Do we still believe in 'support local'?

I sat across from a table of teenage girls at the library last week while my tamariki inhaled their kai post-swim, and in their occupied silence I listened with curiosity to their conversation.

“I don’t have enough stuff in my cart for free shipping on Shein yet, I’ve got 6 dresses, but It’s still not at the $50 minimum”. 

“Oh, have you tried on Temu? Their shipping is all free, it’s such a bargain”, her friend replied, as they both casually scrolled through their checkout cart to see the haul they could anticipate.

And it's not just teenage girls, it is seemingly everyone across nearly every demographic. From doting grandparents to wealthy mid life professionals and thrift savvy teens.

I winced internally and exhaled slowly, as I usually do when I hear of peoples ‘unbelievable bargains’ found on these and other similar sites.

I wonder, how is it that we’re not having a broader conversation as a community, as a society, as a nation about the impact of this model of spending and consumption. How is it that we’re not fostering conversations about ‘how is it possibly this cheap?’. 

Who is paying for the very real cost of this global ‘free shipping’, and why?

What is the consequence of buying 6 dresses  (likely synthetic and made from deep earth mined fossil fuels and converted into plastic) and hating them all, then either returning or ‘donating’ them?

How does this not deserve some sort of reflection or discussion or debate?

As a business, and person that believes that upholding the mana and integrity of both our common human dignity and of our whenua and whaea- Papatuanuku as being of paramount importance, I simply cannot reconcile nor endorse such models of rampant exploitation (of both labour, women, finite resources and land). I feel like screaming at times ‘how can we be so willingly and complicitly stupid that we’ll sell our own integrity of the price of free shipping?!!’

Rant kind of, but not entirely, over. Because this is, arguably, going to get worse.

You know the flip floppy global tariff trade war that’s been playing out between two of the world’s biggest economies? China and America?

Well America has slapped a 145% tariff on Chinese goods shipping to America. Which means that America will essentially stop importing these now prohibitively expensive goods from China. 

And for China, this is important as their sales to America make up around 20% of their entire national exports. That's a big chunk of money, a massive loss of income for Chinese companies.

And so, they need to expand their other markets to sell the stuff they’ve made. So Europe, Australia, New Zealand are all excellent candidates.

Do you remember the ‘good old days’ , when, during the Covid lockdowns suddenly thousands of people started discussing ‘Support local’, ‘Buy local’, ‘Buy Māori Made’, ‘Buy New Zealand made’. Small businesses in Aotearoa were supported like never before and there grew and intentionality, a discernment about who and where and how our products were made and whether our purchase would make a direct and tangible positive impact on our local community?

And then the cost of living crept up. And up. And up. And up. And up. 

And the majority of us sought out ways to keep our costs down. 

For many it has meant buying less. Buying cheaper. Not buying.

And while I’m absolutely in favor of buying less and spending your hard earned dollars discerningly, the direct implication of people buying as cheaply as possible from the likes of Temu and Shein and others is that local small businesses are shutting up, liquidating, closing down and absolutely struggling at a pace we’ve not seen in a long while.

And the problem I think is that in our willing blindness and complicitiousness, we’re not comparing apples with apples. 

While yes, you can buy a dress online for $8 including free shipping from half way around the world, the true cost is much much higher. 

In our dopamine induced shopping frenzy, we’re blinded to the exploitative, exhausting, unpaid labour of the real humans that sewed that dress. We’re blind to the toxic chemical discharge that poisons our earth and waters and skies. We’re blind to the carbon footprint of dress we didn’t need. We’re blind to the environmental catastrophe or the landslide of valueless garments flooding our oppshops and rubbish dumps for literally Ever.

We don’t understand how things are made, we just consume them. We dont appreciate that the slogan cotton tee that looked cute on the model but ultimately didn’t suit us,  took thousands of litres of water to grow, in a field on an actual cotton plant sprayed liberally with pesticides. And then harvested by real people and processed. Ginned, spun, woven and printed that tee. Then  yet another human cut and sewed that teeshirt before shipping it more than 11,000km to our local store. Added 100 -200% profit , then tax. And then sold it for $5.

The numbers do not add up.

We as consumers must do so so so much better. We must ask questions. And care. And vote with our feet and our dollars. 

We must support local if we want local to exist at all. 

We must support transparent, ethical, fair trade, if we want people to live with any sort of dignity. We must buy less and better and park shopping as a leisure activity- and instead take up collective mending or making. 

We must return to a place of valuing the expertise and the mana of makers.

If we remain complicit in this tidal wave of capitalism and consumption.the wave will happily break upon us and pour out the bounty of plastic junk all over our oceans and beaches and living room floors and peace of mind. 

And the aftermath, in much the same was as most of the plastic that has been invented and used- will not be recycled, but will be, forevermore. For our children and theirs, and those after them to deal with. To wade through. To curse.