Consumption of Garbage: Work and Consume

By Johnny W. Lee

Written by Corbett, Communicating Nature is a book that revolves around the environment and its messages. The focus of chapter 4 is around the “work-and-spend cycle” Corbett mentions. Corbett states, “we tend to think of work as what we must do, and leisure as the time that remains after the practical necessities of life are taken care of.” Essentially the leisure time is the time spending on buying consumer product. Corbett mentions, “To fill big houses, we ‘shop ’til we drop.’ We spend far more time shopping—three to four times as many hours as people in Western Europe.” Another term Corbett mentions is “Buyosphere” and how we spend most of our life in this sphere. The message Corbett is trying to get across is that we are stuck in this cycle of spending.

She conveys this message through examples of how the marketing industry tries to keep us in this cycle. She states, “The marketing industry had realized that its selling strategies had to revolve around making the customer discontented with the product in hand, and to desire instead the new one in the store.” Another example is the obsolescence of cars, “By the 1950s, the auto market perfected “dynamic obsolescence”36 with a goal of shrinking the average length of car ownership from five years to one.” Another example is the appeal of the consumers, fear, “One way to nurture dissatisfaction is to appeal to an individual’s fears of being “less than” without the product: without X, Y, and Z, you’ll miss out on sex and love, get passed over for promotion, and raise bad children.” In the film Story of Stuff, the narrator speaks about the same message of consumption through the example of the changing of shoes styles and color. As a result, the marketing industry conveys a feeling of need, but we must ask ourselves “Do I really need it?”

In an article from Nature titled, Environment: Waste production must peak this century Chris Kennedy speaks on waste production. Kennedy mentions that, “Rubbish is being generated faster than other environmental pollutants, including greenhouse gases. Plastic clogs the world's oceans and rivers, causing flooding in developing-world cities. Solid-waste management is one of the greatest costs to municipal budgets.” He mentions, however, that the situation can be improved locally. Kennedy mentions “San Francisco in California has a goal of 'zero waste' (100% waste diversion by reduction and recycling) by 2020; already more than 55% of its waste is recycled or reused. The Japanese city of Kawasaki has improved its industrial processes to divert 565,000 tonnes of potential waste per year — more than all the municipal waste the city now handles.”

It is clear that from Kennedy’s article that waste production is a real problem and must be fixed. He also states, “In 1900, the world had 220 million urban residents (13% of the population). They produced fewer than 300,000 tonnes of rubbish (such as broken household items, ash, food waste and packaging) per day. By 2000, the 2.9 billion people living in cities (49% of the world's population) were creating more than 3 million tonnes of solid waste per day.” By the use of statistical data Kennedy is able to convey the readers the root of the problem—the amount of trash be produced per day. All these examples have one thing in common, the marketing industry is trying to keep us in this “work-and-spend cycle” and in this “Buyosphere”. As a result Corbett mentions, “Therefore work, both in substance and of necessity, is linked to our play and our consumption. At the workplace, we strive to earn more ostensibly to be ‘more comfortable,’ to get what we want, to buy more.”

In Chapter 5 Corbett starts to define what leisure is through different framework. In one framework, Corbett mentions “Leisure, for Aristotle, is the love and contemplation of what is; it is a thanking and a thinking. It is an affirmation of the world and an attempt to comprehend, not to change it…Leisure is the end of existence, the cessation of striving.” Today, however, the marketing industry is giving another message, a message that we should buy more consume more. This idea is also extended to “how we view the natural world and our relationship with it: Disney theme parks, and the environment in films and television.” Corbett conveys the message of commodification of leisure activities in nature.

Where do all these consumer products eventually end up in the end? They end up in the garbage. The film Synthetic Sea it shows footage of how petroleum, based plastic can’t biodegrade in the sea. As a result through the view of Captain Charles Moore, an oceanographer, the viewer can see the results of our consumption. The impact when I saw the scene was full of sorrow. The message of this film is to shows how much damage humans can cause to the sea and the only way we can fix this is to stop polluting and stop consumption. Another film that speaks out on consumption is No Impact Man, a film on how Colin Beavan and his family try to have no impact on the environment. This is done by buying and eating locally grown food and living without the use of electricity. One scene that was impactful was when Colin showed the viewers his garbage can for the week. It was almost empty. It shows that living this lifestyle is certainly possible. Compared to most Americans with their overflowing garbage cans, Colin is able to show that if we tried we can do the same as him. We can leave the same impact as him.