Irish Examiner view: Support your neighbours by shopping local during the January sales
Whether it's furniture, fashion, or even food you're after, switching from far-flung website operators to local retailers — including those offering online sales — keeps cash in your community. Picture: iStock
As we disentangle ourselves from all the Christmas wrapping paper and all the food and goodies that have been months in the preparation, today our attention will turn to another annual phenomenon which seems every year to easily part us from our hard-earned gelt.
The post-Christmas sales have seemingly been with us forever and present us with some unmissable opportunities to find the sort of bargains that, well, only come around once a year. Of course, that is not the case at all, as we are bombarded on a daily basis in the modern era with offers we absolutely cannot afford to miss. From these, the January sales, will come the inevitable spring, summer, and autumn sales and then, as the year rolls around, December’s Black Friday.
In between, of course, there will have been the new year and mid-year car registration offers which come along with the biennial change of number plate which is now part of our automotive culture, there will be the gardening centre sales for every season there is, there will be clothes sales, home appliance sales, furniture sales, and electronics sales.
It would appear that we are wrapped up in a constant revolving door of sales, each intended to remove large dollops of cash from our bank accounts and wallets. And they do.
But, by dint of making us feel good about ourselves for having made some sort of value-driven killing, sales can and do ameliorate any guilt we may have about excessive spending.
We can assuage that guilt — in as much as we can — by spending wisely and with the express intent of boosting local businesses, shops, industries, and individuals by ensuring we target those enterprises that keep our local economies alive and thriving.
‘Shop local’ has been a clarion call to consumers for as long as most of us can remember and it is sage advice indeed as the benefits of boosting regional and provincial businesses and industries are many and obvious.
Economists estimate that, for every euro spent at a local business, some 80c stays in the community and that local businesses generate more than 70% more local economic activity than big-box retail stores.
In a world where we can shop pretty much anywhere, shopping locally actually makes real sense.
In contemplating the seemingly impossible offers available in the January sales, it behoves us all to remember that there’s an environmental impact to all that shopping.
Commercialism and all that goes with it has a deep impact on those who manufacture the clothes, shoes, and other items we crave, the environment they live and work in, and, when they reach the end of their useful lives, the wider world.
On the banks of the Korle lagoon, just outside Accra, the capital of Ghana in West Africa, there’s a ragged 20-metre cliff in a landfill dump. Except it is not full of just the usual household rubbish that you’d expect. Some 60% of it consists of unwanted clothing, the majority of which comes from the dirty secret of the fashion world.
Every week, Ghana imports 15m used garments from Europe, North America, and Australia, an estimated 40% of which are deemed useless and dumped in landfill there. Most are dumped indiscriminately because the country’s waste management systems are not adequate to cope.
When it rains hard in Ghana — as it does often — floodwaters carry these clothes, along with household garbage, food waste, and plastics of all descriptions, and dumps them in drains. They end up in the natural watercourses, causing havoc with aquatic life. The consequences for the local environment are quite horrendous.
The clothes are nominally shipped to Ghana for reuse and resale, but just under 50% of them are not even fit for that. As global clothing consumption skyrockets, fed by so-called ‘fast fashion’ brands and marketed heavily by online retailers, so too does the environmental catastrophe which follows. It behoves us all, therefore, to be aware that, on a global scale, we are buying 60% more clothes than we did just 15 years ago and that since 2000 global production of clothing has doubled.
This sordid reality is something we all, as consumers, should be ideologically tuned into.
The punters are lining up; the bookies too — and then you’ve got the soccer heads, the rugger-buggers, the darters, the tailgaters and the cricket Jaffas.
Traditionally many sports come into their own at this time of the year and for sporting fans — most with plenty of time on their hands over the holidays — it is time to fully immerse themselves in the action. And what action there is to be had.
There’s top-quality horse racing all week in Leopardstown and Limerick, as well as cross-channel action at Kempton, Aintree, and Chepstow; there’s endless top-flight football in England and across Europe; the darts World Championships at Alexandra Palace are heating up nicely; there’s ample test cricket; the regular NFL season is coming to a busy climax.
And then there’s the rugby.
In Limerick tomorrow night, one of the season’s most eagerly awaited fixtures, Munster vs Leinster, gets the top billing.
The men in blue have been pre-eminent lately, most recently beating their most bitter rivals in a packed Croke Park. But Thomond Park will, as ever, be a seething cauldron for this attempt at Munster redemption.
At Kempton today, Spillane’s Tower tries to win a King George for Jimmy Mangan, the Conna, Co Cork, trainer, while at Leopardstown on Saturday, Willie Mullins saddles Galopin Des Champs and Fact To File in a tasty Gold Cup preliminary.
The stars on view — from Mo Salah, to Patrick Mahomes to Luke Littler, not to mention Jack Crowley and Sam Prendergast — will make for compelling viewing.
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