To ask you to swerve Shein & Temu

Current conversation is the climate damage of sea vs air freight. You're obviously not actually reading what anyone is saying, rather jumping to "virtue signaling" so you don't have to view your own habits through a remotely critical lense.
That poster can absolutely ignore me if they wish to, but they keep coming back of their own volition.

I don't know anyone desperate, everyone I know has a job. But there's still a handful who buy from those sites. They just don't understand how bad those companies are.

I've never used them.

Ignore these posters who fail to acknowledge pretty much everything they buy in shops will have been or had raw materials manufactured in China, India or other countries where working conditions are poor and slave labour still exists. It's not like you can see a top in Next and ask to see the chain of origin and production from the raw materials to it ending up on the shelf.

They're only virtue signalling about not buying from Temu and Shein because it's currently being written about in the news. It's hardly a new phenomenon and I remember sweatshop practices being talked about in the 80s when I was in primary school, yet British Governments have closed even more factories in the UK, so it's nigh on impossible to buy a product which has been produced fully ethically.

Even going to work involves supporting slave labour, as sourcing the raw materials to make phones and computers and cars more often than not involves forced labour. People are happy to overlook this and upgrade to the latest iPhone etc every few months. They'll switch to an electric car because they've read in the news it's better for the environment, but will overlook the fact that children die whilst mining for cobalt to manufacture the batteries. You don't need to look far on this forum, to see people using ChatGPT etc to post replies. It's unlikely they've considered the exploited labour which occurs in the early stages of developing AI. Children being forced to work long hours in poor conditions to label data and often view graphic material.

Paying a bigger markup for products leads people to believe this is going to the workers and not the factory owners or to Marketplace owners like Amazon. Seeing the shit working conditions Amazon imposes on it's warehouse staff in this country, I highly doubt this is the case.

Are you comfortable wearing period pants that quite possibly have dodgy chemicals in them? That would worry me.

I'd probably want to double check the tape measure is accurate too!

Thanks. I really LOATHE China.

Certainly not true in my house. I declutter & things go straight to charity shops, thus 'swerving' Vinted & the like. I have no interest in selling things on.
Even if I had a mansion, you can't buy & buy, that's ridiculous! I don't know a single person who overbuys.

Or buy second hand. Or repair it. Or just ask yourself if you really need it.
And you save an awful lot of money too.

What I said is well known. I recommend watching: Buy Now. The shopping conspiracy. See the trailer here: https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81554996?s=a&trkid=13747225&trg=cp&vlang=en&clip=81948006

The issue of clutter is increasing with online shopping, that's a fact.
When something is dirt cheap people feel they can replace it easily, so they buy and buy. It has enormous environmental consequences. It's an addiction for people and it's killing the planet.

@FuckRealityBringMeABook I'm pretty positive that @ninjahamster doesn't really want to be borrowing anyone else's hairbrush.. she's already said it was PART of a bigger order..

@Manyredpoppies jeez, where do you get off speaking for everyone? Why do you assume that people who shop with Temu etc are compulsive / addicted shoppers? Why do you think 'everyone' has too much stuff? How do you know that people can afford to shop in other places?
When you've done a mumsnet poll, then I might listen, but until then, you are making a hell of a lot of assumptions.

Good luck with that.

So much stuff could be swapped or borrowed rather than bought new from China.

It's a yes from me.
But I try to boycott everything from China. They have an APPALLING record on human rights. And even worse on animal rights. Disgusting, disgraceful country.

But I just tagged it on my order. I only shop online so cannot go to a supermarket. But point taken. I only order about twice a year so I’ll hear it in mind.

Yes, you have. But I just don't agree that flying a hairbrush China is reasonable or necessary. Hairbrushes that were shipped in bulk are a couple of quid in supermarkets, Boots etc.
Air freight is about 30x worse than sea.

Well, I have explained my reasoning so much on this thread.
How I wish I had the finances to shop local but I don’t.

Airfreighting more stuff makes it worse, not better.

FFS they didn’t. It was part of an order.

Yeap. Air freight is so much worse than containers on a cargo ship!

100 per cent agree and I would add, how is it possible any of those items arrive at our door all the way from another continent for 5 euros/ 4 euros whatever? Does this bother people at all?

fucksake why are we shipping individual hairbrushes halfway around the world? How is that in any way sustainable in a time of climate crisis?

I’ll say it again.

We do NOT have lots of stuff. Apart from stocking fillers we use it for essentials. A tape measure, wellies for my husband. Period pants for me. Screwdrivers. A hairbrush. Things like that.

I just wanted to thank you for starting this thread. I had no idea about all the toxins and chemicals in the children’s clothing and I recently bought my daughter lots of clothing and clothing for her dolls. They’re going straight back. It’s just not worth the risk. Thank you.

I really hope that buying shite in Shein and Temu will heavely taxed in the very near future for all the reasons pointed before by pp.

For those who say they buy in Shein and Temu because that's all they can afford I would ask them: are you actually happy having so much stuff?

Those platforms are for compulsive buying and not because you can't afford it. I simply don't buy what I don't need. Houses get cluttered. Everyone hates clutter. Shein and Temu exist to feed the addiction, just purely for having stuff, the more stuff the better.

We are the first generation who feel entitled to buy, accumulate and dump. But we can't afford that. Climate change is now happening. As we can't expect everyone to understand the consequences of it, I do hope taxing this stuff will stop people from using those platforms for good.

Fair enough, we will have to disagree on that.