The price on the screen

In Abu Dhabi, a parcel of clothes arrives at a flat for less than the cost of a lunch. Three tops, a pair of trousers, a dress that will be worn twice. The price on the screen was so low that buying felt almost like a favour to oneself.

That price is not what the clothes cost. It is only the part the buyer pays.

The rest is paid somewhere else, and by nearly everyone. The water used to grow and dye the cotton, in places that cannot spare it. The fuel to fly each parcel across the world on its own. The trucks and the landfill outside the city, filling with things bought in spring and thrown away by autumn. The heat that each year adds to a summer that was already hard. None of it appears in the basket, so it feels as if nobody pays it.

Somebody does. A person who has never ordered a cheap dress in her life still covers the landfill through the city's fees, the heat through her electricity bill, the waste through everything it touches. Buy or do not buy, a share of the bill is yours.

The sellers have done a remarkable job of making all this feel harmless. Cheap, quick, fun, easy to send back, a small treat with no consequences. Counted properly, it is none of those things.

What would happen if every parcel carried its full price, the part on the screen and the part paid by everyone else?

I suspect it will take us a long while to add it up. The bill is already being paid, just not at the checkout.