Meet The Brands Using Black Friday as Call to Conscious Consumption
This holiday season, Ecoalf suggests thinking critically about what a “good deal” means—unpacking who or what benefits and how long those benefits last, for example—before shelling out for post-pie purchases.
The Spanish, sustainable-but-still-sleek brand has spent the last 15 years, give or take, disavowing Black Friday as a primal, destructive day, to relative success. According to the B Corp’s most recent sustainability report, its 2022 Black Friday recycling campaign with English poet Tom Foolery hit nearly 45 million press-based views and another 2.5 million organic hits.
In an expedition with Spanish filmmaker Stella Banderas, Ecoalf founder and president Javier Goyeneche “took the moment a step further,” all the way to Chile, for this year’s Black Friday campaign.
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“It’s not enough to share statistics about the waste our industry is generating—we wanted travel to the Atacama Desert to show people what happens to this clothing when they toss it into garbage bags and forget about it,” Goyeneche said in a statement. “The piles of discarded garments aren’t just numbers; they are real, growing mountains of waste in other parts of the world.”
The plateau’s visible-from-space garment graveyard was the central focus of the not-quite-two-minute-long video. Debuting by way of a joint IG grid post, the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren sets the scene for the documentary, which was commissioned by the recycled ocean plastic purveyor.
Within 24 months of purchase, 60 percent of fast fashion frocks are tossed and/or burned, Banderas alleges, narrating over clips of the region previously home to what she called the largest textile and trash landfill in the world.
“Two years ago, the Atacama landfill was mysteriously burned, causing it to mostly disappear and exude extremely toxic chemicals to the surrounding communities,” she continues—likely a nod to the systemic climate consequence known as El Paso de la Mula, the confusing Alto Hospicio fires from 2022 that the nonprofit media group Grist covered earlier this year.
In line with the climate solution publication’s reporting, the sustainable fragrance founder suggests the issue is far from gone, as two-thirds of Chile’s secondhand imports go through the port of Iquique, a “free trade zone established without any environmental controls, which encourages this booming secondhand textile industry,” per Banderas.
The modern consumer’s apathy fuels this market, as a collective lack of consideration for what happens to outgrown outfits is what keeps the Iquique engine running. Considering global Black Friday sales surpassed $67.6 billion last year and “continues to rise,” per Ecoalf, the video closes with a call to action: consume better less often.
“Each of us has the power to say no to over-consumption by shopping responsibly for quality pieces; we cannot keep consuming the way we do,” she concludes. “Let’s be part of the solution, not the problem, and work together for a planet beyond next season.”
Banderas later called the journey with Ecoalf a “profound experience.”
“I have long been drawn to initiatives that promote environmental stewardship, which is why I eagerly embraced the opportunity to collaborate with Ecoalf,” she said in a statement. “I hope this project sheds light on the pressing realities we face and underscores our collective responsibility to effect change: reject fast fashion, prioritize quality over quantity and buy less.”
Ecoalf, too, adheres to a justify-the-means approach.
“[Atacama] has only reinforced the importance that it is up to us: we need to invest in quality garments. If we don’t change our habits, this problem will only continue,” Goyeneche said. “It’s easy for people to place the blame on brands, but every time we make a purchase, we’re endorsing the future that company promotes for the planet.”
Using Black Friday as an opportunity to virtue signal and shame consumers is not novel, though of bolstered relevance this season considering the subduing of once-absurd sales, inflation and changing consumer habits.
Allbirds bucked the tradition of discounts, instead raising prices by $1 in 2020 to donate to environmental causes. Its “Break tradition, not the planet” campaign matched those $1 donations. In 2021, Patagonia donated a record $10 million in Black Friday sales to a conservation-centered grassroots group. REI closes its doors on Black Friday to encourage enjoying the great outdoors. The retailer’s “Opt Outside” movement has been around since 2015 and became an official (and permanent) paid holiday for its 16,000 employees in 2022.
Social Studies, a nascent “socially conscious fashion destination” co-founded by Jessica Valenzuela Gangoso and Daniel Lewis, tapped into the trend with its F*ck Black Friday campaign. On the individual level, the campaign encourages slowing down consumption and reframing the concept of sales. On the public forum, Social Studies is incentivizing customers to volunteer within their community, spending time to give back. Anyone who tags the online curator on socials with proof of being decent gets 30 percent off pieces from the likes of Ganni and Collina Strada.
“Black Friday has become a holiday which big brands plan for by designing lower quality items to intentionally be sold at lower price points and overproducing to ensure no sale is left unfulfilled. Lower prices typically mean lower quality materials and worse working conditions for the people making the things being purchased,” Lewis told Sourcing Journal. “Rather than incentivizing overconsumption of low-quality goods, Social Studies encourages people to engage in the higher-quality parts of life by creating value in their community.”
