Another year without Amazon — ‘easy enough’

By Libby D’Orvilliers

Almost exactly a year ago today, a piece I wrote about my 2025 New Year’s resolution was published in The Rider News. In this piece, I shared my resolve to boycott shopping on Amazon.com for the year. Today, I will briefly share how I kept that resolution and where I plan to go from here with it. 

To begin, yes, I was successful in my resolution. In 2025, I did not make a single purchase from the domineering online retail giant. Overall, I am grateful and proud of myself. 

To be fully transparent, this accomplishment was easy enough and did not shake my life up too drastically, as many people think their resolutions will. Originally, it did not feel like much of an accomplishment at all, to be honest. Yet, upon further reflection of my feat, I have come to be proud of it. I was able to avoid the temptation of the overbearing and incessant commercials and advertisements for all the different products and services the company “conveniently” offers — the question worth asking being: convenient to whom? The answer certainly is not convenient to the delivery drivers working overtime in the icy cold to deliver your packages and it is certainly not convenient to Mother Earth either. 

I must admit, though, that I did visit the Amazon website a few times. However, my infrequent visits to the website were purely for research purposes as I wanted to compare prices to gather some statistics on how much money I was really “losing” by purchasing my items elsewhere. While I did not purchase anything, it is unfortunate that I gave their website traction — and my cookies, whatever those are anyway — by my browsing through the select products I was comparing. 

In my “research” of sorts, I did discover that some items I elected to buy elsewhere, most often in person, were marginally more expensive than their list price on Amazon. 

That is not to say that I view spending the extra $5 on my new computer charger at an in-person store as a “loss.” If anything, it is an investment. I am investing those extra few dollars in a more sustainable future, higher quality items and, of course, a personal piece of mind that I am sticking to my commitment. Overall, I found that $5 differences here and there were worth it so as to not compromise my values. 

As I have stated before, I do generally find New Year’s resolutions to be a bit arbitrary in nature, as people tend to not stick to them or take them too seriously. Who said that resolutions have to be restricted to a year-by-year basis? Who said that you have to make a new resolution every single year? I challenge you to ask yourself these types of questions and consider picking back up old resolutions, or continuing to keep up on previously held resolutions as I have going into this upcoming year. Nothing new needs to be set, just continue on with what you have been working toward already, 

Going forward, I do not see myself ever shopping on Amazon again. To put it quite frankly, I can manage just fine and pretty much the same without it than I did with it in my life. In the way my life is currently structured, I have come to realize that I do not need Amazon. Nor do I want it. 

While I recognize some limitations that many individuals face, as I did in my previous article, I urge you, if you can, to dump Amazon like a toxic ex. Try exploring what life might look like without it. Not just for you, but for the environment and the betterment of society as a whole. 

It is time to flip the script and make it so that when you search “What is Amazon?” on the internet, the rainforest is at least in the top five search results. 

Libby D’Orvilliers is a senior psychology major