“Don’t hesitate if you need me to advise you against other purchases, it will relieve the planet’s resources.” The latest advertisement from the Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe), which presents a “merchant” in a humorous tone to encourage people to buy fewer new items, does not convince the merchants who demanded his withdrawal on Tuesday.
This is one of four ads from the campaign to combat excessive consumption broadcast since November 14. In these videos, potential buyers of a polo shirt, a sander, a washing machine and a telephone are dissuaded. Instead, they are offered not to buy, rent, repair or buy refurbished. To do this, these sequences each time have an “atypical and, at the very least, confusing counselor who does not encourage consumption but rather prefers to question their real needs.”
These announcements should be broadcast until December 4, states a press dossier from the ecological transition agency.
“At the beginning of a period of essential activity for all commerce, this campaign addresses the commerce sector and, in particular, the fashion sector in an incoherent and unjustified manner,” writes in a statement the Trade Alliance, which brings together the large warehouses. and large clothing and footwear brands, and represents 27,000 stores.
An “exceptional crisis in the fashion sector”
“The fashion sector has been going through an exceptional crisis in recent months,” underlines the organization, which mentions tens of thousands of lost jobs.
The campaign is accompanied by a site that lists rental or repair addresses: epargnonsnosressources.gouv.fr.
“This campaign on sobriety does not say ‘buying is bad’. It means ‘buying is not the only solution’,” defended the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu on his X account (formerly Twitter), broadcasting one of the ads. .
Sure the social network, The Trade Alliance asked the minister for the “immediate withdrawal” of the campaign.
In a separate press release, the CPME, an employers’ organization that brings together 243,000 artisans, VSE, SMEs and ETI, “calls for an end to a clumsy and stigmatizing communication campaign towards merchants.”
A “store stigma”
“Stigmatizing the store seems especially clumsy to us when the message should focus more on platforms like Shein or Temu, which today take the lion’s share, despite the lack of respect for social, ecological and ethical issues that are ours” , Olivier Ducatillon, warned separately the president of the Union of Textile Industries.
Asked this Thursday by Franceinfo, the Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, described the campaign as “clumsy.” “I believe deeply in sobriety, I believe in incitement, not guilt,” he added.
Source: BFM TV
