Episode 16 - Resisting Consumerism, Reclaiming Power

The journey to consuming less and reclaiming our collective power is an imperfect, emotional, and challenging one. Consuming stuff is embedded into our identities and our culture. We are told that we deserve to buy things, and that ownership defines our worth. For the sake of our planet’s health and our own freedom, it is well worth the hard work of dismantling our addiction to stuff and asking ourselves questions about who we want to be. 

Aja Barber joins Reseed for a fascinating and frank conversation that delves into intersections between fashion, justice, and climate, wildest dreams for remaking the fashion ecosystem, and how to balance individual and collective action. She digs into her book Consumed - The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism. Aja is a highly respected writer, stylist and consultant whose work deals with the intersections of sustainability and the fashion landscape. She writes for outlets like The Guardian and CNN, and for her thriving online community. Her work builds heavily on ideas behind privilege, wealth inequality, racism, feminism, colonialism and how to fix the fashion industry with all these things in mind.

Consuming less is not easy, and sometimes our stuff threatens to consume us. Our rites of passage, rituals, celebrations, hard times, boredom, and life changes are marked often by the accumulation of more things. Consumption is deeply intertwined with colonialism, is built on unjust labour conditions that keep people in poverty, and fuels climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution. Even when we know that, in the context of consumption being so wedded to our identities and society, buying less can be really frustrating, emotional, and - ultimately - it can be liberating.