What is #TartanFriday ?
#TartanFriday puts a different spin on the orgy of consumption. Sure, we love stuff too and we’re fond of a bargain, however, we think it’s all got out of hand. We’ve got too much stuff, we haven’t got room to keep, we chuck it out and then buy more. Take a trip to your community recycling centre and you’ll see perfectly good bikes, bookshelves and mirrors all getting chucked away. Our consumer society in full flow. We’re a guilty as anyone in this, but we’d like to be better.
So we’re launching #TartanFriday to run each year on the same day as #BlackFriday. We’d like you to join in if you fancy.
The idea is fairly simple: We donate to a charity on #TartanFriday and we avoid buying stuff. We’ll donate to our own supported charity and we’ll also put in £5 to the first 20 charities nominated on our Facebook Page
It’s not much, we know on our behalf, but if 1% of the companies in Scotland / UK / Europe etc did this then we’d raise shed loads of dosh for charity and help nudge us towards a more sustainable way of living.
We’re not particularly having a dig at Amazon in this, they created something that is very convenient at a good price. However, we’d be grateful if they paid a wee bit more corporation tax. According to the BBC it was just £7m in 2017.
How things used to be
In the ‘olden’ days we’d buy a CD (or a vinyl record) from our local music shop. That shop would be paying rates and the owner lived in the city. S/ he’d spend their money in the fish shop who’d spend it in the butcher, who’d go the pub, who’d be employing local people and so the money goes around the community with local (and national) taxes being taken at the appropriate points.
These taxes in part built and ran libraries where we could all go along and borrow books for ….free….There’s no need to keep them, just hand them back. Now we buy from online retailers who often have financial arrangements that involve shipping most of the revenue to a tax haven – out of the community and not creating any high street jobs. Nobody is doing anything illegal, it just doesn’t seem very, well, fair. Or sustainable.
What can we do?
So we can’t change the world and we don’t want to limit our choice permanently. However, we do want to try to make a difference in our own small, microscopic way. So here we are #TartanFriday. At the very least we’ll give a wee bit to charity and not order anything for ‘next day delivery’. Are you gonna chum us on the journey?
