In 1994 Zuckermann collaborated with Eric Britton, with whom he had worked much earlier on the Sundance Festival, to create an interactive program under The Commons for something they called "Consumer Holiday – The one day a year we turn off the economy and think about it". Shortly however they became aware of a well financed Canadian program with many of the same objectives, Buy Nothing Day, and decided to convert their collaborative project into an international support site that looked at a broader range of problems, ideas, paths and solutions, which would help to amplify and compete the Canadian project. Thus the International Buy Nothing Day program was born and continues to this day.
