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

The Consumer Society: Garbage In, Garbage Out The present global economy has been greatly influenced by the consumer society, not by the ideals of environmental conservation. For that reason, through failing to perceive the entire costs of products and services, the market gives out deceptive information to policymakers at every level. This, along with the dominance of the culture of consumption, has generated a misshapen economy that is in conflict with the ecosystem of the planet, an economy that is throwing more and more garbage that destroys the Earth’s natural support systems. 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 for unspoiled resources more and more crashes with a minority of native people who had chose 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 aluminum, its timber, and its metals such iron and steel (Clarke 2003). Advanced technologies have allowed exploitative industries generate these massive quantities of unprocessed materials and have aided to maintain the decline of majority of material prices. Still, the developing range of those industries as well has meted out constantly rising cost. Unprocessed materials production has caused an unprecedented ecological damage throughout in the not so distant past. From 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 infrastructure 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. The area of stability they are situated at present is a superior one, still, and the consumer society remained strong (Edwards 2000). Materials utilization has by now reached astonishing levels in developed societies due to the outmoded international economic structure that lowers the prices of unspoiled materials and, essentially, falls short to explain the environmental costs of their mining and processing. The decline in prices has persisted even as environmental costs of the international materials economy have remarkably increased. Throughout the recent decade, nearly every main good or product has become considerably inexpensive all over the world, a development that, consequently, permitted consumption rates to sustain their stable growth (Clarke 2003). Global trade rules and regulations of developed countries have a tendency to bolster materials consumption patterns that resembles those of the colonial period, when empires were brought together to secure rights to extract raw materials for home-grown manufacturing industries (Edwards 2000). Nevertheless, the implications of rising consumerism in the garbage problem and its effect on the environment are many. In addition to the favorability of environmental and resource maintenance from quality of life as well as economic viewpoint, society faces growingly pressing waste and landfill management problems. A solution is reorganization which primarily relies on consumer behaviors. Public rules and regulations cannot sanction conscientious disposal through expanded means. Though, the better the knowledge and appreciation of consumer behaviors and impetuses, the better prepared society is to adjust practices of waste disposal to accomplish societal objectives. Techniques to motivate socially responsible reorganization movement could be an important outcome of expanded channel investigation. This dimension of environmentally conscientious behavior is dissimilar from the ordinary ecological focus of recycling non-biodegradable wastes such as packaging materials mentioned in previous researches. Consumer dumping of usable goods is hence a prominent concern that merits further investigation. In order to understand clearly the scale of constructive effect obtained from delaying the arrival of a particular product at a landfill, a resourceful researcher could locate data to approximate measurement of landfill space that could have been used to store the goods or products that were put up for sale or collected in pre-Christmas clothing or toy drives by non-governmental and charitable institutions (Alfino 1998). In the meantime, overconsumption is defined as buying and consuming more than you actually need. Several of our environmental crises can be associated to overconsumption. Forests are being denuded at a worrisome rate to manufacture paper and other timber goods. Bodies of water are being critically polluted and poisoned by the toxic wastes that are discharged by factories where mass production of consumer goods takes place (Alfino 1998). And landfill sites are starting to overflow due to the fact that we buy and consume than we actually need and that generates tons of garbage. The backside of the garbage problem is our resource utilization. Resources, as discussed above, are the unprocessed materials extracted and processed to produce things we use. For instance, plastics are produced from petroleum, and the metals that are used to build our skyscrapers are produced from mineral resources mined from underground. These resources are costly to obtain and process into finished products, and several of them, such as oil, are nonrenewable, once they are completely depleted, they would not be replenished anymore (Durning 1992). When we dispose things, we not only increase the garbage problem but we as well lose several of these important resources, together with all the time, energy and effort given to locate them, mine them from the ground and transform them into usable products. Individuals have to think critically on how they can lessen the garbage they generate, primarily. When we start to consider the things that we usually throw away, it becomes definite that our individual garbage is evidently connected to our buying behaviors. Whether we are purchasing shoes, clothes, make-up, bags, CDs, there is always, to a certain extent, a form of waste brought about by the buying activity and resources used. It is as well essential to remember that a quantity of the garbage related to the products we purchase is unseen, for the reason that it is generated when the product was manufactured or delivered to us. That newly bought multicolored t-shirt was dyed in a container of chemical dye that should be thrown away; import oranges should be packed in sheets of soft materials or even cardboard to maintain its original appearance after transport (Ratneshwar et al. 2000). These appear like extremely insignificant things, yet when we sum up all the purchases people make in a day, these unseen waste concerns can become extremely significant. It is at present normal hear people insert the word ‘refuse’ to the familiar environmental slogan ‘reduce, reuse, recycle.’ People make use of the term ‘refuse’ to indicate other activities that they are trying to ‘refuse’ or say ‘NO’ to the manufacturers of the products we usually use. People respond through refusing to bring home product packaging, in order that sellers will subsequently pressure producers to lessen packaging. People as well say ‘No’ to purchase products that are not durable, pressuring producers to modify their products (Clarke 2003, 85). In order to lessen the amount we purchase, we should make a decision on what things we actually need. It can be particularly difficult to differentiate between our needs and wants if we regularly view various advertisements on the television trying to persuade us that we actually need a variety of consumer goods. An individual who regularly watches television, frequently goes to the movie is relentlessly barraged with promotional information about products that are believed to delight us, or make us trendier and more popular. Yet if we reflect critically about all the information that are given to us, we can embark upon the difficult task of filtering the messages and making our own decisions and choices regarding the things that we actually need. Various forces operate against us in attempting to trim down consumption. One of these forces is ‘planned obsolescence.’ This “refers to the production of goods that were never intended to last” (Clarke 2003, 88). This is the strategy used by some companies to make sure that we purchase their products more frequently than we would if their products are made to last. Examples of planned obsolescence are the electronic and fashion industries. We frequently buy clothes instead of repairing old clothes, and this as well generates waste. And we are merely starting to witness the negative effects electronic wastes are generating for the world. Reducing garbage appears like a trivial effort at first, yet it is uncomplicated to notice how it may perhaps actually transform the quality of our personal lives, and the larger society as well. Waste reduction demands us to modify our consumption habits, but there are as well numerous positive effects. It is as well fascination to reflect about how we belong to the wider global community, particularly taking into account the fact that developed countries merely make up an insignificant portion of the world population yet the largest consumers of the planet’s resources. Majority of individuals in the world have lives interestingly dissimilar from us. Understanding and gaining knowledge about other cultures could provide us more insights about modifying our consumption habits. References Alfino, Mark et al. McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture. Westport, CT: Praeger , 1998. Clarke, David B. The Consumer Society and the Postmodern City. New York: Routledge, 2003. Durning, Alan Thein. How Much is Enough? The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth. New York: Norton, 1992. Edwards, Tim. Contradictions of Consumption: Concepts, Practices and Politics in Consumer Society. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2000. Ratneshwar, S. et al. The Why of Consumption: Contemporary Perspectives n Consumer Motives, Goals and Desires. London: Routledge, 2000. Read More