For Black Friday 2021, Oway launched its awareness campaign for conscious and sustainable consumption
Words by: Gianmarco Gronchi
With the Christmas season approaching, the schizophrenic impulse to buy that animates the hyper-capitalist society we live in comes back to life. Black Friday, a tradition that exploded in Europe a few years ago, is perhaps the most explicit manifestation of a system that needs to constantly feed the consumer’s desire to live. The Black Friday week is the canonical start of the pre-Christmas shopping season, a time of great collective euphoria and huge revenues, but also a time when the contradictions of a global system revealed vulnerable by the pandemic outbreak. However, there are those who choose to dissociate themselves from this event, demonstrating that an alternative path to uncontrolled consumerism is possible.
Oway, an agricosmetic company from Bologna, decided to close its stores and e-commerce site for the duration of Black Friday. The initiative, called Don’t Black Out the Future, aimed to make consumers aware of the need to rethink our consumption patterns. “Oway’s history has been characterised from the beginning by courageous choices, convinced from the start that asking questions about the footprint of our passage in the world was the right direction to take. For this reason, this year more than ever, we strongly felt the need to stop on the day when everyone is running and reflect on the fact that we need to consume less and better” said Martina Sormani, Oway retail manager.
The campaign to combat the wastefulness of a compulsive consumption model was accompanied by some tips that consumers can put into practice to reduce their impact on the ecosystem. A conscious consumer, in fact, should try to choose concentrated products, so as not to need large quantities of use, buy only packaging in infinitely recyclable materials, avoid unnecessary packaging and choose products made from environmentally friendly raw materials. In fact, the Bologna-based company is well aware that, despite the efforts that companies can make to reduce their environmental impact, the greatest commitment must be made to educating the end consumer to adopt sustainable forms of consumption.
The Don’t black out the future initiative reflected the soul of the Bologna-based company, which has built its identity on eco-sustainability. As early as 2010, Oway created its Ortofficina, a 0 km farm where, following the principles of biodynamic agriculture, all the raw materials on which its cosmetics are based are cultivated. Since 2020, Oway has also obtained biodynamic product certification from the independent DNV body, thus guaranteeing quality and transparency throughout the entire production chain.
The packaging has also been the subject of intense attention. Aware of the enormous waste and unsustainable impact on the ecosystem due to the use of plastic, since 2013 Oway has completely replaced this material with glass and aluminum. In fact, glass and aluminum can be recycled indefinitely, unlike plastic. At the same time, Oway has worked to reduce overpackaging, in the knowledge that reducing waste requires the recovery of resources already in circulation.
In doing so, Oway is now a carbon-neutral company, whose impact on nature is almost zero and whose production is completely made with green energy. The Don’t Black Out the Future initiative, therefore, is another step towards the awareness that, today, consumers can no longer ignore environmental sustainability.
