Buying nothing is green

Instead of hitting the malls for the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving sales, why not just buy nothing?

This crazy idea was first proposed in 1996 by a Vancouver artist, and the magazine and media foundation Adbusters has celebrated Buy Nothing Day ever since.

Surely you've seen the retail ads trumpeting huge discounts on Friday, so you can get your holiday shopping done. Local news surely will show the folks lined up outside stores before dawn so they can buy the latest gadgets and toys.

But many of the things we buy aren't recycled and will end up in a landfill soon enough. Besides, who needs a house filled with more stuff we probably can't afford?

In the U.S., per capita consumption has risen 45 percent in the last 20 years, and Consumer Reports notes that the average household has about $9,000 in credit-card debt already.

Activists, environmentalists, and concerned citizens will protest and create street art in about 65 countries on this 15th-annual Buy Nothing Day. They use one of the busiest shopping days of the year to point out our over-consumption of mass-market goods.

This year, Adbusters reminds us that we can go green by stopping shopping.

"Driving hybrid cars and limiting industrial emissions is great‚" writes Kalle Lasn, Adbusters' editor in chief, "but they are band-aid solutions if we don't address the core problem: We have to consume less. This is the message of Buy Nothing Day."

Kids can get in the act too.

The Media Awareness Network has a great list of questions to discuss with school-age children about consumerism and its effect on the culture and environment.