Learning how to upcycle, reuse, and buy secondhand are all great ways to reduce waste and dirty pollution from shipping items. Yet, it is not always easy to make those choices when constantly inundated with advertisements designed to convince you to buy products.
In a Reddit post on the r/a******design thread, a user posted about the exploitative nature of advertising by Temu.
The post explained that Temu uses more than 10,000 accounts on Instagram to advertise their products. This means, if you block advertisements from Temu, there are still thousands of other accounts that can continue to promote the brand to you.
Temu is an e-commerce platform that produces and ships its products from China to 50 countries across the world, according to Commons. It offers extremely discounted products, similar to fashion company Shein. A Greenpeace article about Temu highlights the company's push for "hyper-consumerism," which results in huge amounts of waste and pollution from sales and transportation.
One of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to avoid overconsumption and only purchase new items that you need. However, that can be difficult in a world where we are bombarded by advertisements. In fact, there are some estimates that people see on average 10,000 ads per day. This makes sense when you consider that, along with on our phones and streets, there are ads seen flashing on trucks, on boats, even inside fortune cookies.
To combat this, one U.K.-based organization, AdFree Cities, is working to keep "big branding out of public spaces," as per its website. It also states, "Consumerism drives climate and ecological breakdown, harms well-being and undermines local resilience."
By sticking to secondhand shopping, as well as learning tips and hacks to upcycle materials at home, you can help too.
"Temu has mastered the bot game, probably has AI creating 100 bots an hour," added a user.
"I think Temu's entire business model just revolves around being as annoying as possible," joked another.
🗣️ Should companies be required to help recycle their own products?
🔘 Definitely 👍
🔘 No way 👎
🔘 It depends on the product 🤔
🔘 They should get tax breaks instead 💰
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
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