Another branded freebie? You really shouldn’t have

People keep giving me free things, and they’re taking over my home. But I’ve got a solution,and it’s a simple one.

This morning I threw away two lanyards. I hate having to put tangible objects into the general waste stream, but I have no other option. It’s hard to recycle fabric and I already have a drawer full of them.

Let’s back up here. I go to a lot of tech events in my day-to-day working life. Later this month I’ll be flying over 5,000 miles to San Francisco to attend another one. Chances are high I’ll be given a lanyard to hold my name badge and press accreditations. When the event is done maybe, just maybe, someone will be glad to take it back.

But they probably won’t.

And even if they do what will they actually do with it? They certainly won’t reuse the lanyard. Would you want to put on a lanyard that had been dangling round my neck all day? I wouldn’t want yours and I’m sure you’re clean, sweet-smelling and free of contagious skin conditions (as am I).

Lanyards and clear plastic badge holders present an obvious problem that I think a lot of us can relate to.

But it doesn’t stop with lanyards, does it?

Within sight of me as I type I am surrounded by cheap squeezy plastic stress relievers, a plastic desk clock, another mouse mat, a sports water bottle, several USB memory sticks with a cumulative capacity somewhere north of 15GB, and a little magnetic travel chess set. I’m even wearing a hoodie branded with the logo of a hosted cloud service provider. All of it bought online by someone in marketing from one of those ‘YOUR LOGO HERE’ websites.

Oh, and the pens, pens without end.

The point is I didn’t need or want any of this stuff. The hoodie is comfy, by the way, but it’s not in my size and I already have a perfectly good one of my own.

It makes me increasingly angry that whole industries and supply chains have grown up supplying single (or never) use products that suck up more and more resources that we are now realising we cannot afford to waste.

It’s almost criminal.

“Grandpa, why do we live in a post-apocalyptic anarcho-agrarian commune that’s strangely reminiscent of the Mad Max franchise?”

“Well, little Jimmy, we could still live in a comfortable style like we did when I was a young man in the 2010s, but my generation decided it would rather use up the planet’s finite resources by handing out free plastic crap to everybody, even when they didn’t particularly want or need it.”

“Oh. Your generation kind of screwed us over didn’t they?”

“Yup. Now fetch my gun, we’re having two-headed squirrel for dinner tonight.”

So what’s my solution? Easy. When the guy or girl with the fixed smile waiting on the way into the conference hands you the goodie bag. Just. Say. No. When you’re on the hot new start-up’s stand and you’ve had the demo and they want to hand you a commemorative mouse mat and a little toy car with their logo on it. Just. Say. No.

To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie in Alice’s Restaurant, if one person says no, they’ll think you’re a bit odd. If ten people walk past and say no they may think it’s an organisation. And can you imagine fifty people? Fifty people walking through and saying “no thank you”? Friends, they may think it’s a movement…

And that’s what it is, the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Plastic Crap Movement, and all you’ve got to do to join is: Just. Say. No.

No thanks, buddy. I’m good. Really.