Friday is Black Friday, a day of super promotions increasingly criticized for its ecological impact in particular. However, it remains difficult to quantify the exact impact of this day of overconsumption on the climate as explained by the researcher François Gemenne at the microphone of Europe 1.

INTERVIEW

Since Friday morning, Black Friday is in full swing. A day of promotions XXL whose brands have been advertising for weeks on the Internet and in the cities, watering the mailboxes and mailboxes attractive offers. This Black Friday meets more and more opponents, criticizing him for its environmental and social impact. But what is this impact really? Its influence on the environment is "difficult to quantify" recognizes François Gemenne, executive director of the political research program of the Earth Sciences Po.

Black Friday, a symbol of overconsumption in the textile sector

"Today Black Friday is a symbol of this overconsumption, especially overconsumption in the textile sector which has a huge influence on the climate since it is an industry that represents between 3 and 10% of global emissions of greenhouse gases. greenhouse, "says the researcher.

François Gemenne recalls that the life of a garment has been "halved" over the past fifteen years. A situation that is not sustainable according to him when we know the carbon footprint of the production of a garment "both in terms of CO2 emission but also in terms of the amount of water" needed to make a garment . "To make jeans, it takes easily 7,500 liters of water," he notes.

Faced with this day of overconsumption, now opposes Green Friday. 450 French brands have decided to boycott Black Friday, such as Faguo, Nature & Discovery and Jimmy Fairly. Even the Minister of Ecology Elisabeth Borne has risen up against this event.

Black Friday contributes to the digital carbon footprint

Another criticism: Black Friday is pushing for consumption but its digital promotion system also has an influence on the climate. François Gemenne alert on this digital carbon footprint: "An email is 0.15 gram of CO2, if we add these billions of emails we arrive at a considerable carbon footprint."

In addition to the mails is that a large part of the purchases are made online, which "will not only generate Internet traffic but also traffic in our cities for deliveries", notes the researcher.

For this specialist in environmental geopolitics, "if we want to fight climate change for the long term, we will have to put an end to this symbol of overconsumption".