Buy Now The Shopping Conspiracy: A Marine Biologist Reviews

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Buy Now The Shopping Conspiracy is a documentary that

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is just released on Netflix last week, a week before Black

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Friday, the day this episode is being published. Right

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now, you're probably looking for deals, and I don't blame you. It's expensive to

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buy things out there, and to find deals for

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getting ready for the holidays, to buy gifts for your loved ones, is really

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great. It may be some stuff for yourself. You deserve it, you've worked hard. But are

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we over-consuming and is it our fault? That's gonna be the subject of

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today's episode. We're gonna be reviewing the documentary, Buy

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Now, The Shopping Conspiracy, because it

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needs to be talked about. We need to talk about our consumption of goods.

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This is a documentary and it's something that we need to discuss right now on

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this episode. So let's start the show. Hey

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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm

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your host, Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how

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you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by

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taking action. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about

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consumption, about buying things. And are we buying too

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much? Have we put too much of a focus on having things

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rather than experiences like spending time

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with people and has our striving for consumption and

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buying things for people and receiving so many materialistic things, has

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it gone too far and is it hurting the environment? That

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was the question surrounding the Netflix special or

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the Netflix documentary buy now the shopping conspiracy.

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lined up early, early in the morning, sometimes the night before to get to

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take advantage of all the crazy deals that were happening the

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day after Thanksgiving. It was a time where people bought gifts

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for the holidays. It was a time where people trampled over

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each other just to get the deal they wanted and to make their family

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members or friends happy. That's a crazy time.

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Now, things have kind of really gotten out of hand. Maybe not so

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much the in-person shopping and the violence. I think that's kind of

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subsided a little bit because online shopping has really made way

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to make it easier to get deals. And it's not just one

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day. It's not just Black Friday. It's not just Cyber Monday. It's

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all about the week or even two weeks surrounding Black Friday.

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There are deals that I've been receiving for pretty

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much two weeks before Black Friday. Now this episode is gonna be released on

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Black Friday, so it's really timely to have this documentary

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discussed on a day where it's probably the biggest shopping

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day in North America. Let's be honest, it's a huge, huge

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day. There are a lot of companies who are making quite

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a bit of money. So today, what I wanted to do was go over what

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this consumption's about, how it's impacting our

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lives, not only from a human perspective, but from an

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environment perspective, and how we're getting through the holidays, right?

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The holidays are a time where you're

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supposed to have experiences with family, with friends, and

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spend time with your loved ones. But a lot of the times, when

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we get to the fall, it's late fall, it's gonna be early winter coming

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soon, and it can be a very great time for a lot of

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people. And you wanna make sure that your mind is right.

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You wanna do whatever you can to make sure that you have a

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good time during the season. Whether you're buying stuff for family and

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friends, whether you're spending time with family and friends. I know not

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everybody's family and friends situation is the same and is the best, but

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you wanna make sure that your mind is right. And to be honest, something that I've

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been doing on and off recently, and

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really more recently, especially as it gets a little grayer. So I wanna make

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sure that my mind is right. And so what I've been doing is

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I've actually been, I've been talking about for the last year called Magic

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Mind. It is an elixir that has a

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lot of healthy things in it. It has ginger, it has

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a bunch of things that I use. It's a little shot that I take every morning

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and I basically take the shot, I use it and it basically gives

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me the ability to start my day off right.

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It gets my mind right, it gets me focused, it has

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some caffeine in it, but what I love about this caffeine is it

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gives you the caffeine fix throughout the day. It's not just one

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shot, you feel like you're up here, and then once that caffeine goes

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away, you crash down like you would with sugary drinks that

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have caffeine, or coffee that have caffeine. This is just a quick shot,

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I take it, and I'm focused and awake for the rest of

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the day. My working day, whether I'm doing a video, whether I'm editing

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videos, whether I'm doing research, whether I'm interacting with

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you, the audience member, it's just a bunch of things. One

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thing that I love about it is it just, It's not expensive,

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it's very environmentally friendly, and the company continues

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to become more and more environmentally friendly where they can. And

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you can get it, they've actually, and you can get it through my affiliate link

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and get 20% off. using this affiliate

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link. So if you go to www.magicmind.com forward

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slash Lewin20, that's L-E-W-I-N 20. So

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it's www.magicmind.com forward

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slash Lewin, L-E-W-I-N 20. 20 all

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one word check that out. I'll put that in the show notes so you can click on

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it You can get 20% off you can get to your holiday season, right?

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Make sure you're focused get all that work right to keep that job to

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keep going and trying to protect the ocean I use it

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and it's fantastic. I think it's I recommend it to anybody. I

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am NOT a big fan normally of elixirs this

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is something that I love. So check out the link in the description below

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and in the show notes if you're listening to this on audio, and let

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me know what you think about it. So it's www.magicmind.com forward

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slash Lewin, L-E-W-I-N 20, that's my

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last name, Lewin, L-E-W-I-N 20, and

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let me know what you think. All right, let's get back to the show. I wanna

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talk about this documentary because something that I feel like this

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documentary highlights, I wanna talk some of the different highlights, some

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of the key highlights that have come out of this documentary. Now, the overall goal

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of this documentary is to show the consumption and how companies are

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taking advantage of consumers to make sure that you have

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the latest and greatest of all the products that are out there. It's all about mass

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consumption so that they can make a ton of money. That's really what

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it's about. And so what we're trying to do here is

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highlight the movie. I highly recommend that you watch the documentary on

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Netflix if you have Netflix. But what I want to talk about is what

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it really looks like. So the film examines how companies like

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Amazon, Adidas, and Apple use persuasive marketing

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techniques to encourage consumers to overspend. That's

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really what it comes down to. It goes over environmental impacts, which I'll

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go into in just a second. It highlights ecological damage caused

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by the excessive consumption, such as the disposal of unsold clothing, leading

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to environmental degradation in countries like Ghana in

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Africa. and Apple easy

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as possible. Let's

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just buy now. So you go over the cart and you say, you know what? I

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don't want to buy anything in my cart right now. I want to just hold on to that. I'm just going to

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buy this product right now so I can get it as fast as possible. So they're making things

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that are easier to shop and making that impulse buy.

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That's what it's all about. It's all about the impulse buy. Then there's also they talk

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about e-waste concerns. So it exposes the grim reality of

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electronic waste recycling and how it's really just

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not really out recycling. Showing how discarded electronics are

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often shipped to developing countries, where workers dismantle them

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without proper protection, leading to health hazards. You

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gotta remember that in North America and Europe and a lot of other places,

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they have occupational health and safety at warehouses, at

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work, any type of work should have occupational health and safety. Some

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countries don't have it and their workers are actually suffering

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because of it. It's basically a critical examination of the modern

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consumer culture. and its far-reaching impacts. It is

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really enlightening. A lot of the stuff you've probably known for

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quite some time, but some of the intricacies of how they

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manipulate the consumers is really interesting. So I want to

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dive deeper into the type of pollution that they talk about and

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what it really discusses. So textile waste and pollution.

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So we're looking at fast fashion here, how it drives overproduction. It

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talks about you know, like companies like Sheen, how they

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create millions of new items per year because they just want

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to sell as much as possible. And then with unsold or discarded clothing

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ending up in landfills and being exported to developed countries,

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for example, massive amounts of textile waste accumulate in

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places like Ghana's Kantamento market, where

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the discarded clothes often pollute rivers and harm local ecosystems. Synthetic

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fabrics release microplastics into waterways during

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washing, which contributes to marine pollution that ends up in

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the food chain. From a fashion perspective, it covers that, which we've,

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again, we've known, but it really shows how many items are

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discarded per year. It's an insane amount. You have to watch the

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documentary to really figure it out, to really understand it. Electronic waste.

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E-waste from discarded electronics is frequently exported to developing countries. Improper

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dismantling and disposal release hazardous substances such

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as lead, mercury, and cadmium into the soil and water. Informal

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recycling facilities in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and

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India face significant health and environmental challenges due to the lack

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of proper waste management systems. So again, we're seeing

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the fact that e-waste can cause hazardous

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waste for people that have to dispose it or live in around the

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area that dispose it. A lot of the times when we're told about recycling, like

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electronic recycling or other recycling, Unless you're in the right

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program, it doesn't actually take out all the metals or all the things that need to

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be taken out to properly recycle. It gets shipped off to other countries

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where we know the occupational health and safety standards are not as

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high, and then they have to deal with the repercussions. We

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don't deal with the repercussions. We just use electronics as we please. As

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we say, hey, I need the new and latest, greatest tablet or

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phone or whatever, even though we don't really need it. But they're built

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so that we actually need it. It's just a weird situation here. Then

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we talk about carbon footprint of production and logistics. The

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production and transportation of goods requires significant amounts

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of fossil fuels contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. So

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for instance, factories powering mass production rely

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heavily on coal and oil. That's always not good.

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Shipping goods globally contributes to carbon

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emissions and air pollution. We know from a

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fossil fuel and plastics production point of view, which I'll talk about in

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just a second a little bit more, we know that the fossil fuel companies, a third

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of their business is done through plastics. Plastics is a petroleum

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product. So we know fossil fuels are going to be created

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for the plastics industry and a lot of plastics end up in

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our product packaging or even in our product. So that can be

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really bad. Deforestation and resource depletion. The extraction of raw materials

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for consumer goods leads to deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and

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ecosystem disruption. Examples include logging for furniture and

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packaging, mining for precious metals used in electronics, often

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destroying wildlife habitats. There are a lot of regulations in

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North America, but not other places where mining happens. So a lot of

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not only environmental impacts happen, but also human rights impacts

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are not good in a lot of places like Africa, going

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for some of these diamonds and

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metals that are used in electronics. Plastic waste and ocean pollution.

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So excessive packaging always has plastics in it. Much of

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it is non-recyclable, exacerbates plastic waste problems. Plastics

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break down into microplastics, which accumulate in marine environments, harming

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wildlife and threatening marine ecosystems. Hundreds of thousands of animals die

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a year in the ocean because of plastics. It's

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really simple. It is not hard to get that concept. However, if

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you look around, everything we do has plastic in it. Even companies

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who say, hey, we're going to put in our values that we don't want to have plastics

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in our containers or anything like that down the road, like we're

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going to work towards using less plastics, they continue to

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use plastics. It's all greenwashing. It's all for nothing. And

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it's really frustrating when you look at the harm that plastics do

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to the ocean, not just in big forms. This is microplastics, like

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nanoplastics, that are everywhere. It's like a soup in the ocean. You

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just sit there, and you just get frustrated. As a biologist, as a conservationist, as

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someone who wants to protect the ocean, it's a frustrating process. And

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it's getting worse because of our consumption, our

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overconsumption of goods and materials. Overexploitation

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of water resources. So industries like fast fashion electronics consume

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vast amounts of fresh water. Producing a single pair of jeans can

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require up to 10,000 liters of water. Wastewater from dyeing

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and processing textiles is often discharged untreated, contaminating

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rivers and groundwater, especially depending on where these products are

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made. Again, regulations aren't as good

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in certain countries that are in like European and and

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North American countries. I only say that because that's what I know,

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but there's a lot of standards around that. And even then, sometimes they get

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broken. That's something that we have to look at.

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Climate change impacts. We kind of talked about it a little briefly with fossil fuel industry, but

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increased consumptions accelerates resource use, energy demands, and

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pollution, contributing to rising temperatures, ocean acidification, and

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more frequent weather, extreme weather events. The impacts underscore the

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urgent need for sustainable consumption practices, better

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waste management systems, and more transparent corporate accountability. Now,

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one of the things that I want to gather And I put this in chat, GPT,

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because I wanted to find out what people think. Obviously, this is

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really harmful. But I feel as though the movie

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was talking to consumers. It was trying to make consumers

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aware of some of these practices that You

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know, these companies will play to manipulate us.

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So there's that awareness. Oh, we're being manipulated. This is not about consumption.

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It's almost like you want to keep up with the Joneses, right? You want to keep up with

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your neighbor to say, hey, they have this or your friends and say, hey,

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they have this. I want to have this. I see this a lot in

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in my kids, in teenagers where there's a peer pressure based on

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not necessarily like I have this, you don't. Sometimes that happens, but

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it's more of Oh, this person has this, this person, I need to have

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three or four pairs of shoes, I need to have this, I need to have that, I need to have that. These

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are young children who have been taught about environmental sustainability since

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they were young, in class, and they were taught and they want to

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protect the ocean, they want to protect the planet, they want to be environmentally friendly,

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but they fall into these peer pressure

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tactics and marketing tactics that they don't have any control over

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because their minds just fall into the trap. And

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as adults, we do the same thing. I mean, you look at influencers on

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any kind of app, on any kind of social media platform, and they're talking about

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their Amazon haul or their Shein haul or just

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a variety of different companies and like what they got from there. And in the movie,

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they really go to the extreme where they're showing influencers talking about, I bought,

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you know, a hundred iPhones and I bought, look at my Amazon haul

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and all this kind of stuff. Let's go with what I bought. We

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still have people like friends of mine, like Erica Hernandez,

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who talks about, hey, look at my thrift haul because she went thrift

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shopping because it's more sustainable. And so there are influencers out

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there who are sending out the message that, hey, you know what? Going

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thrift shopping and being sustainable is actually better than

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buying new. And you can still look great. You can still feel great. You

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can still go to professional conferences or go to an office. with

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thrifting, like through thrifting, like buying clothes, like used

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clothing is what it is, but you kind of make it cool and kind of make it nice to

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be there. So there are influencers like that, but a lot, most of the people still

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fall into the trap of buying you, I have to buy you, right? Even

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to the point, like I was having discussions today at work, I was having,

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at lunch, I was having discussion, we were talking about the movie, and we're discussing how,

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you know, we try and up everybody, we

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try and even like, you know, there's no repairing anymore, they even talk

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about this in the movie, You know, there's no repairing of clothes. There's

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no like, I remember when I was a kid, if I had like a

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hole in my pants, my parents would sew a patch onto it. Like

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you had patches on your pants all the time. You didn't just go out and

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buy new clothes. You actually got your parents sewed a patch on

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it, or they taught you to sew a patch on. You

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fix things. If something broke, you would fix it. If something was

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too old, you would take it apart and you would put it back together. You would maybe

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make something new out of it because it wasn't working as its primary

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function. So we're talking a lot about that at lunch, and

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we just don't have that anymore. When you're trying, like a

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friend of mine was trying to fix his vacuum cleaner and looking for a part. The part was

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so expensive, it was almost the same price as buying a

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new vacuum. So why fix something that's broken

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when you can get something brand new? We get warranties where

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it's like, hey, you know what? If you do a warranty, we'll just send you something brand

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new if it breaks. Companies don't even care if it breaks or not.

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They may have a program where they sell refurbished, but

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a lot of times you don't really see that. You see mostly new stuff. Appliances,

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kitchen appliances and appliances for the home, they're not built like they

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used to be. They're built to break down earlier so you'll buy another thing.

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It used to be, and sometimes it still happens, where appliances that

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were built in the 70s, 60s and 70s, are still working today. They're

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still being used today, but now you get like a dishwasher or something, it

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lasts for maybe three to five years. They used

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to last for like 10 to 20. And so it's just like these companies

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that keep making these products that are not as good, just

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so that you'll buy new ones. And this movie

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kind of gives that light where it's like, hey, you know what? This

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is your fault. It's consumers. Like we kind of get that hint where it's like

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you got to stop buying. And in a way we have to stop buying. We

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have to stop thinking about how much can I buy and

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start thinking about what can I get out of this product that's

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a value for a long time. right? Get away from

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that impulse buy. Think about your purchases. Think about our purchases. And

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I fall within this as well, right? I am not good. I

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like impulse buy all the time. I see something like I want it. I have the money. I'm

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going to get it. Not everybody's like that because times are tough. So we're starting to

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like, you know, penny pinch a little bit more. But it's

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really easy to buy when you don't have to worry about giving up cash. You don't have

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to see your cash leaving your hand. You're on an app and all you have to

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do is just press one button and it comes to your door within a couple of days, sometimes within

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the same day, depending on where you live. It is crazy to

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think that we as consumers can just buy

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all this stuff, but we also have the power not to buy all this. But

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on the other hand, we're kind of stuck because things are really expensive.

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If I can buy something for cheap, I will buy it for cheaper, especially if

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I can buy it online and I don't have to go in person. There are

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places like Amazon, Walmart, all these big box stores and these online

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stores that have a lot of purchasing power that can buy things for cheaper and

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therefore sell things for cheaper compared to like your local supermarket or

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your local store variety store where if you go in and buy it,

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it's going to be more expensive because they don't have the purchasing power of these huge franchises.

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I was just talking to somebody about a company that's local to us. It's

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local to the area. It's like a deli meat company. And it's

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great. It has great food, sausages, food. It's like a supermarket, but

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a smaller supermarket, a little bit more expensive. But there was

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a box store that moved in almost right beside

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it. And it probably sells things for cheaper, very

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similar, maybe not as good quality what we're used to. But we have to make

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that choice now, where do we want to just go to a place that's going

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to sell it for cheaper? Or do we want to go and go to a place that's

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that's more local to us, right? That's not very like it's not in

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many cities, it's maybe in like two or three cities around the area. It's

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family owned, it's smaller, and it sells a

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great product. But right now they're struggling because

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there's other big box stores that are coming in and undercutting them.

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So are we going to see the demise of a family-owned business that's local

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that will spend money locally, like within the area? Or

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are we going to see the success of

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another big box store that makes a lot of money, the

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money goes to the headquarters and goes to some billionaire

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or somebody who's soon going to be a billionaire, and we never see the money

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back in our community? It's a very difficult position

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to be in because we're, as consumers, we're balancing what

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we can afford, and especially these days, it's not very much, and

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what we want to support, you know, from a value perspective in our

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local community. So I think that the difficulty thing, and

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many viewers, although they appreciate the in-depth exploration,

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they're kind of like, hold on a second here, is this our fault? Like,

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is this really our fault? It would be great to

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see more systematic solutions to

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the problem, not just put it on us. They do the same thing with climate change, if

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you've noticed. It's all about us, all about the individual consumer. When I

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speak up about climate change, some people are like, well, do you do

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this? Do you do this? Do you not take this? Or you like that phone? We've heard senators

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say that. uh... in in in your congressman say that in

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in the u s you know at an actual committee means that what you're talking

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about how to we have to reduce uh... clinton's but that phone was made

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through fossil fuels and through plastics and things like that's because yes his assistant made

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it that way there's no other alternative that we can buy that's more

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sustainable right? Hopefully that's coming down the road, but

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we don't see that because there's no incentive to do that. So it shouldn't

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be on the consumer who has no choice. You have to get in with technology. You have

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to get in with, um, what's happening, right?

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You just can't, you can't just rebel even

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though if you want, if you want to be successful, if you want to have

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a good life in this world, There has to

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be a systematic solution to help control some

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of these products that are coming out. It's very easy to pick

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a product that's not sustainable or not environmentally friendly. Those

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are all around. Everybody that I've talked to on this podcast and talked to

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off this podcast about building a business that's more sustainable, the

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amount of difficulty they have creating a product that

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is sustainable. But

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other times, you kind of have to. So it's a really difficult situation. The

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best way to do it is you can have

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a solution with your wallet by not paying for those products and going more sustainable. If

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you have the money, spend a little bit more for the sustainable product. Or

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what you can do is talk to your businesses, talk

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to your government, and hopefully they will help with that. It's

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a very difficult situation. A good, solid, from

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what I know, documentary that's on Netflix, I highly recommend

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that you watch it on Netflix. But I want to go through with you and

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talk to you about it because I think it's something that we really need

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to talk about. We need to talk about this

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consumption at the best time when we're talking about probably the most intense

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consumption time of the year. We're buying so many products. So I

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would love to hear what you think. Hit me up on Instagram at how to

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protect the ocean, or you can hit me up on various platforms. People have

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hit me up on LinkedIn recently. People have hit me up on YouTube in

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the comments or Spotify in the comments. I respond to

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as many as possible as soon as I can. So please feel free

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to drop a comment in the YouTube comment section, or

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if you want to comment on Spotify, Or if you want to just hit

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00:24:28,473 --> 00:24:31,917
me up on Instagram, please do so at HowToProtectTheOcean. That's

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00:24:32,137 --> 00:24:35,701
at HowToProtectTheOcean. I want to thank you again for listening

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to me. I would love to hear again your thoughts on the movie. But thank

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you so much for joining me on today's episode of the HowToProtectTheOcean podcast. I'm