June 09, 2022

Meet The Influencer Who Wants You To Buy LESS Stuff

33 minutes

In our episode Fast Fashion’s Dirty Little Secret (Hint: It’s Oil), we made the call to action: buy less clothing, and keep your clothing for longer. Some of you may have heard that and thought – “yeah, sure.” It sounds great, but it’s really hard to do, given the ecosystem of desire creation that is social media. How can you buy less when your feed is encouraging you to buy more, more, more? To find out, we talk to beauty influencer Hannah Louise Poston about how social media sucked her into overspending, what it was like to spend a year buying nothing at all, and how she makes beauty content that doesn’t suck people in too.

Guest: Hannah Louise Poston

Calls to action

You’ve heard this one here before: shop less, and keep the things you have for longer. Here are Hannah’s tips for giving that a try:

If you see something you want to buy, wait. Put it on a wishlist and revisit it later. Some desires may fade slower than others, but she found during her no-buy year that almost all of those desires faded eventually.

Before you buy something, think about what it will look like in 6 months. What will an article of clothing look like after it's been washed 10 times? What will a lipstick look like when it’s covered in bronzer dust at the bottom of your bag?

Revel in what you already have. If you want to buy clothes, dress up in something you already own and love. If you want to buy makeup, play with your own collection. Chances are, you already have something similar, or can have a similar experience to buying something new.

Hannah’s video goes into detail about these strategies.

Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Anna Ladd. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Kendra Pierre-Louis, Rachel Waldholz, and Daniel Ackerman. Our supervising producer is Matt Shilts. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Our intern is Janae Morris. Sound design and mixing by Bobby Lord and Enoch Kim with original music by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord, Catherine Anderson, and Billy Libby.. Our fact checker for this episode was Claudia Geib.

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