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Watch Yourself this Buy Nothing Day

By Sarah Smith

I heard about Buy Nothing Day a year ago at the first Student Environment Centre meeting I attended at UBC. I volunteered to help organise a Stuff Swap event to celebrate BND and my involvement with the project had a profound effect on the way I thought about my consumption practices.

The reasons behind Buy Nothing Day are complex. In its 13th year, BND is a global initiative. It is a day to not participate in the frenetic consumer-binge that has become central to our culture. But instead of tackling the enormous economic, social and political issues upon which BND is based, the first step to participating in Buy Nothing Day is to start thinking about your consumption patterns.

Last year I began asking myself some basic but important questions. What or whom am I supporting by buying my produce from Safeway? From Capers? Why do I feel the need to continually buy more for my apartment, car or closet? On what do I base my ideas of happiness? Being honest with myself as I answer these questions continues to be difficult.

We are socialised from infancy to be consumers. Marketing companies target young television audiences, as we see in the documentary “The Corporation,

Digging for love, money, fame and sex appeal

By Bryan Zandberg
Published: May 19, 2006

For Wally Satzewich, the kick of urban gardening is making fat money and sticking it to the Man. Thing is, he's doing it growing leafy greens in people's back yards.

He's one of many urbanites who like to get dirty. Which is ironic, because for generations, waves of migrants left the ragged toil of the country behind to slip into the tidy cubicles of the Information Age. And yet city slickers of all stripes are now down in the soil, sowing veggies like their country forebears did. Besides some kind of West Coast leguminous nirvana, you have to ask what compels them. In Vancouver at least, it seems they're greening up the city for everything from money, to posh ingredients, to urban renewal, to muscle tone.

For those of you that are not familiar with Vancouver, BC, we have a great community garden project that runs along the old railroad track in Kitsilano. The City Farmer project (the website has a wealth of information about urban farming) has been in existence since 1978. It is one of my favorite places to walk in the spring and summer in the city. On weekend days the small land plots are spotted with community members bent over their crops or chatting with each other over the short wire fences that divide the plots, their hands dark with dirt.

My roommate, Maureen, and I are lucky enough to live two short blocks away from this urban agricultural haven. This year they have opened up a couple more plots further down the tracks and we were quick to claim one for ourselves.

Shelby and I have decided that we would like to increase our presence on the Relocalization Network, by posting regularly on our blogs, checking new forum posts and adding more of our own content.

I have never thought that I would enter into the world of blogging, because I always thought I needed something profound and insightful to say in order to post on the internet.  Well, if you are looking for something along those lines, you are out of luck - at least for now.

This week Shelby and I are working on writing the content for the new relocalize.net site and are developing a new and improved information package for new groups.  We also are in the process of creating a information package about the new voluntary membership fee program.