Living a sustainable life doesn’t mean throwing away all your stuff. This new viral “underconsumption core” trend on TikTok, where people decide to become eco-friendly and throw all their stuff in the trash, has nothing to do with sustainability. To understand why, we should first define sustainability. It is basically the quality of causing little or no environmental damage. Does throwing away your makeup products, clothes, etc. cause little or no damage? Definitely not. Alternatively, it causes more damage than using the stuff you already bought.
You are not required to have only one piece of clothing, one lip balm, or one pair of shoes to be eco-friendly. As long as you use up all the makeup products and wear the clothes until they can’t be worn anymore (or donate them if they are still in good condition), you are doing great. If we stop and think for a bit, we can see that throwing something away while it’s in perfectly good condition is the opposite of beneficial to the environment and should actually be discouraged rather than promoted online. I hope that kind of trend ends soon and never starts again.
Some of those videos are just staged to get views and likes. Some people don’t realize and genuinely blame themselves for not being sustainable enough when they see a video where an influencer shows their only bag, the only pair of shoes, two body care products, and three makeup items. But if they checked this influencer’s profile, this huge clothes/skincare products haul, which was posted just a couple of days after the “underconsumption is the only way to live” video, couldn’t go unnoticed.
Please think critically before blindly following any trends 🙏🙏
