Date of Publication: December 27, 2019

Author: Kokho Jason Sit

Summary:

For retailers, sales are a great opportunity to liquidate unsold or off-season stock into cash, make room for new stock and cross-sell existing stock via impulse or unplanned buying. For consumers, sales provide one or more “legit reasons” for spending and gifting, either to oneself, others or a bit of both. Emotionally, they may drive consumers to spend money they do not have and then feel regret or guilt afterwards. Psychologically, it may exacerbate compulsive buying disorder, also known as “oniomania”, by legitimising gifting and spending. All this adds up to some serious environmental costs. The phenomena of throwaway culture has made it so that the more we buy the more we throw. Less than 1% of material used to produce clothing is recycled indicating that we are disposing of clothing in environmentally unfriendly ways. More clothing sales means more clothes returned which contributes to the pollution from the shipping industry.

Link to Full Reading:

https://theconversation.com/how-sales-shopping-is-killing-the-planet-128725