The unsustainable side of stationery
Studygrams hide the ugly face of capitalism at its finest
The incredible world of social media has enabled people to congregate into groups of their defining hobbies and passions, regardless of their social background or geographical origins. Large groups and growing trends give name to ‘communities’, and there is not a perhaps more emblematic Instagram community than the world of ‘studygrams’.
Studygrams, although surpassed Instagram and now also found in Youtube and TikTok videos, are accounts dedicated to… Studies, one could say. The main idea seems to be to converge study tips, motivation quotes, inspiration to keep going, and keep students engaged in the pursuit of their educations.
In reality, the frenzied world of the ‘study community’ — there are over 9 million photos using only the #studygram — is a colorful world of notebook spreads, planners, cheap and expensive gel pens, markers and washi tapes, all set into intricate photographic aesthetics that captivate the urge of students for order and ‘cuteness’. You can’t forget the computer / tablet, the planner and some nice fairy lights to set the scene!
It all seems fairly innocent, naîve and even fun. After all, who doesn’t like fresh new stationery on a new school year, or colorful writing material and making your hand writing extra fancy to highlight important notes? There is a playful element of displaying your pens and stationery ‘goodies’, sharing and swapping school supplies with friends and distracting your mind with encouraging photos and successful stories of such-and-such that used to be a terrible student but then decided to color code their notes to the n-th degree and now is graduating cum lade.
Apart of setting up unrealistic expectations, there is a deeper issue. As well as with any other trend that has to be materialistically consumed, a lot of people will be excluded from it. And feel awful about it.
Anywhere outside the middle classes of developed countries, stationery is quite expensive, especially the specific brands everyone rages about. Study gram influencers will praise those items and often imply ever so subtly that that specific 30$ notebook or a 30$ pack of brush pens in all the colours of the rainbow is exactly what they need to succeed as better students. Often, their targeted audience are young — and very impressible — children. It’s a sneaky tactic, since kids and teens will bug their parents for money for new supplies while being easily trapped into the colorful bubble of empty promises.
Maybe 50$ in school supplies doesn’t sound much to some of you. But in my country, and many others, a pack of Zebra mildliners, arguably the apple of the eye of this community, can cost up to 1/10th of the minimum wage. Let’s say that again. A simple pack of highlighters, that are not even that good, costing 10% of someone’s hard earned salary. To the majority of the world, that fancy notebook or those colorful pens will bring a lot of headaches to well-meaning parents that only want to make their kids and teens happy. Or to the broke students that want to forget, at least for a brief moment, that spending on new supplies won’t make their grades go up.
But in the end of the day, an expensive pen or a beautiful notebook won’t make you a better student, and buying into that narrative can make you forever pursue the ‘next best’ thing, always frustrating yourself when your grades don’t get better.
And because a lot of people won’t have the money to buy those supplies, they can feel terrible by seeing all their friends having those or browsing through Instagram and seeing the same ‘desirable’ items everywhere. Peer pressure is an effective way of keeping people hooked into buying stuff they actually don’t need or can’t afford. When society sees you for what you own, not having money, which in itself has nothing to do with your worth, becomes an internalized feeling of failure. And no one should go through that.
It’s the everlasting grip of a capitalistic culture trapping people into believing that they need more stuff, all the time, always. Online shopping allows the quick dopamine hit to be available at all hours of the day — or night. The sheer amount of new supplies being put into the market means that the companies need consumers to keep buying new products, feeding into the infinite loop of consumerism.
To advertise their brands and work, those companies will often partner with an Youtube / Instagram influencer to display their items into beautifully packaged boxes, which they will open and dazzle their audience with the shiny new pens. Those same Youtubers will often accumulate so much stuff that they will make video after video organizing their school and office supplies and doing give-aways to declutter their space. Welcome to the weird world of stationery hauls.
Those hauls videos follow a very similar structure: the person will thank the sponsor for sending those items, and does an ‘unboxing’ and sometimes a swatch of the new materials. What it can’t go unnoticed is the amount of plastic and other types of waste that comes with the fun part. Each box contains cardbox, plastic wraps and bubble wrap, plastic sleeves for small items, plastic coating for fragile items, plastic for…
Once the package is open, the waste is put aside — it’s not cute or aesthetic. Given that I haven’t seen a haul video explaining what they do with the waste, I can only assume it’s toss into the thrash without second consideration. And when we start to talk about millions of disposable pens, all wrapped individually in plastic bags, we can see the catastrophic side of this ‘community’. People are being sold into the idea of owning more supplies that they can use in a lifetime, and in the meantime only helping to pollute an already dangerously overworked planet.
An amazing Youtuber by the name of Elizabeth (from her channer Plant Based Bride) has discussed this issue before hand, in a video she entitled “Stationery Anti-Haul”. It’s not a new term by any meas; the ‘beauty’ community has seen anti-haul discussions for years now. Nonetheless, the amount of people discussing and talking about it is still way smaller than it needs to be, drowned by the ocean of plastic accumulated by the haulers.
We shouldn’t put the burden into single actions of individuals, but we do have a responsibility of not feeding into the system of disposable trinkets. As well as pressuring companies into taking more responsible measures against waste and pollution, we too need to make our part and establish healthier ways of living in our planet.
So, on the individual-to-individual note, don’t buy into mindless consumerism. By all means, get yourself a new pen — not 20 — at the beginning of the new study year to help you transition into study gear, if your old one is dried out. Get yourself the notebook you’ve been wanting, if you don’t already own 50 more around the house, sad and unused. The important aspect is keep asking yourself: do I really need this? Am I just wanting to buy it because I saw it three times on my feed and it looks cute? Do I have an already planned use and necessity for this item?
Because if you don’t, chances are that you will waste the product away in dust, forgetting that you even had it until you decide to declutter your study space. The shininess and excitement of buying new stationery quickly fades. But adopting a mindful approach when consuming non-essential items will in fact allow you to live more at ease.
You will be able to save money more efficiently and spend it on experiences, not simply ‘more stuff’. In the end, those experiences are the memories we carry throughout our lives. Not the brand new pack of Muji pens. These will eventually dry out anyway.
