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(From: Omslag - workshop for sustainable development)

Dutch Buy Nothing Day marks turning-point to less consumption

Eindhoven/The Netherlands, November 30, 2003 - The International Buy Nothing Day - which also in The Netherlands was celebrated with great enthousiasm - marks the current trend of reservedness amongst the average Dutch consumer.

Just this weekend an official report of research-bureaus Q&A and IMT was presented, which shows that in The Netherlands this years' Sinterklaas- and christmass-shoppings are expected to be substantially less exuberant than in earlier years. Although the background of this restraint for many consumers is mainly financial, nature and the environment will derive much benefit from more moderate consumption-patterns. Many consumers experienced Buy Nothing Day as a moral support.

Much sympathy

This year the Dutch Buy Nothing Day ('Niet-Winkeldag') was characterized by a high volume of creativity. In sixteen cities activists went into the streets to draw attention to the consequences of over-consumption for people and for the environment, and to focus on the un-equal access to consumption for all world-citizens. Everywhere the activists met a lot of sympathy and approval from the shopping public.

The Dutch Niet-Winkeldag is part of the international Buy Nothing Day-campaign, which since 1992 takes place each last weekend of November. This year Buy Bothing Day was celebrated in about 65 countries. In The Netherlands BND was celebrated for the nineth time.

Sixteen cities

Last Saturday there were Buy Nothing-actions in sixteen Dutch cities: Amersfoort, Amsterdam, Barneveld, Den Haag, Arnhem, Den Bosch, Diemen, Eindhoven, Groningen, Leeuwarden, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, Tilburg, Utrecht, Wageningen and Zevenaar.

The activities were organised by local initiators, often in cooperation with local groups such as: Emmaus-communities, Food Not Bombs, religious groups, squat-cafes, LETS-circles, sections of Friends of the Earth ('Milieudefensie'), peace-organisations and Give Away-shops ('Weggeefwinkels'). There was also suport from local sections of national environment-, youngsters- and political organisations, such as DWARS, GreenLeft ('GroenLinks'), Young Active Environmentalists ('Jongeren Milieu Actief'), Rood and the Anti-Kapitalisten. Some activities were organized by local groups which were formed specially for this occasion.

Many different actions

The Dutch BND showed a wide ranch of actions: handing out anti-greed pills, balloons with the text 'Koop Niets! ('Buy Nothing!'), bottomless shoppingbags, distributing free food and drinks, street-livingrooms, info-stalls, religious meetings, live music, handy- and painting-activities, folding mini-purses, political discussions, exchange-stalls, banners, streettheatre and give away-actions.

Silver Wolf-award for documentary about over-consumption

On Friday, Buy Nothing Day-activists were gladly surprised by the Silver Wolf-award for the documentary 'Surplus - Being Terrorized Into Consumers', at the International Film- and Documentary Festival (IDFA) in Amsterdam. This documentary, by the Swedish filmmaker Erik Gandini, focusses on the motivation of mainly young people worldwide to resist against over- consumption and the poisoning influence of advertisement. For more information click here.

Den Bosch: People came to apologize for their shopping

DEN BOSCH - Until the late afternoon ten enthusiastic non-consumers tried to wake up the shopping audience from their shopping-intoxication. Among the activists were members of Food Not Bombs-Den Bosch and of the local section of Loesje. **)

Food Not Bombs distributed free super delicious vegetable soup, bread and salad; all made of food that otherwise would have been thrown away by supermarkets. Loesje-Den Bosch pulled the attention with a large poster clothesline filled with Consume Less-posters. Besides that, the shopping-street stood full of sandwich boards with Loesje-texts: 'Free the market, buy less', 'Buy Nothing Day: overloaded my shopping-cart with ideals today' and 'People: Do Buy Nothing!'. Hundreds of leaflets were handed out with on one side a Loesje-text, and at the other side some questions for average compulsive buyers to ask their selves from time to time. Most people are very eager to receive a Loesje-flyer; the texts are in general inviting to think about and to be self-critical.

Next to the Food Not Bombs-stall there was a 'Give Away'-stall, where many redundant goods were given away for nothing so that they could start a second life. This stall was especially very popular with children. However the 'lucky dip' was the greatest fun of all. Also there was a real clothes-department, where the remainders of a recent clothes-exchange-afternoon were given away for nothing.

On this super-crowded Saturday-afternoon thousands of people have seen the Buy Nothing Day-stalls. Those who wanted, received a flyer, a cup of soup and some explanation. It's always difficult to find out what's going on in the minds of the people watching a Buy Nothing Day-action. Those who stayed for a while were in general very positive. One man became a little bit angry, saying he always buys Fair Trade products and recycled paper (which he always throws away separately for recycling). The activists tried to make clear to him that this action was about OVER-consumption and raising awareness amongst people who are not so well-informed yet about the history and future of products. Nevertheless the man was convinced that we had chosen a wrong form of action. In his opinion the people reacted negative or des-interested to the action.

BND-campaigner Geertje Jansen reacts to this: ,,Well, I haven't seen any negative reactions, but maybe it's a good idea for next year to choose a more (inter)active and ludicrous approach. The results of our action today showed up at the end of the afternoon: some people came back to our stall to apologize for their shopping today. Well, we're not at the end already, but we're on our way''.

Shop-keepers and the media unfortunately didn't respond to the action in Den Bosch. Instead the activists got some attention from the police, because the non-shoppers didn't have a license to sell. ,,But we don't sell anything! We're just speaking out our opinion''. The police however remained adamant. If the activists were to stay there, they should have a mobile stall... It was easy to arrange some wheels under our stall, but al these rules? ,,They may take their rules away for nothing!'', says Geertje. And she concludes on: ,,All together we are very satisfied about our action. Next year we will certainly go into the streets again. What a pity that it's Buy Nothing Day only once a year! Right now we are already busy planning an action for just before Christmas; it's good to talk with people about over-consumption again by then! And next year there will be a BND-action again: mobile and ludicious. Just a bit pin-pricking. A town like Den Bosch still needs that very much!''.

**) Loesje is famous all over the Netherlands! For many years already Loesje produces eye-catching posters with short, tickling and mostly positive texts that make people think and smile. In many Dutch cities you find Loesje-posters sticked upon walls, electricity cabines, school cantinas and busstops. Each month Loesje produces new texts; they are spread over the country through internet and by local groups. (back to Den Bosch)

Tilburg: BND-song and golden bags with happiness

TILBURG - In the city-centre of Tilburg the duo 'Fransje & Fransje' performed the song: 'One ounce of happiness is more than a pound of gold'. Despite the cold many people stopped and listened to this real tear-jerker! The audiance appreciated this action-performance very well; their respond was cheerful and positive. Most people agreed with the message, which was materialized by handing out small 'golden bags with an ounce of happiness inside' to the audiance. Within an hour Fransje & Fransje had run out of stock - all the golden bags were taken home by happy shoppers.

Amersfoort: booming rhythms through the streets

AMERSFOORT - Roll of drums, a deafening rhythm, laughing people, surprised faces. The highlight of Buy Nothing Day in Amersfoort was - no doubt about that - the last hour of the action: a surprising samba-band passed through the streets: so much cheerfulness is seldom seen in a shoppingstreet!

For the first time Food Not Bombs distributed free food. For quite some time already the Amersfoort Food Not Bombs (FNB)-group works together with FNB-Utrecht, but this day the people from Utrecht assisted their Amersfoort-colleques. Food Not Bombs-groups collect redundant food at local shops. Mostly this is very good food, sometimes with a little 'spot' or food at the edge of the tenability-date. From all this free donated ingredients, FNB cooks a delicious meal that is distributed for nothing in the streets. As a protest against a world where good food is been thrown away whilst millions of people suffer from starvation. A protest against a world where more money is spent on weapons and war than on fighting poverty. The free food was available next to the local MacDonalds. At first the passers-by looked rather suspicious: 'giving away food just for nothing? Something must be wrong about that...' However, when the first sheep went, the others followed soon! The action became a great success!
Meanwhile the 'goods-exchange-stall' a few streets ahead, attracted a lot of visitors. All kinds of different presents were collected here. And exchanged. Even an awfull, inflateble picture-frame foud a new owner. There was a 'street-livingroom' for those who were tired of shopping. Young environmentalists provided free coffee and tea.
And then - the highligt of the day: making music out of rubbish! A large rolling waste-container, covered with BND-posters, was the big drum, played by three people, whilst a fourth person pushed the container forward. Also building-materials like iron pipes, pots and pans, and even a fire-extinguisher functioned as beat-instruments. A booming rhythm moved through the streets, leaving a trace of laughing, surprised, bewildered and dancing people behind. Amersfoort will remember this Buy Nothing Day for a long time...

Zevenaar: ideals for sale

ZEVENAAR - ,,Buy Nothing Day was a nice and sunny day. In the city centre of Zevenaar we organized an extended manifestation- market, were we mainly sold 'ideals'. Everything and everybody was present'', says organisor Dick van Duren.

There were stalls of all kinds of organisations: Green Left (political party), UNICEF, Handri (recycle-shop to benefit third world projects), Amnesty International, the Thirld World-shop, the Heath-shop, SARI (fair trade clothes and textile from third world countries), De Horsterhof (organic food and dairy) and the provincial environment federation.
The manifestation-market was an initiative of the brand new local section of Green Left (GroenLinks). Main items were: 'conscious consumption' and 'consumeing less'. Young pupils of Liemers Music school performed music and the local scoutinggroup assisted children in writing poems and making toys from waste materials. Both local and regional newspapers had published a lot about the initiative. A week before BND there was a live-interview at the local radiostation; also about the special meeting about conscious consuming, that Green Left organisised a couple of day before Buy Nothing Day. Dick van Duren states afterwards: ,,We've heard no discordant sounds, only positive. Next year we'll make Buy Nothing Day an even larger event in Zevenaar''.

Barneveld: happiness and luck as common as grass

BARNEVELD - A lottery? Many people did not immediately understand the meaning of the 'lucky-presents' that were handed out for nothing in the streets of Barneveld. Some didn't trust it at all and just walked on. However, who took the trouble to unpack the present, discovered that this was a lottery with only first prices! The presents contained beautiful folded peaces of paper with unpayable gifts: 'luck', 'happiness' and 'love'. Only a few passers by didn't understand the meaning, stating that the whole economy would become a big mess if happiness was given away for free. But in general the public responded positive, although many of them asked for an explanation about the backgrounds of Buy Nothing Day.

Meanwhile a 13 year old Santa ('Sinterklaas') accompanied by two young Black Peters ('Zwarte Pieten') was handing out yellow 'Buy Nothing'-balloons. These balloons were in great demand. Whilst spreading the balloons the 'young Santa' met an elder 'colleque'. But that was not a real Sinterklaas! It was a dressed up person who was hired by the shopkeepers-society, to get people into a buying mood...
(BTW: Santa and Black Peter is a typical Dutch tradition, not te be confused with Christmas-Santa!)

Eindhoven: spontaneous children's parade

EINDHOVEN - Six little boys aged about ten started a spontaneous demonstration through the streets of Eindhoven. Holding their yellow balloons with the text 'Buy Nothing' high in the air proudly, waving with their Buy Nothing-leaflets, they loudly appealed to the public: BUY NOTHING!

,,The boys were members of the local Scouting, where lately had been a discussion about consuming and consuming-less'', says Regina Wuisan, handing out the yellow balloons this Saturday in the city centre. She met a lot of sympathy, but also many people who could hardly understand the meaning of Buy Nothing Day. The Buy Nothing-ballons were very popular, both with children and adults!
A muslim-man nodded in agreement while his daughters balloon was being inflated: ,,We must be solidair with the poor, that's in the Koran'', he stated.
Meanwhile at the central market-square a cheerful carrier-tricycle was installed as a stall where everybody could exchange their 'ever-received-but-never-used' presents. At least a hundred people took this opportunity. Six Not-Buyers at the stall yelled loudly to the passers-by to come to the stall to buy Nothing. And every person that passed by with a grumpy face received a compliment: ,,Very well. You did buy Nothing!".

Wageningen: a real international action

WAGENINGEN - In the centre of Wageningen (city of the Agricultural University) a street-livingroom was installed on the market square. People who were tired of shopping were invited to take a rest on the lazy couch or to take a seat at the table. There was free coffee, tea and hot chocolate. A large banner with: Niet-Winkeldag ('Buy Nothing Day') drew the attention and made people ask about the meaning of this. Lidewei Kruizinga and her seven co-activists had lots of interesting talks. Meanwhile children could colour an oversized Dutch BND-logo.

During the action a couple of foreign students showed up, very well informed about Buy Nothing Day. Two of them - an American and an Israeli - appeared to be BND-campaigners themselves. The Israeli went home and came back with an 'American' flag, with 50 big company logo's instead of 50 stars. Their presence made it even more interesting for passers-by to stay a while and talk about the aims of Buy Nothing Day, and about its real international impact!

Rotterdam: 'Pied Piper' causes hilarity

Rotterdam/The Netherlands November 29th 2003. The feared 'Consumer-cather of Rotterdam' (the Pied Piper) roamed the streets of Rotterdam this Saturday. Dressed up in red and black, horned, and walking on high stilts he stepped around, meanwhile whistling a false tune, luring passers-by into the shops... 'Buy More!' said the sign dangling from the oebo producing the melody, Many, many shoppers answered to the magic call and the started buying, buying...

However, help was at hand! Two caring nurses rendered First Aid at Over-Consumption. Their survival-package contained shoppinglists, a cut-out to fold a mini-purse (no space for a credit-card), consume-less hints and pills to battle the buying-virus. Some two hundred consumers were rescued by such an aid-package.

About ten activists joined this action. When they ran out of their aid-packages, they started handing out leaflets. ,,The action drew a lot of attention, caused many laughing faces and lots of hilarity'', says Willemien Troelstra, member of Milieudefensie-Rotterdam (Friends of The Earth). ,,Especially people who stayed at a distance had a lot of fun when they saw that someone else was tackled by a nurse. They seemed to be glad that they stood aside''.

Two press-photographers took pictures.

Buy Nothing Day-activists delighted by film-award for 'Surplus'

Eindhoven/The Netherlands, November 29th, 2003 - Exactly at the kick off of International Buy Nothing Day, Friday November 28th, the Swedish documentary 'Surplus: Being Terrorized Into Consumers' received the Silver Wolf-award at the International Film- and Documentary Festival (IDFA) in Amsterdam.

The film 'Surplus' is a 52 min. documentary focussing on the motivation of especially young people to resist against the ecological disaster caused by over-consumption. And against the power of advertising.

The Silver Wolf-award (10.000 euro's) was made avaibable by the Dutch Programm Foundation (NPS) for the best short documentary at the IDFA-festival.

Surplus will be broadcasted on the Dutch national television on December 12. ('Het uur van de wolf', 21:00 - 22:00 hr).

Support for Buy Nothing Day-campaigners

In 'Surplus' Buy Nothing Day-activists recognize many of their own arguments to resist against the culture of unbridled consumerism. Over-consumption not only causes many ecological problems (use of raw materials and energy, and waste-problems), access to consumption is divided very unequally amongst all world-citizens: 20% of the world population, mainly living in North-America, West-Europe and Japan, consumes about 85% of all that's available worldwide.

Today, November 29th, it is Buy Nothing Day all over the world, also in The Netherlands. Overhere there are friendly actions in at least fifteen Dutch cities, to confront the shopping public with their own consuming patterns: what are you buying, and why? Theme of the Dutch Buy Noting Day ('Niet-Winkeldag') is: enough is enough!

Surplus

The film-documentary 'Surplus: Being Terrorized Into Consumers' is made by the Swedish filmmaker Erik Gandini. The film starts during the mass-demonstrations of anti-globalists during the G8-summit at Genova (Italy) and sets off on a world journey seeking the answer to the question: why?

Surplus' approach is to portray this issue from an emotional rather than a factual perspective: in the US, India, China, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Canada and Cuba. It also contains George Bush's famous 'shopping speech' calling for a war against terrorism that deters the nation from the fear of consumption, and shows Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer preaching that the computer will give us peace on earth. And the Canadian Buy Nothing Day-activist Kalle Lasn (Adbusters) warns that advertising pollutes us mentally, that over-consumption is unsustainable and that we are running out of oil. Surplus also shows parts of the international appeal to join the international Buy Nothing Day-campaign: the blurping pig.

- End press release -

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