Unbearable Costs + Consequences of Consumerism
This week a friend sent me the link to a new online film by an expert on the materials economy and it took me a few days to click on it. I finally did because I wanted to clean up my email in-box, nothing more noble. Now I want to clean up my spending habits.
This rapid-fire film helped me see much more clearly how what I choose to buy:
1) has an effect on the world’s natural resources and the health of the environment
2) contributes to a lower quality of life in poor nations where natural habitats are ruined by resource extraction and production, forcing people into unhealthy factory work in slummy mega-cities
3) contributes to a lower quality of life in rich nations for the employees of superstores and the like which distribute these goods at rock bottom prices while stiffing the workers on pay and health benefits
….plus there is more damage waiting at other points in the consumer cycle, like
a) consumption (6 months usage per product is average in the USA, with products built to break or go out of fashion) and
b) disposal (especially the incineration of garbage which creates the world’s most toxic man-made chemical – dioxin – and releases it into the air we breathe), and
c) the role product-pushing corporations play in our lives and how our governments now work to please them rather than take care of us.
“The Story of Stuff” reveals that the rampant consumerism of our modern lifestyle has devastating consequences for our environment, third-world nations, the working class, personal health and even the general state of our happiness. Take a look. If you’ve got kids, let them watch and see if it changes the way they view the world of stuff.
The site also features hundreds of organizations working to change the cycle of the materials economy and suggestions about what we can personally do to change the unsustainable direction things are headed.
–Anastasia Ashman
Filed under: global warming, environment, health, awareness, work-life balance, city living, lifestyle, greenhouse gasses, carbon footprint, greenhouse gases, chemicals, depression, greenhouse gas, Planet Earth, Anastasia, sustainability on March 27th, 2008
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