It’s gift giving season! We know what that means, time to make our holiday wish list for friends and family. Let’s scope out the hottest items of the season:

• First, we definitely need an Owala water bottle, the Stanley cup I bought this past March is so outdated. 
• Second, we need a Ninja CREAMi in blend ice cream and milkshakes, definitely don’t use the blender we already have.
• Third, we definitely need another tote bag, I mean, I already have like… twenty, but this one has a frog on it!

We definitely, one-hundred percent, totally, and truly need all of these items… or do we?

Here’s the deal. I guarantee that most of the time, we don’t need what we’re buying. But the society we live in and the economy it relies on, tell us that consumption is necessary. In the age of social media, this narrative has only gotten worse. Influencers on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are constantly pushing products onto us:

@alixearle Linking more ideas for holdiay wishlists in my @Amazon storefront in bio! ❣️ @Amazon Influencer Program #amazonpartner ♬ original sound – Alix Earle

@jiggythursdaytik tok shop is the worst its making me go crazy♬ original sound – jig

Above: A TikTok of popular influencer Alix Earle promoting Amazon. Earle’s personal brand is so powerful that its consumer impact has been coined “The Alix Earle Effect” Below: A viral TikTok parodying influencer sponsored content.

I know from personal experience temptations created by the constant streams of videos screaming “Buy this! Buy that!”, but these influencers only feed into overconsumption — the practice of buying more than needed. And while buying another water bottle, blender, or tote bag might seem harmless, the environmental costs of these small purchases add up. 

Take water for example, the water footprint of a singular t-shirt is 659 gallons of water. That’s the number we get by taking into account every step of the manufacturing process. To put that in perspective, each t-shirt needs two years worth of drinking water to be manufactured. Now take into account that factories make hundreds of shirts a day and suddenly to make that t-shirt we’re using Olympic-size swimming pools of fresh water that could be used for other purposes.

We also have to consider that — to make a t-shirt in the first place — cotton in India has to get to a factory in China and then get to a store in America. That’s a lot of transport. When looking at the total emissions created to transport goods, we see that over 3 billion tons of CO2 is emitted annually to move products all over the globe. Speaking of India, 3 billion tons is equivalent to the amount of emissions produced by the entire country in 2023, the third largest producer in the world! 

It should be noted that overconsumption is a particular problem in the United States. The US only houses 5% of the world’s population, but consumes 25% of the world’s resources. I’m talking about oil, water, meat, grain, timber, iron, metals, minerals… Not only that, but we spend more than anyone else in the world. China has the second largest consumer market in the world, with Chinese households spending a collective $7 trillion in 2023. The US is the largest consumer market in the world. How much did American households spend in total? $19 trillion, a number that dwarfs China’s spending.

Now while it’s obvious the United States loves to consume and takes more than a quarter of the world’s resources, does it actually need them? I’d argue: no. Just look at the sheer amount of waste the US produces. Each year, approximately 300 million tons of waste is produced in the US, which is around 5 pounds per person per day. We not only consume more than everyone else in the world, we produce the most waste.

It’s also not completely our fault. Americans have been conditioned to buy goods of increasingly poorer quality. During the Great Depression there was a need to stimulate the economy. How do you stimulate the economy? By compelling people to buy. This led to the idea of “consumer engineering”, creating artificial demand by making older objects undesirable. Almost a century later and Americans are caught in a vicious cycle: the consumer has an appetite for newer things, so the industry needs to keep up with demand, which lowers the quality of goods, which drives people to need newer things.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Up until 50 years ago, mending clothes and items was the norm. There is so much value in repairing your clothes and items. Not only does it save you money, but it can be fun as you get to learn a new skill and express your creativity. Upcycling is a form of repairing that incorporates creativity to make a whole new item. For example, a month ago a pair of my favorite jeans ripped on the back of my leg — unrepairable as jeans — so instead I turned them into shorts!

Another form of reuse is buying second hand. There are tons of items in thrift stores, antique shops, and online marketplaces just waiting to be used. The greatest thing about buying second hand? The little reward center in your brain giving you a happiness boost from buying, but without the large environmental price tag that comes from buying brand new.

So what should we take away from this? Overall, we need to be more conscious about what we consume and when. I know, that last minute holiday deal is so tempting! But I encourage everyone to think about how — and if — that item will be used. Next, we need to put in the small effort into maintaining the items we already have. The longer things last, the less we need to replace. 

Everything with a price tag also has  an invisible environmental price tag. It’s important that we stay mindful — no matter what the trends are telling us.