role past not encouraging this mindless consumption too.
Ho Xiang Tian is the co-founder of breezy environmental group LepakInSG.
A business professor explains why consumption and sustainability tin exist incompatible:
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/singles-day-sales-1111-online-shopping-carbon-emissions-climate-change-environment-293711
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