Talking about the Project at Interesting:New York, September 13, 2008 at F.I.T., NYC

Scott Ballum at Interesting New York from David Nottoli on Vimeo.

Back to the Consume®econnection Project Blog

I’m here to talk about a consumer experiment I’ve undertaken called the Consume®econnection Project, but I think to best explain it it’s easier to go back to how I got here with it.

As a student at SVA, I began getting interested in the choices we have, versus the choices we make, as a consumer.

I created a magazine, focused on criticism of global corporations, sweeping marketing campaigns, and unconscious consumption, but the intention was really to find alternatives and highlight people and organizations who were doing something unique and making deliberate choices as to what they consumed and produced, rather than just be critical. But I didn’t seem to know how to do that.

Three years passed and I started to get antsy to create something again, but I was struggling to find the voice, the angle, so I decided I’d take a year making my own content, seeing if the lifestyle I was advocating was viable. Basically could I not be a hypocrite, and do something that made me hyper-conscious of everything I bought.

First I thought that I would only buy things made locally, but what if I needed a computer part? Plus, the locavores are doing that already.

What if I only bought things made in small quantities, nothing mass produced? but then all I could picture was artisanal hand crafted clothes and shoes and knew there’s no way I could afford that.

So I came up with what I thought was a plan that would let me, theoretically, buy anything I wanted as long as I did the research. I would only buy something if I could trace it back to an individual involved in the production process, someone who worked to bring that object to the marketplace. It’s so easy to walk into a store and sort of think that everything there just sort of appeared there for the sole purpose of me buying it. I was going to force myself to know at least some of the backstory to everything I bought.

In keeping with the tone of my first magazine piece, I called it the Consume®econnection project. I started a blog, so that I felt like I had something to hold me accountable, and so that I would have a record of the whole thing when it was over to turn it into something. I’m halfway through, and here is some of what’s happened, what I’ve learned.

I drove to Kentucky to Maker’s Mark distillery, wandered off from the tour and met a guy named Jude who rolls empty barrels from the warehouse to the cistern where they are filled, and then rolls the full barrels back to the warehouse. Who even knew that job existed? And this guy does it day in and day out.

I joined the Park Slope Food Coop, and have met some of the truck drivers and produce buyers who get my food into my hands,

And visited the Harlow Brother’s farm in Vermont, which is one of the coop’s suppliers.

It’s been really fun when the people I meet get really excited about it and it opens even more opportunities for me. I met the owner of a coffee shop in Fort Greene called Urban Spring, and he told me about this guy he buys his coffee from,

Harold, who started roasting beans in his apartment in the neighborhood. When I met Harold he thought this was great, and when one of his suppliers,

a coffee farmer from Nicaragua named Mausi came to town for a visit he called me up and I was able to come meet her and hear all about her farm and family and her granddaughter who she was maybe even more proud of.

It was a similar friend-of-a-friend connection that introduced me to Emmanuel Boyer, who grew up on a vineyard in France and still works with his family winery selling Le Croix Belle here in the states. (so now I have whiskey, wine and beer, from Brooklyn Brewery, that I can drink)

I learned that smaller, socially-conscious and eco-conscious companies are much more willing to deal with me and my odd requests. The big companies don’t know whether my call is a customer service issue, a pr request, what. But two companies sort of on the cusp of mass-production but interested in what I was doing were Tom’s of Maine, who’s factory rival’s Willy Wonka’s,

And Seventh Generation in Burlington, Vermont, who’s social practices are as important as their famous ecologically progressive practices.

I was recently also in LA, meeting with the guys at GOOD magazine who have been really supportive of the project, so I was able to make an visit to the American Apparel factory downtown. Though I wasn’t able to speak with any of the line workers, mainly because I don’t speak Spanish more that any other reason, I did get an in-depth 2 hour tour learned all about how they make their products, how everyone from senior management to product development to graphic designers are right there in the same factory as the hundreds of workers, and they treat and pay their workers extremely well.

All in all, here is a representation of all the products I’ve been able to track back and make a personal connection to. Food has been the biggest challenge, particularly restaurants. My boyfriend and I are getting pretty tired of the same burritos, even though we love them, so some new restaurant connections are in order for the fall.

And here are things

That I have not been able to make a personal connection to yet, and hope to in the next few months. No new music, no shoes, that’s a shower curtain liner, who knew how important those were…

So what have I learned? Is this a viable lifestyle? Well, not to this extreme, no everything and not only things that I can track a connection to, but if I scale it back and I pay attention, I can try to know something about most things I have t buy.

And I’ve learned that cost and carbon footprint aren’t the only determining factors for value and sustainability.

Now that I’ve started this project, I’ve started to be as aware of everything I produced as a graphic designer as well as everything I was consuming, and I decided to leave corporate life and start my own studio called Sheepless, to continue working on my own projects and to work with social and cultural organizations to affect positive change.

I hope you’ll check it out.

Back to the Consume®econnection Project Blog