Radio show “Hijack hour” about Bar Circular event – Black Friday impact consciousness
Last November 29th CATAPA co-organized Bar Circular, an event meant to raise awareness on the impact of Black Friday. The consumption levels around the idea of ‘Black Friday’ is increasing every year, in more countries and the event is lasting longer and longer, for example, now the duration is actually about a week long. This is pushing more and more people into over-consumption.
As part of this event, we were very happy to be invited to talk about this at a student Radio that same day. The Radio that host us was Urgent FM and we were in the show called ‘Hijack hour’ where one hour of radio time is given to local organisations who want to share and advocate for an important issue.
Here we want to share with you that “Hijack hour” session about the impacts of Black Friday consumerism related to mining and the ICT supply chain, and some actions you can do!
Catapista Louna and Catapista Youssef represented CATAPA in the show for the first part (in English), talking about the problems related to the ICT supply chain in the first half hour.
In the second half hour (in Dutch), members of Gents MilieuFront and Netwerk Bewust Verbruiken, also co-organisers of Bar Circular, talk about the different solutions and alternative ways of consuming ICT, like repairing or buying second hand. They even did interviews with repairers from the Repair Café, one of the activities of the Bar Circular event.
The event had many different activities open to participants and guests in the Krook library! Just before the activities started, local artists transform Miriam Makebaplein square (in front of the Krook) into an e-waste cemetery. Through this public action we tried to create more awareness about the impact of Black Friday and the consequences of our current way of producing and consuming electronic devices.
Then, as mentioned above, we had a Repair Café where you could bring your broken electronic devices and clothing to get them fixed and give them a second life! Throughout the afternoon, three interactive presentation sessions were happening, about the problems related to the production of our electrical appliances and how we can work together towards solutions.
More practically, we had a “Documentary speed-date” corner where visitors could watch in pairs a short documentary from a selection that were about the problems related to the ICT chain and the possible alternatives. Also, there was a Workshop to discover the inside of a smartphone. During this workshop you will discover what raw materials and materials are inside a smartphone, what function they have and what their ecological impact is. Last but not least, there was also an old mobile phones collection point that was after taken to a designated recycling center.
Another initiative we launched to raise awareness of the impacts of Black Friday was an alternative online campaign called “Buy nothing day”, that you can find more about it here.
This event is the result of a collaboration between CATAPA vzw, Gents MilieuFront, Netwerk Bewust Verbruiken, Vormingplus Gent-Eeklo, Curieus, Festival van de Gelijkheid and Bibiliotheek De Krook; with the support of Gent Klimaatstad.