Black Friday’s Environmental Cost Is Sparking Worldwide Protests

The American phenomenon of Black Friday—a post-Thanksgiving shopping binge so intense it has its own death count tracker—has long since spread to the rest of the world. Some countries aren’t happy about it. Black Friday began in the 1950s, on a day when American shoppers’ pre-Christmas stockpiling would turn stores’ balance sheet from red, a loss, to black, a profit. It wasn’t until the 1990s that this holy day of consumerism became the frenzied phenomenon it is today, thanks to the participation of major retail chains. In the 2000s, Black Friday spread to countries outside the US, including Britain, where Walmart’s Asda supermarket chain introduced the concept in 2013. Read more at Quartz.