My year without Amazon | Transition Network.
Exactly a year ago today I wrote a piece on this blog called The day I closed my Amazon account. It set out why, and how, I had decided that Amazon was so at odds with my values that I was withdrawing my support for good. It turned out to be the most popular thing I wrote that year. It was eventranslated into German and put on YouTube. I thought it might be useful to offer some reflections on how a year free of Amazon has been. (Spoiler Alert: it’s been great).
At the end of that article, I wrote:
“It feels surprisingly unsettling, as one does after ending a relationship, but it was the right thing to do. It may be a drop in the ocean, but if enough people do it….”
It appears that a year later I’m not the only one deliberately crossing the road to avoid that great behemoth of an online retailer. A campaign called Amazon Anonymous has invited people to pledge to not support Amazon this Christmas, because they:
“don’t pay their workers a living wage. They dodge their tax. They take money away from our local shops”.
Indeed. So far signatories have pledged to not spend just over £3 million with Amazon. Of course in the big picture of Christmas spending, £3 million is but a drop in Amazon’s vast ocean, they probably wouldn’t stop to pick it up if they dropped it, but it’s a powerful statement nonetheless that has generated a lot of press coverage.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
