Black Friday is the gala day in a calendar of hyper-consumerism! We’re just not that into it around here. At FillRefill, we don’t take part. We choose to ignore it, letting it flow under the bridge, carrying with it all the excess packaging & shipping waste it produces every year. We don’t want to add to the torrent of stuff or the idea of perpetual accumulation.
It’s also the time of year when big brands & mainstream retailers get to flex their marketing muscles and stir up some serious swivel-eyed shopping opportunities. Smaller independents & conscious brands get nudged aside, lost in the frenzy, unable to compete with the majors.
Over the summer I read Jason Hickel’s book, “Less Is More; How Degrowth Will Save The World”. It’s way more nuanced and complicated than I can put down in a few lines but I agree with his basic idea that slowing down and wanting less is a healthy place to start.
I can’t think about Black Friday without imagining that we’ve somehow stepped right into a real-life version of Tom Waits’s ‘Step Right Up’. If you don’t know it, it’s a cool song where he raps lines of sleazy sales patter to make increasingly outrageous product claims.
“That's right, it filets, it chops, it dices, slices
Never stops, lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn and it picks up the kids from school”
Just like the song, we’ve arrived at consumption overload! If you find yourself being overwhelmed this BlackFriday, it’s good to ask a few basic questions, like “does this make me happy?”or “do I need it?”. The likelihood is we really don’t need most of the stuff that gets served up. We should also question where things are made, whether they have been produced, packaged and marketed responsibly plus try to find out who made them and how fairly they might have been treated. There’s a lot of questions to ask, and it’s useful to look for standards & accreditations to validate claims.
Sure, we all like a bargain. Not everyone can afford items at list price, discounts can work out.
When it comes to what we do at FillRefill, panic-inducing discounts to encourage short-term sales isn’t the way we roll. We design, formulate and make everything ourselves and we cost everything carefully with a standard margin to offer good value all year round. We stand by that. We want folks to have access to great quality products without contributing to the problem of plastic pollution and single use. It’s about democratising refill, making it available for everyone. We want folks to choose to reuse and to refill, and to support their local stores by shopping small.
We might be the slowest-growing refill brand in theUK, but I think there’s something good to be said for that. We aren’t setting out to be an overnight sensation, refill is not a passing fad. Single use is over!
It’s not only about buying less. It’s having less and becoming more. We should be less defined by what we choose to buy and more by what we choose to do and be. That’s why we’ll be quietly making a donation this year, instead of funding a promotion. We’re very proud to be members of 1% For The Planet, which means we donate 1% of our turnover to environmental causes. We think that’s important. It means a lot to know we can make some kind of positive impact beyond eliminating single use plastic packaging.
Black Friday is the gala day in a calendar of hyper-consumerism! We’re just not that into it around here. At FillRefill, we don’t take part. We choose to ignore it, letting it flow under the bridge, carrying with it all the excess packaging & shipping waste it produces every year. We don’t want to add to the torrent of stuff or the idea of perpetual accumulation.
It’s also the time of year when big brands & mainstream retailers get to flex their marketing muscles and stir up some serious swivel-eyed shopping opportunities. Smaller independents & conscious brands get nudged aside, lost in the frenzy, unable to compete with the majors.
Over the summer I read Jason Hickel’s book, “Less Is More; How Degrowth Will Save The World”. It’s way more nuanced and complicated than I can put down in a few lines but I agree with his basic idea that slowing down and wanting less is a healthy place to start.
I can’t think about Black Friday without imagining that we’ve somehow stepped right into a real-life version of Tom Waits’s ‘Step Right Up’. If you don’t know it, it’s a cool song where he raps lines of sleazy sales patter to make increasingly outrageous product claims.
“That's right, it filets, it chops, it dices, slices
Never stops, lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn and it picks up the kids from school”
Just like the song, we’ve arrived at consumption overload! If you find yourself being overwhelmed this BlackFriday, it’s good to ask a few basic questions, like “does this make me happy?”or “do I need it?”. The likelihood is we really don’t need most of the stuff that gets served up. We should also question where things are made, whether they have been produced, packaged and marketed responsibly plus try to find out who made them and how fairly they might have been treated. There’s a lot of questions to ask, and it’s useful to look for standards & accreditations to validate claims.
Sure, we all like a bargain. Not everyone can afford items at list price, discounts can work out.
When it comes to what we do at FillRefill, panic-inducing discounts to encourage short-term sales isn’t the way we roll. We design, formulate and make everything ourselves and we cost everything carefully with a standard margin to offer good value all year round. We stand by that. We want folks to have access to great quality products without contributing to the problem of plastic pollution and single use. It’s about democratising refill, making it available for everyone. We want folks to choose to reuse and to refill, and to support their local stores by shopping small.
We might be the slowest-growing refill brand in theUK, but I think there’s something good to be said for that. We aren’t setting out to be an overnight sensation, refill is not a passing fad. Single use is over!
It’s not only about buying less. It’s having less and becoming more. We should be less defined by what we choose to buy and more by what we choose to do and be. That’s why we’ll be quietly making a donation this year, instead of funding a promotion. We’re very proud to be members of 1% For The Planet, which means we donate 1% of our turnover to environmental causes. We think that’s important. It means a lot to know we can make some kind of positive impact beyond eliminating single use plastic packaging.
