Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Buy Now The Shopping Conspiracy: A Marine Biologist Reviews

Transcript

Buy Now The Shopping Conspiracy: A Marine Biologist Reviews · How To Protect The Ocean

0:00
Buy Now The Shopping Conspiracy is a documentary that
0:03
is just released on Netflix last week, a week before Black
0:06
Friday, the day this episode is being published. Right
0:09
now, you're probably looking for deals, and I don't blame you. It's expensive to
0:13
buy things out there, and to find deals for
0:17
getting ready for the holidays, to buy gifts for your loved ones, is really
0:20
great. It may be some stuff for yourself. You deserve it, you've worked hard. But are
0:23
we over-consuming and is it our fault? That's gonna be the subject of
0:27
today's episode. We're gonna be reviewing the documentary, Buy
0:31
Now, The Shopping Conspiracy, because it
0:34
needs to be talked about. We need to talk about our consumption of goods.
0:38
This is a documentary and it's something that we need to discuss right now on
0:41
this episode. So let's start the show. Hey
0:47
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
0:50
your host, Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how
0:54
you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by
0:57
taking action. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about
1:01
consumption, about buying things. And are we buying too
1:05
much? Have we put too much of a focus on having things
1:09
rather than experiences like spending time
1:12
with people and has our striving for consumption and
1:16
buying things for people and receiving so many materialistic things, has
1:19
it gone too far and is it hurting the environment? That
1:23
was the question surrounding the Netflix special or
1:27
the Netflix documentary buy now the shopping conspiracy.
1:44
lined up early, early in the morning, sometimes the night before to get to
1:48
take advantage of all the crazy deals that were happening the
1:51
day after Thanksgiving. It was a time where people bought gifts
1:55
for the holidays. It was a time where people trampled over
1:58
each other just to get the deal they wanted and to make their family
2:02
members or friends happy. That's a crazy time.
2:06
Now, things have kind of really gotten out of hand. Maybe not so
2:09
much the in-person shopping and the violence. I think that's kind of
2:12
subsided a little bit because online shopping has really made way
2:16
to make it easier to get deals. And it's not just one
2:20
day. It's not just Black Friday. It's not just Cyber Monday. It's
2:23
all about the week or even two weeks surrounding Black Friday.
2:27
There are deals that I've been receiving for pretty
2:31
much two weeks before Black Friday. Now this episode is gonna be released on
2:34
Black Friday, so it's really timely to have this documentary
2:38
discussed on a day where it's probably the biggest shopping
2:42
day in North America. Let's be honest, it's a huge, huge
2:46
day. There are a lot of companies who are making quite
2:49
a bit of money. So today, what I wanted to do was go over what
2:53
this consumption's about, how it's impacting our
2:56
lives, not only from a human perspective, but from an
2:59
environment perspective, and how we're getting through the holidays, right?
3:03
The holidays are a time where you're
3:07
supposed to have experiences with family, with friends, and
3:10
spend time with your loved ones. But a lot of the times, when
3:14
we get to the fall, it's late fall, it's gonna be early winter coming
3:18
soon, and it can be a very great time for a lot of
3:21
people. And you wanna make sure that your mind is right.
3:24
You wanna do whatever you can to make sure that you have a
3:27
good time during the season. Whether you're buying stuff for family and
3:31
friends, whether you're spending time with family and friends. I know not
3:34
everybody's family and friends situation is the same and is the best, but
3:38
you wanna make sure that your mind is right. And to be honest, something that I've
3:41
been doing on and off recently, and
3:45
really more recently, especially as it gets a little grayer. So I wanna make
3:48
sure that my mind is right. And so what I've been doing is
3:51
I've actually been, I've been talking about for the last year called Magic
3:55
Mind. It is an elixir that has a
3:58
lot of healthy things in it. It has ginger, it has
4:01
a bunch of things that I use. It's a little shot that I take every morning
4:05
and I basically take the shot, I use it and it basically gives
4:09
me the ability to start my day off right.
4:12
It gets my mind right, it gets me focused, it has
4:16
some caffeine in it, but what I love about this caffeine is it
4:19
gives you the caffeine fix throughout the day. It's not just one
4:22
shot, you feel like you're up here, and then once that caffeine goes
4:26
away, you crash down like you would with sugary drinks that
4:29
have caffeine, or coffee that have caffeine. This is just a quick shot,
4:33
I take it, and I'm focused and awake for the rest of
4:36
the day. My working day, whether I'm doing a video, whether I'm editing
4:40
videos, whether I'm doing research, whether I'm interacting with
4:43
you, the audience member, it's just a bunch of things. One
4:47
thing that I love about it is it just, It's not expensive,
4:51
it's very environmentally friendly, and the company continues
4:55
to become more and more environmentally friendly where they can. And
4:58
you can get it, they've actually, and you can get it through my affiliate link
5:02
and get 20% off. using this affiliate
5:05
link. So if you go to www.magicmind.com forward
5:11
slash Lewin20, that's L-E-W-I-N 20. So
5:15
it's www.magicmind.com forward
5:19
slash Lewin, L-E-W-I-N 20. 20 all
5:23
one word check that out. I'll put that in the show notes so you can click on
5:26
it You can get 20% off you can get to your holiday season, right?
5:30
Make sure you're focused get all that work right to keep that job to
5:33
keep going and trying to protect the ocean I use it
5:37
and it's fantastic. I think it's I recommend it to anybody. I
5:40
am NOT a big fan normally of elixirs this
5:43
is something that I love. So check out the link in the description below
5:48
and in the show notes if you're listening to this on audio, and let
5:51
me know what you think about it. So it's www.magicmind.com forward
5:56
slash Lewin, L-E-W-I-N 20, that's my
5:59
last name, Lewin, L-E-W-I-N 20, and
6:02
let me know what you think. All right, let's get back to the show. I wanna
6:06
talk about this documentary because something that I feel like this
6:09
documentary highlights, I wanna talk some of the different highlights, some
6:12
of the key highlights that have come out of this documentary. Now, the overall goal
6:16
of this documentary is to show the consumption and how companies are
6:19
taking advantage of consumers to make sure that you have
6:23
the latest and greatest of all the products that are out there. It's all about mass
6:26
consumption so that they can make a ton of money. That's really what
6:29
it's about. And so what we're trying to do here is
6:33
highlight the movie. I highly recommend that you watch the documentary on
6:36
Netflix if you have Netflix. But what I want to talk about is what
6:40
it really looks like. So the film examines how companies like
6:44
Amazon, Adidas, and Apple use persuasive marketing
6:47
techniques to encourage consumers to overspend. That's
6:51
really what it comes down to. It goes over environmental impacts, which I'll
6:54
go into in just a second. It highlights ecological damage caused
6:58
by the excessive consumption, such as the disposal of unsold clothing, leading
7:02
to environmental degradation in countries like Ghana in
7:05
Africa. and Apple easy
7:24
as possible. Let's
7:44
just buy now. So you go over the cart and you say, you know what? I
7:48
don't want to buy anything in my cart right now. I want to just hold on to that. I'm just going to
7:51
buy this product right now so I can get it as fast as possible. So they're making things
7:55
that are easier to shop and making that impulse buy.
7:58
That's what it's all about. It's all about the impulse buy. Then there's also they talk
8:01
about e-waste concerns. So it exposes the grim reality of
8:05
electronic waste recycling and how it's really just
8:08
not really out recycling. Showing how discarded electronics are
8:12
often shipped to developing countries, where workers dismantle them
8:15
without proper protection, leading to health hazards. You
8:19
gotta remember that in North America and Europe and a lot of other places,
8:22
they have occupational health and safety at warehouses, at
8:26
work, any type of work should have occupational health and safety. Some
8:30
countries don't have it and their workers are actually suffering
8:34
because of it. It's basically a critical examination of the modern
8:37
consumer culture. and its far-reaching impacts. It is
8:41
really enlightening. A lot of the stuff you've probably known for
8:44
quite some time, but some of the intricacies of how they
8:48
manipulate the consumers is really interesting. So I want to
8:51
dive deeper into the type of pollution that they talk about and
8:54
what it really discusses. So textile waste and pollution.
8:58
So we're looking at fast fashion here, how it drives overproduction. It
9:01
talks about you know, like companies like Sheen, how they
9:05
create millions of new items per year because they just want
9:08
to sell as much as possible. And then with unsold or discarded clothing
9:12
ending up in landfills and being exported to developed countries,
9:15
for example, massive amounts of textile waste accumulate in
9:19
places like Ghana's Kantamento market, where
9:22
the discarded clothes often pollute rivers and harm local ecosystems. Synthetic
9:26
fabrics release microplastics into waterways during
9:30
washing, which contributes to marine pollution that ends up in
9:33
the food chain. From a fashion perspective, it covers that, which we've,
9:37
again, we've known, but it really shows how many items are
9:40
discarded per year. It's an insane amount. You have to watch the
9:43
documentary to really figure it out, to really understand it. Electronic waste.
9:47
E-waste from discarded electronics is frequently exported to developing countries. Improper
9:51
dismantling and disposal release hazardous substances such
9:55
as lead, mercury, and cadmium into the soil and water. Informal
10:04
recycling facilities in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and
10:07
India face significant health and environmental challenges due to the lack
10:11
of proper waste management systems. So again, we're seeing
10:15
the fact that e-waste can cause hazardous
10:20
waste for people that have to dispose it or live in around the
10:23
area that dispose it. A lot of the times when we're told about recycling, like
10:26
electronic recycling or other recycling, Unless you're in the right
10:29
program, it doesn't actually take out all the metals or all the things that need to
10:33
be taken out to properly recycle. It gets shipped off to other countries
10:36
where we know the occupational health and safety standards are not as
10:40
high, and then they have to deal with the repercussions. We
10:43
don't deal with the repercussions. We just use electronics as we please. As
10:46
we say, hey, I need the new and latest, greatest tablet or
10:50
phone or whatever, even though we don't really need it. But they're built
10:53
so that we actually need it. It's just a weird situation here. Then
10:57
we talk about carbon footprint of production and logistics. The
11:00
production and transportation of goods requires significant amounts
11:04
of fossil fuels contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. So
11:07
for instance, factories powering mass production rely
11:10
heavily on coal and oil. That's always not good.
11:14
Shipping goods globally contributes to carbon
11:18
emissions and air pollution. We know from a
11:22
fossil fuel and plastics production point of view, which I'll talk about in
11:25
just a second a little bit more, we know that the fossil fuel companies, a third
11:28
of their business is done through plastics. Plastics is a petroleum
11:32
product. So we know fossil fuels are going to be created
11:36
for the plastics industry and a lot of plastics end up in
11:39
our product packaging or even in our product. So that can be
11:42
really bad. Deforestation and resource depletion. The extraction of raw materials
11:46
for consumer goods leads to deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and
11:50
ecosystem disruption. Examples include logging for furniture and
11:53
packaging, mining for precious metals used in electronics, often
11:57
destroying wildlife habitats. There are a lot of regulations in
12:01
North America, but not other places where mining happens. So a lot of
12:04
not only environmental impacts happen, but also human rights impacts
12:09
are not good in a lot of places like Africa, going
12:12
for some of these diamonds and
12:16
metals that are used in electronics. Plastic waste and ocean pollution.
12:19
So excessive packaging always has plastics in it. Much of
12:23
it is non-recyclable, exacerbates plastic waste problems. Plastics
12:26
break down into microplastics, which accumulate in marine environments, harming
12:30
wildlife and threatening marine ecosystems. Hundreds of thousands of animals die
12:34
a year in the ocean because of plastics. It's
12:37
really simple. It is not hard to get that concept. However, if
12:41
you look around, everything we do has plastic in it. Even companies
12:44
who say, hey, we're going to put in our values that we don't want to have plastics
12:48
in our containers or anything like that down the road, like we're
12:51
going to work towards using less plastics, they continue to
12:54
use plastics. It's all greenwashing. It's all for nothing. And
12:58
it's really frustrating when you look at the harm that plastics do
13:02
to the ocean, not just in big forms. This is microplastics, like
13:06
nanoplastics, that are everywhere. It's like a soup in the ocean. You
13:11
just sit there, and you just get frustrated. As a biologist, as a conservationist, as
13:15
someone who wants to protect the ocean, it's a frustrating process. And
13:18
it's getting worse because of our consumption, our
13:23
overconsumption of goods and materials. Overexploitation
13:27
of water resources. So industries like fast fashion electronics consume
13:31
vast amounts of fresh water. Producing a single pair of jeans can
13:34
require up to 10,000 liters of water. Wastewater from dyeing
13:38
and processing textiles is often discharged untreated, contaminating
13:42
rivers and groundwater, especially depending on where these products are
13:45
made. Again, regulations aren't as good
13:49
in certain countries that are in like European and and
13:53
North American countries. I only say that because that's what I know,
13:57
but there's a lot of standards around that. And even then, sometimes they get
14:01
broken. That's something that we have to look at.
14:04
Climate change impacts. We kind of talked about it a little briefly with fossil fuel industry, but
14:08
increased consumptions accelerates resource use, energy demands, and
14:11
pollution, contributing to rising temperatures, ocean acidification, and
14:15
more frequent weather, extreme weather events. The impacts underscore the
14:18
urgent need for sustainable consumption practices, better
14:22
waste management systems, and more transparent corporate accountability. Now,
14:26
one of the things that I want to gather And I put this in chat, GPT,
14:30
because I wanted to find out what people think. Obviously, this is
14:33
really harmful. But I feel as though the movie
14:37
was talking to consumers. It was trying to make consumers
14:41
aware of some of these practices that You
14:45
know, these companies will play to manipulate us.
14:48
So there's that awareness. Oh, we're being manipulated. This is not about consumption.
14:52
It's almost like you want to keep up with the Joneses, right? You want to keep up with
14:55
your neighbor to say, hey, they have this or your friends and say, hey,
14:59
they have this. I want to have this. I see this a lot in
15:03
in my kids, in teenagers where there's a peer pressure based on
15:06
not necessarily like I have this, you don't. Sometimes that happens, but
15:10
it's more of Oh, this person has this, this person, I need to have
15:13
three or four pairs of shoes, I need to have this, I need to have that, I need to have that. These
15:17
are young children who have been taught about environmental sustainability since
15:20
they were young, in class, and they were taught and they want to
15:23
protect the ocean, they want to protect the planet, they want to be environmentally friendly,
15:27
but they fall into these peer pressure
15:30
tactics and marketing tactics that they don't have any control over
15:33
because their minds just fall into the trap. And
15:37
as adults, we do the same thing. I mean, you look at influencers on
15:41
any kind of app, on any kind of social media platform, and they're talking about
15:45
their Amazon haul or their Shein haul or just
15:48
a variety of different companies and like what they got from there. And in the movie,
15:52
they really go to the extreme where they're showing influencers talking about, I bought,
15:55
you know, a hundred iPhones and I bought, look at my Amazon haul
15:59
and all this kind of stuff. Let's go with what I bought. We
16:02
still have people like friends of mine, like Erica Hernandez,
16:06
who talks about, hey, look at my thrift haul because she went thrift
16:09
shopping because it's more sustainable. And so there are influencers out
16:12
there who are sending out the message that, hey, you know what? Going
16:16
thrift shopping and being sustainable is actually better than
16:20
buying new. And you can still look great. You can still feel great. You
16:23
can still go to professional conferences or go to an office. with
16:26
thrifting, like through thrifting, like buying clothes, like used
16:30
clothing is what it is, but you kind of make it cool and kind of make it nice to
16:33
be there. So there are influencers like that, but a lot, most of the people still
16:36
fall into the trap of buying you, I have to buy you, right? Even
16:39
to the point, like I was having discussions today at work, I was having,
16:43
at lunch, I was having discussion, we were talking about the movie, and we're discussing how,
16:47
you know, we try and up everybody, we
16:50
try and even like, you know, there's no repairing anymore, they even talk
16:53
about this in the movie, You know, there's no repairing of clothes. There's
16:57
no like, I remember when I was a kid, if I had like a
17:00
hole in my pants, my parents would sew a patch onto it. Like
17:03
you had patches on your pants all the time. You didn't just go out and
17:06
buy new clothes. You actually got your parents sewed a patch on
17:09
it, or they taught you to sew a patch on. You
17:13
fix things. If something broke, you would fix it. If something was
17:17
too old, you would take it apart and you would put it back together. You would maybe
17:20
make something new out of it because it wasn't working as its primary
17:24
function. So we're talking a lot about that at lunch, and
17:27
we just don't have that anymore. When you're trying, like a
17:31
friend of mine was trying to fix his vacuum cleaner and looking for a part. The part was
17:34
so expensive, it was almost the same price as buying a
17:37
new vacuum. So why fix something that's broken
17:41
when you can get something brand new? We get warranties where
17:44
it's like, hey, you know what? If you do a warranty, we'll just send you something brand
17:47
new if it breaks. Companies don't even care if it breaks or not.
17:51
They may have a program where they sell refurbished, but
17:55
a lot of times you don't really see that. You see mostly new stuff. Appliances,
17:59
kitchen appliances and appliances for the home, they're not built like they
18:03
used to be. They're built to break down earlier so you'll buy another thing.
18:06
It used to be, and sometimes it still happens, where appliances that
18:10
were built in the 70s, 60s and 70s, are still working today. They're
18:13
still being used today, but now you get like a dishwasher or something, it
18:17
lasts for maybe three to five years. They used
18:20
to last for like 10 to 20. And so it's just like these companies
18:23
that keep making these products that are not as good, just
18:27
so that you'll buy new ones. And this movie
18:30
kind of gives that light where it's like, hey, you know what? This
18:35
is your fault. It's consumers. Like we kind of get that hint where it's like
18:38
you got to stop buying. And in a way we have to stop buying. We
18:41
have to stop thinking about how much can I buy and
18:45
start thinking about what can I get out of this product that's
18:49
a value for a long time. right? Get away from
18:52
that impulse buy. Think about your purchases. Think about our purchases. And
18:55
I fall within this as well, right? I am not good. I
18:58
like impulse buy all the time. I see something like I want it. I have the money. I'm
19:02
going to get it. Not everybody's like that because times are tough. So we're starting to
19:05
like, you know, penny pinch a little bit more. But it's
19:08
really easy to buy when you don't have to worry about giving up cash. You don't have
19:12
to see your cash leaving your hand. You're on an app and all you have to
19:15
do is just press one button and it comes to your door within a couple of days, sometimes within
19:18
the same day, depending on where you live. It is crazy to
19:22
think that we as consumers can just buy
19:25
all this stuff, but we also have the power not to buy all this. But
19:29
on the other hand, we're kind of stuck because things are really expensive.
19:33
If I can buy something for cheap, I will buy it for cheaper, especially if
19:36
I can buy it online and I don't have to go in person. There are
19:40
places like Amazon, Walmart, all these big box stores and these online
19:43
stores that have a lot of purchasing power that can buy things for cheaper and
19:47
therefore sell things for cheaper compared to like your local supermarket or
19:51
your local store variety store where if you go in and buy it,
19:54
it's going to be more expensive because they don't have the purchasing power of these huge franchises.
19:58
I was just talking to somebody about a company that's local to us. It's
20:01
local to the area. It's like a deli meat company. And it's
20:04
great. It has great food, sausages, food. It's like a supermarket, but
20:08
a smaller supermarket, a little bit more expensive. But there was
20:11
a box store that moved in almost right beside
20:14
it. And it probably sells things for cheaper, very
20:18
similar, maybe not as good quality what we're used to. But we have to make
20:21
that choice now, where do we want to just go to a place that's going
20:24
to sell it for cheaper? Or do we want to go and go to a place that's
20:28
that's more local to us, right? That's not very like it's not in
20:31
many cities, it's maybe in like two or three cities around the area. It's
20:34
family owned, it's smaller, and it sells a
20:38
great product. But right now they're struggling because
20:41
there's other big box stores that are coming in and undercutting them.
20:45
So are we going to see the demise of a family-owned business that's local
20:48
that will spend money locally, like within the area? Or
20:51
are we going to see the success of
20:55
another big box store that makes a lot of money, the
20:58
money goes to the headquarters and goes to some billionaire
21:02
or somebody who's soon going to be a billionaire, and we never see the money
21:05
back in our community? It's a very difficult position
21:09
to be in because we're, as consumers, we're balancing what
21:12
we can afford, and especially these days, it's not very much, and
21:16
what we want to support, you know, from a value perspective in our
21:19
local community. So I think that the difficulty thing, and
21:24
many viewers, although they appreciate the in-depth exploration,
21:29
they're kind of like, hold on a second here, is this our fault? Like,
21:32
is this really our fault? It would be great to
21:35
see more systematic solutions to
21:40
the problem, not just put it on us. They do the same thing with climate change, if
21:43
you've noticed. It's all about us, all about the individual consumer. When I
21:46
speak up about climate change, some people are like, well, do you do
21:49
this? Do you do this? Do you not take this? Or you like that phone? We've heard senators
21:53
say that. uh... in in in your congressman say that in
21:56
in the u s you know at an actual committee means that what you're talking
22:00
about how to we have to reduce uh... clinton's but that phone was made
22:03
through fossil fuels and through plastics and things like that's because yes his assistant made
22:07
it that way there's no other alternative that we can buy that's more
22:10
sustainable right? Hopefully that's coming down the road, but
22:14
we don't see that because there's no incentive to do that. So it shouldn't
22:17
be on the consumer who has no choice. You have to get in with technology. You have
22:20
to get in with, um, what's happening, right?
22:24
You just can't, you can't just rebel even
22:28
though if you want, if you want to be successful, if you want to have
22:31
a good life in this world, There has to
22:34
be a systematic solution to help control some
22:38
of these products that are coming out. It's very easy to pick
22:41
a product that's not sustainable or not environmentally friendly. Those
22:45
are all around. Everybody that I've talked to on this podcast and talked to
22:48
off this podcast about building a business that's more sustainable, the
22:52
amount of difficulty they have creating a product that
22:55
is sustainable. But
23:16
other times, you kind of have to. So it's a really difficult situation. The
23:19
best way to do it is you can have
23:23
a solution with your wallet by not paying for those products and going more sustainable. If
23:27
you have the money, spend a little bit more for the sustainable product. Or
23:31
what you can do is talk to your businesses, talk
23:34
to your government, and hopefully they will help with that. It's
23:38
a very difficult situation. A good, solid, from
23:42
what I know, documentary that's on Netflix, I highly recommend
23:46
that you watch it on Netflix. But I want to go through with you and
23:49
talk to you about it because I think it's something that we really need
23:53
to talk about. We need to talk about this
23:57
consumption at the best time when we're talking about probably the most intense
24:02
consumption time of the year. We're buying so many products. So I
24:05
would love to hear what you think. Hit me up on Instagram at how to
24:08
protect the ocean, or you can hit me up on various platforms. People have
24:11
hit me up on LinkedIn recently. People have hit me up on YouTube in
24:15
the comments or Spotify in the comments. I respond to
24:18
as many as possible as soon as I can. So please feel free
24:21
to drop a comment in the YouTube comment section, or
24:25
if you want to comment on Spotify, Or if you want to just hit
24:28
me up on Instagram, please do so at HowToProtectTheOcean. That's
24:32
at HowToProtectTheOcean. I want to thank you again for listening
24:35
to me. I would love to hear again your thoughts on the movie. But thank
24:39
you so much for joining me on today's episode of the HowToProtectTheOcean podcast. I'm