Let's turn Black Friday GREEN
Black Friday is a day (sometimes weeks) in November that encourages overconsumption, overproduction and overspending through discounts and sales. And let’s be honest.. we’re over it! According to Statista, UK consumers are estimated to spend a total of £8.71 billion over the course of the Black Friday weekend this year. Identified by Which?, only 1 in 7 deals this Black Friday are considered to be genuine discounts, with retailers marking up their prices days before the Black Friday to orchestrate bigger savings. So with billions of pounds predicted to be spent this weekend, we’re drawing attention to the reasons why it’s best to avoid the frenzy and make sustainable switches for Green Friday instead.
The environmental impact of Black Friday
More spending on new items means more manufacturing, more shipping and ultimately more waste. In 2021, Black Friday was expected to emit 386,243 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK alone, which is the equivalent of powering 83,223 petrol/diesel vehicles for a whole year! On top of that it’s said that approx 80% of products bought at Black Friday end up in landfill, are incinerated, or are recycled poorly.
What is Green Friday?
Opposite to Black Friday, Green Friday encourages people to shop sustainably (or not at all) and to not over consume. It’s about taking a step back to think about whether you really need the item you’re about to buy or not. Fortunately, consumers are starting to become more savvy to the Black Friday offers and the impact they have on the environment. Nearly 1 in 4 people in the UK now factor in the carbon impact of what they buy online, which is 88% more than those asked last year.
The benefits of renting over buying
Another way to combat Black Friday is to refrain from purchasing anything new and to rent that said item instead. Marketplaces such as ByRotation, Fat Llama, RentMy etc make is super easy to rent almost anything! So why is renting better than buying? When a product is made, a large chunk of that item’s carbon footprint comes from the manufacturing process. In fact, up to 50% of a car’s total carbon footprint is generated during manufacturing alone! The more uses you get out of an item, the more you reduce its lifetime carbon footprint, which is why it’s important to reuse what we already own or to rent from others. You could also seek out second hand purchases to encourage the circular economy and reuse items instead.
How is Karshare ‘green’?
We know that the most environmentally friendly way of getting around is walking, riding a bike, catching the bus or taking a train – but sometimes there are journeys where a car is simply necessary. Renting a car from your neighbour makes use of an unused vehicle without adding more cars to our streets, helping to reduce the carbon footprint of every car shared. Making a new car produces more than 3 year's worth of road emissions and we prefer to utilise cars that already exist! So rather than purchasing a new car, we make it easy for you to access hundreds of cars without needing to own one yourself.
£30 off car rentals for Green Friday 2022
Every vehicle listed on our car sharing marketplace is privately owned and the daily prices are managed individually by the owner. This reinforces the fact that we don’t influx the prices and slash them on Black Friday to appear like we’re giving a huge discount. Instead, for Green Friday this year we want to encourage car sharing within communities, which is why we’re sharing our biggest promo of the year so far.
You can claim £30 off your next car rental when you enter code 30GREEN at the checkout.
Terms and conditions - 30GREEN is a single use code. Minimum rental value of £60 required to redeem the discount. Expires 23:59 on 27th November.
