The last few weeks of the year are always a special time—for shopping.
According to the National Retail Federation, an American trade group, Americans will spend nearly $1 trillion on clothing, electronics, accessories, and other goods during the 2024 holiday season, which is defined as November 1 through December 31. That’s about one-fifth of the entire year’s retail sales. in just two months.
Will all that shopping make people happier? Probably not—more than half of Americans say they regret their Black Friday shopping, according to a national survey. Polls suggest that what people at the top get from buying things is infinite; it quickly dissipates, only fueling the desire to buy more.
Perhaps the biggest loser in the cycle of overconsumption, however, is the planet. Hidden in the low prices included in online flash sales are external costs to the climate and environment—in the form of raw material extraction, air pollution from factories and transportation, and the waste that results when products and their packaging end up being thrown away. According to some estimates, the retail industry accounts for a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The Internet is full of blogs and opinion articles that say consumers are to blame—that “our need to buy is ruining our planet.” But Flora Bagenal, producer of a new Netflix documentary called Buy now! Shopping Conspiracyhe sees injustice in that framework. Why should everyday people feel guilty, the film asks, when manufacturers and retail companies are doing everything they can to improve the speed of consumption? These companies designed products to break down quickly, promised that recycling would keep the planet clean, and precisely crafted their ads and marketing to make the impulse buy irresistible—all the while passing on environmental damage to society.
“I’ve always felt that we don’t hold our companies accountable,” Bagenal told Grist. “I wanted to explore that from the perspective of someone who feels as trapped in the system as everyone else.” Bagenal lives in the UK and has produced several other documentaries on topics including the anti-vaccination movement and mental health care.
Without using this word clearly, Buy now! makes the case for an alternative called the “polluter pays principle,” which says that companies—not society—should be held financially responsible for dealing with the waste they produce. In wonkier terms, the idea is seen as “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, policies that typically require large companies to pay into a central fund for waste management and prevention. In the US, five states have passed EPR packaging laws.
Through interviews with former executives at Adidas, Amazon, and Apple, Buy now! argues that consumer goods companies have deliberately abdicated their social responsibility. Grist sat down with Bagenal to discuss the film and how he and his executive production team went about bringing the polluter pays law to a general audience.
This interview is edited for length and clarity.
What was your motivation to produce a film about overconsumption, and the role of the big consumer goods companies in turning it into a problem?
We knew that the problem of wastage was a really big problem, but we were worried about doing something sad that people would turn their backs on. And little by little, we shifted our thinking away from piles of garbage and landfills and things like that—instead, we thought: Well, where does it all come from? And as you start to peel back the layers and go back, you realize that any film about trash is going to have to be about who makes the things that become trash. That was really a revelation for us—we realized that we could tell this story in a different way and target companies that hadn’t yet responded.
The movie’s subtitle is Shopping Conspiracyexposes the strategies companies use to get people to buy more while denying responsibility for the resulting waste. But one could argue that this is exactly what we would expect from companies motivated to maximize their profits. Why do you think their behavior warrants being called a conspiracy?
We had many conversations about this—in the back of the taxi, in the back of the studio, in the editing room. There was no table where these fictional players sat and decided to do this and put it out into the world. But the conspiracy comes from the fact that you cannot work for one of these companies and not know the truth: that, while we are all here trying to do our best, we feel guilty and wonder what we can do, these big companies. they are well aware of the impact they have on the world and they are not doing enough. If I go down to the store and decide not to buy that pot of yogurt because it might not be used again, nothing will change. But if a company like Adidas or Amazon or Apple actually decided to sell less stuff or make a product that would last three times longer, then something would change.
The philosophy you describe—that polluters should pay for their pollution—has become popular among policy ideas such as “extended producer responsibility.” What strategies did you use to make that idea accessible?
EPR is really popular in NGO [nongovernmental organization] and business circles, but we felt that it would be really difficult to communicate the film and get people to care. So we’ve spent a lot of time trying to distill it into something that sounds obvious, that’s hard to fight. And actually, it was Erik Liedtke, the former Adidas executive, who hit the nail on the head at the end of the film. He said, “Stop including us [the public]stop telling us it’s our responsibility. You produce this thing, you need to account for its life after disposal. “
We called the movie again Buy now! to find out at that moment when you press the button and decide to give your money to the company. That transaction is the minority that makes money, that is the minority that the industry is interested in. But if you press “buy now,” you’re making a contract that you don’t know about—you’re now the guardian of this. thing, and it is your burden until you throw it away, then it becomes the burden of the whole world. The only one that is not really responsible anymore is the company.
Several states and US states have passed EPR laws, and environmental organizations have offered ambitious new proposals. But what big picture solution should those policies be aligned with?
There are many good things now that companies are doing. The fashion industry in particular has embraced the EPR concept, and some consumer goods companies such as Coca-Cola have talked about it. I think it’s really important as a tool for governments to hold companies accountable and share the costs of environmental impacts. But it doesn’t solve the problem completely. I think we all still need to buy smaller things, and companies need to do smaller things. It is good to tax [companies] with end-of-life items, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that reduction is the ultimate goal.
Despite all the talk about corporate responsibility for climate and environmental pollution, it can still be difficult for people to think about how they can stand up beyond individual actions—like buying less. How do you hope viewers will react?
Well, not buying doesn’t have to be a sacrifice. It feels satisfying as an act of resistance and like, “You know what? I will not waste my precious time and money on this company. I don’t need another coat.”
But the people I really think about are the people who work inside companies and have been responsible for a long time. People who feel that something is wrong try to change it without anyone listening, even if they are not in the right job and they may use their time and energy to do something positive. Those are the people I would like to watch this and have a change of heart. We’ve already seen some reaction to the trailers from people who work in advertising who have said, “You know, we sell you this shit, that’s what we do all day. And we all feel bad about it.” I would be happy if a few people saw this and took it as an opportunity to say, “You know what? I can do better than this.”
This article was originally published by Grist, a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate solutions and a just future. Subscribe to its newsletter here.
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