The Consumer Society - Garbage In, Garbage Out - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The environmental price of mounting garbage or waste disposal, from toxic discharges to the contamination of groundwater by rising landfills, have been reported alarmingly with increasing regularity. Yet, enormous damage is brought about by the preliminary mining and processing of unprocessed materials through a massive system of mines, chemical plants, smelters, logging activities, petroleum refineries, and pulp mills. Only four main manufacturing industries, namely, metals, plastics, chemicals and paper, comprise more than 50% of toxic discharges from all manufacturing industries in the United States. The pursuit of unspoiled resources more and more crashes with a minority of native people who had chosen to remain untouched by the mainstream culture (Clarke 2003).

The influence of the consumer society that has stretched all the way from North America to Europe, parts of East Asia, and a minority of the affluent in developing nations, has carried with it an extraordinary craving for physical and material goods. People in developed nations account for an insignificant portion of the world’s population; though consume nearly a 100% of the world’s supply of aluminium, its timber, and its metals such iron and steel (Clarke 2003). Advanced technologies have allowed exploitative industries to generate these massive quantities of unprocessed materials and have aided to maintain the decline of the majority of material prices. Still, the developing range of those industries as well has meted out constantly rising cost. Unprocessed materials production has caused unprecedented ecological damage throughout in the not so distant past. From the 1970s, progress in the consumption of unprocessed materials in developed countries has slowed. A number of scholars think that these countries have already maximized its consumption capacity, for a great deal of their materials-exhaustive infrastructures such as networks of roads and structures, by now is in place, and marketplaces for large and heavy products such as cars, domestic devices and others.  ...Download file to see next pagesRead More