Why consumerism is a problem

This causes a domino effect of problems on society. Over-consuming leads to obesity , which in turn leads to further cultural and social problems. For example, medical services are stretched further and further as the worldwide obesity rates rise. As well as obvious social and economic problems, consumerism is destroying our environment. As the demand for goods increases, the need to produce these goods also increases. This leads to more pollutant emissions, increased land-use and deforestation, and accelerated climate change [4].

We are experiencing devastating effects on the planets water supplies, as more and more water stores are used up or diverted as a part of intensive farming procedures.

Waste disposal is becoming a problem worldwide, and our oceans are slowly but surely becoming a giant waste disposal pit. It is estimated that over half of the plastic produced every year is single use — this means that it is used once, and then either thrown into landfill or finds its way into the environment.

According to scientists, up to 12 million tons of plastic enters the ocean every year, forming giant floating garbage patches all over the world [5]. It is obvious that we need to reduce consumerism and change our current lifestyles, otherwise the planet we know will cease to exist.

We are currently consuming resources at an unsustainable rate, which is causing mass environmental destruction and social problems across the world. Make a change today by reducing materialistic possessions, increasing recycling, and raising awareness in your community.

This process is already happening. Look at the USA. Buying food has become so cheap that it is fine to buy and eat a lot of it. And they found no meaningful difference between the two. For example, friends are always asking me where to take their old clothes so that they are either effectively recycled or make it into the hands of people who need them. My answer? The sustainability movement has been charged with being elitist—and it most certainly is. Choosing fashion made from hemp, grilling the waiter about how your fish was caught, and researching whether your city can recycle bottle caps might make you feel good, reward a few social entrepreneurs, and perhaps protect you from charges of hypocrisy.

I came to this conclusion myself through years of personal research, but other academics have devoted their lives to uncovering the fallacy of conscious consumption.

One of those sustainability experts is professor Halina Szejnwald Brown , professor of environmental science and policy at Clark University. In short, consumption is the backbone of the American economy—which means individual conscious consumerism is basically bound to fail.

Take plastic water bottles, for example. Shipping bottled water from Fiji to New York City is also an emission-heavy process. And yet, despite the indisputable facts and the consistent campaigning by nonprofits, journalists, and activists to urge consumers to carry reusable water bottles, bottled water consumption has continued to rise —even though it costs up to 2, times more than tap water.

So why do we continue to buy 1. Because market capitalism makes it incredibly difficult to make truly helpful sustainable choices.

This then places additional stress on the larger cities to provide for more people. It also results in more slum areas, health problems, increasing crime, over-crowding, and so on. Some, being pushed off their own lands, will move to less arable land to hope to farm that, which may conflict with wildlife. In other cases, others may move into forested areas, clearing them with a hope to make a living form farming that cleared land.

Destruction of old forests in particular can also mean loss of habitat for many wildlife. In yet other cases, many may try to immigrate to other parts of the world if they feel there is no choice left in their own country. In yet other situations, economic growth can also lead to more urban migration.

Sometimes this growth of cities can go in hand with decline in the rural areas. Due to these and a multitude of other complex socioeconomic and political factors, in different parts of the world, there are different proportions of people in urban and rural areas. Full country breakdowns are available in the report. It is not always the case that, as commonly held, the poor are the ones that end up stripping natural resource to survive.

Many communities described as poor materially have traditions and practices that encourage protection of their environment because they understand their mutual dependency. In addition, land ownership for the poor provides mechanisms to ensure sustainable and efficient use, because of the need to care for it for their survival, as detailed for example, by Vandana Shiva, in her book Stolen Harvest South End Press, Peter Rosset also shows that smaller farms are more efficient when it comes to ensuring a productive yet healthy ecosystem.

Economic policies of the wealthier nations and their consumption demands mean that more land is therefore used to grow cash crops bananas, sugar, coffee, tea etc for export to wealthier countries primarily , while other land is diverted for non-productive uses tobacco, flowers etc. Additional land is also cleared and used to grow things like cattle for beef exports. In the quantities that some of the products of these exports are consumed, it could be argued that a lot of this production is wasteful and unnecessary.

The cost to the environment and local populations is borne not by the consumers of the products, but local people instead. And because food is a commodity, then it is those who can afford to pay, that will get food. The following is worth quoting at length bulleting and spacing formatting is mine, text is original :.

To understand why people go hungry you must stop thinking about food as something farmers grow for others to eat, and begin thinking about it as something companies produce for other people to buy. What this means is that ending hunger requires doing away with poverty, or, at the very least, ensuring that people have enough money or the means to acquire it, to buy, and hence create a market demand for food.

When the best agricultural land is used up to produce these cash crops, more marginal land is used for food and subsistence farming. This can also lead to clearing parts of rainforests, or other forms of encroachment on other ecosystems. As nations such as China begin to rise, their appetite for these resources are quite large. However, while there is some concern raised at the amount of environmental resources such nations will eventually require, little is raised about how for decades richer nations have been consuming in further excess and waste.

For more details on this, see Richard H. Robbins, as quoted above. Many wonder why the poor cannot follow the example of the rich and get out of poverty themselves. Numerous mainstream commentators suggest that the poor should follow the example of the rich and that globalization in its current form provides the answer. Some may say this because they or their society has followed this ideology to get out of poverty and it worked for them, so it should work for others.

Yet, often missed is where the resource base to support the increase in wealth has typically come from. Yet, the consumption inequalities of today and the regions of immense wealth and immense poverty, on a global scale shows a similar pattern to those of previous decades and centuries. The U. As described in the poverty section of this web site, wars throughout history have been because of this control of resources.

Yet because in the mainstream this is not acknowledged it is easy to just see this as a threat and act on it, without really understanding why it has become a threat. The traditional objective of making products for their self-evident usefulness was displaced by the goal of profit and the need for a machinery of enticement.

Significantly, it was individual desire that was democratised, rather than wealth or political and economic power. The glove section at an early department store, which changed the way people shopped Credit: Getty Images. Release from the perils of famine and premature starvation was in place for most people in the industrialised world soon after WWI ended.

US production was more than 12 times greater in than in , while the population over the same period had increased by only a factor of three, suggesting just how much additional wealth was theoretically available. The labour struggles of the 19th Century had, without jeopardising the burgeoning productivity, gradually eroded the seven-day week of and hour days that was worked at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England.

In the US in particular, economic growth had succeeded in providing basic security to the great majority of an entire population. In these circumstances, there was a social choice to be made. It would be feasible to reduce hours of work further and release workers for the spiritual and pleasurable activities of free time with families and communities, and creative or educational pursuits.

But business did not support such a trajectory, and it was not until the Great Depression that hours were reduced, in response to overwhelming levels of unemployment. In , Kellogg adopted a six-hour shift to help accommodate unemployed workers. In , the US cereal manufacturer Kellogg adopted a six-hour shift to help accommodate unemployed workers, and other forms of work-sharing became more widespread.

Workers voted for it by three-to-one in both and , suggesting that, at the time, they still found life in their communities more attractive than consumer goods. This was particularly true of women. Kellogg, however, gradually overcame the resistance of its workers and whittled away at the short shifts until the last of them were abolished in If profit and growth were lagging, the system needed new impetus.

The short depression of — led business leaders and economists in the US to fear that the immense productive powers created over the previous century had grown sufficiently to meet the basic needs of the entire population and had probably triggered a permanent crisis of overproduction.

Prospects for further economic expansion were thought to look bleak. The historian Benjamin Hunnicutt, who examined the mainstream press of the s, along with the publications of corporations, business organisations, and government inquiries, found extensive evidence that such fears were widespread in business circles during the s.

Victor Cutter, president of the United Fruit Company, exemplified the concern when he wrote in that the greatest economic problem of the day was the lack of "consuming power" in relation to the prodigious powers of production. Notwithstanding the panic and pessimism, a consumer solution was simultaneously emerging.

As the popular historian of the time Frederick Allen wrote, "Business had learned as never before the importance of the ultimate consumer. Unless he could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, super heterodynes, cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets.

Factory workers icing a steady supply of biscuits in Credit: Getty Images. In his classic book "Propaganda," Edward Bernays, one of the pioneers of the public relations industry, put it this way: "Mass production is profitable only if its rhythm can be maintained.