Consumers and the Environment

Our environment is made up of everything that surrounds us. From the smallest grain of sand to the largest animal on the planet, it can be found anywhere you look.

Whenever people think of the environment, they often think of natural made things like plants, animals, the weather, etc., but they never think of things like sidewalk, buildings, and parks. Though it may not seem like it, man-made environmental factors play a major role in our society.

One major factor that plays a role in our everyday lives is consumer consumption and waste. Consumer consumption happens on a daily basis. This is a very common environmental harm because it happens without people thinking about it. It all begins with work and leisure time.

People work so that they can afford to do what they want with their time. Because of this, leisure and consumption tend to go hand in hand with each other. Leisure and consumption are often intertwined because now-a-days it costs money to do just about anything. Corbett states that “in our highly industrialized and consumer-driven society, our work is what “buys” our leisure and the toys we use it in”.

People also “buy” things to fill their lives. Over the decades, the way that consumers have been living has changed vastly. Take houses for example. “In the 1950s, a standard house for a family was 750 square feet. That had doubled by 1963 to 1,500 square feet and by 2003 it was 2,330 square feet. Fifty years ago, only 20 percent of houses had more rooms than people living in them, but by 1970, over 90 percent of homes had more than one room per person” (Corbett 89–90). Due to the increase in house sizes, people buy more and more, so that they are able to fill all of the rooms in their homes. Hence the phrase, “shop ‘till we drop”.

Next is waste. Waste is not limited to just food and trash. It is everything that a person throws away. As consumers continue to buy, business continue to create new and improved products. “Ever-changing products add pressure to continue buying by making older versions inherently less satisfying” (Corbett 97). This means that whenever companies change the style and design of their product, they use things like new colors and shapes to make their previous products look old and obsolete. By doing this, companies are pushing for what you could call “premeditated waste” (Corbett 97). “Premeditated waste” is when companies convince consumers to buy their new up dated products, even if their old ones still work perfectly fine.

Although companies are making and improving their products, they are harming not only ourselves, but our environment. For example, the products that are being made contain carcinogens (aka cancer). This leads to both the people making and using these products being exposed to things that can lead to cancer (Story of Cosmetics). By creating toxic chemicals and products, companies are also creating more chemicals as a side effect. Causing more harmful waste to be added to the already large pile of waste.

In the end, the consumer market and the waste of products are very intertwined and connected. You cannot have one without the other.

Sources:

Corbett, Julia B. Communicating Nature: How We Create and Understand Environmental Messages. Island Press, 2006.

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