What is the real price of consuming?
Annie Leonard talks about many important things in her presentation, things we all know about but almost always choose not to care too much about. We all know that the earth’s resources decreases rapidly, that the environment are being destroyed more and more because pollution among other things, so why don´t we do anything about it? Annie gives us a very good solution to how we could at least slow down the destruction of earth; don’t consume as much as you do now.
The fact that we connect consumption with status and contribution to the society (yes, sadly it´s a fact for too many people) is a big problem. If everyone realized that the enormous consumption we have today does not help either the earth, the society or ourselves, hopefully the consumption would slow down. Of course we have to consume to make the countries go round, but we have to cut down. If we continue consuming, companies will continue using the earth’s resources until they are all gone, and we can´t let that happen.
It´s interesting that she actually found reports were companies have discussed how they can produce products that will breake as soon as possible, not so fast that the customer will be upset, but just so fast that the customer will go and by a new product. If we should start buying more quality products, that lasts ten years instead of one year, then we would not help the companies to produce these crappy things... More importantly, if we would start paying more for the products, if we stop choosing the cheaper one of two products, then would the employees who work in the factories hopefully get paid more and would get a chance to get a better life standard.
I could write about this for a long time, because it is such an interesting and important subject, but to sum it up; how much is our overconsumption worth?? Is it ok that enormous amounts of toxic pollution are let out, that the rainforest are deforested, that people have to work with toxin almost every day for almost no money, just so we can buy one more unnecessary product?
What would happen if we all would cut our consumption down to half? Could YOU cut your consumption down to half and are YOU willing to do so?
