The capitalist, consumerist lifestyle that we lead as a species is no longer tenable. It is accelerating climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Temperatures are rising year by year and the glaciers are melting. The air, land and oceans are increasingly polluted. 

The voracity of big corporations, the selfishness of great fortunes and the ineffectiveness of governments putting their own interests ahead of the common good (and of the physical limitations of the planet) are some of the key factors pushing us onto the brink of a civilization crisis for which we are far from sharing an equal responsibility.

Yet we should not overlook the fact that you and I, through each of our decisions and actions, are choosing between legitimating this destruction or not. When we buy for the sake of buying cheap clothing, electronic appliances that we don’t actually need, or absurd gifts, when we wildly binge buy on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or in the sales -and all of those dates were invented to waste- we are actually promoting this absolutely devastating frenzy on our own scale, but multiplied by millions. 

People buy 60% more clothing than they did 15 years ago, and keep those clothes only half as long. The fashion industry is responsible for 20% of the toxic waste dumped into our rivers and seas. Meanwhile, the food industry accounts for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions and uses up to 15,000 liters of water to produce a single kilo of beef. What’s more, today we consume 50% more natural resources than we did three decades ago and 90% of the plastic manufactured so far has not been recycled.

At the peak of consumer dates of the year, Greenpeace decided to take the initiative with “Make Something Week”, an international event to promote counter-consumerism and raise awareness about compulsive buying. The initiative included more than 250 actions in more than 30 countries around the world. It was for this occasion that Greenpeace Spain proposed that we conceive, curate, produce, and create the image and communication materials for the event to be held in Madrid. 

We began by renaming it to bring the idea more in line with our own idiosyncrasies. We decided to call it HAZ (Make it!). There is no shorter or better sounding word to speak of reducing our consumption and suggest people make something instead of buying something. HAZ is an invitation to realize we are in the middle of a city amidst a buying frenzy, to discover other more reasonable ways of doing things. HAZ is a peaceful oasis where one can stop and think before getting swept away into consumerism, where one can question acquired habits and promote real changes in our consumption patterns. This is the best gift that society can give itself for its future. 

The event was full of activities in order to creatively have fun and engage in consumerism through workshops, talks, games, projections, and interventions and performances. We also conceived this as a way for Greenpeace to engage with new audiences, taking the experience out to where people were simply taking a stroll and shopping to be stumbled upon. The event was held two years in a row with dozens of experts, groups, and engaged people setting an example through their vision and work on responsible consumption.

 Taking advantage of the Christmas season and intervening in a major shopping hub, we held the first HAZ in the Santa Bárbara Palace on December 2nd and 3rd 2017. Black Friday was the target for the second HAZ, held on the 23rd and 24th of November 2018. There we created an image of an empty upside-down bag with its handles on backwards as a symbol of the event’s counter-consumerism spirit. We also designed a small campaign giving the appalling statistics on consumption using the typical discount signs found in the sales. And we drew inspiration from slow walk, produced by the Rosas dance company, to organize Slow Shopping Walk with the collaboration of choreographers and dancers.