Our Consumption, Communication, and the Earth

By Kylie Campanelli

This week I was asked to compile a list of all the ways I consumed energy or resources unnecessarily. Though most things on my list were small actions with small impacts individually; forgetting to turn the water off while brushing my teeth, using plastic silverware once a day instead of a reusable metal version, or periodically buying a plastic bottle of water instead of remembering my refillable one, when all the actions of the week were added up it was a lot of consumption. It got me thinking about the way each of us lead our lives and if it directly or indirectly correlates to the way we feel about our impact, and the importance of our impact, on the environment. 

I would like to consider myself an environmentally conscious person. I do not consume meat or dairy products, I do not use soaps or body products with chemicals, I recycle, and do my best to be aware of the amount of water or light I am using on a daily basis. Yet, after looking at what I had failed to do in the last week, it is obvious there is much I can improve on. I would imagine this is also the same for many other people. It seems we are never fully aware of what the consequences of our actions. We are all actively contributing to the degrading state of our earth.

There has been a lot of recent discussion about our individual impact and what causes it as well as ways we can improve on it, and here I’d like to analyze further into the different aspects that contribute to why we consume the way we do, the effects it has and what can be done about it moving forward. 

Consumerism has become a huge part of the American way of life. We have become programed to be constantly on the look out for the next best thing. We always want more. This leads to a steady demand for, and also an excess of, commercially produced items. Every part of our lives is influenced by our need for “things.” In chapter 4 of Communicating Nature by Julia B. Corbett, the correlation between our need for stuff and what we do with our down time is examined. She finds that the media, advertisements, and numerous other forms of communication are constantly telling people, that we need to buy things in order to enjoy our time. Also, the harder we work, the “harder we relax,” so to say. This means, we feel we need toys and objects to pass the time, and those who work harder often feel they must be more productive with their time for leisure. We cannot just simply venture out into nature and enjoy ourselves, we need the right clothes, equipment, tools, and toys. And without all this, it is not as great of a time. This communicates the message that even nature needs to coincide with buying, which is ironic because the more we consume, the poorer our relationship with nature becomes. As we buy new, we use more resources as well as dispose of the old in not always environmentally friendly ways.

Corbett then goes on to discuss in the following chapter, our detachment from our actions and their consequences. She pitches the example of goods we buy from over seas. We buy these products without thinking about the route they must take to get to us. We don’t consider the human and environmental rights and laws that could possibly be violated by our purchase. The same goes for our consumption of energy. 

In 30 Days Working in a Coal Mine, a show aired in 2008 that followed Morgan Spurlock, a man working in a West Virginia coal mine for 30 days, a powerful message was delivered about our consumption for energy and, like the example provided before by Corbett, our regard for the people who this consumption effects. The show is a documentary, with all real-life non-scripted footage. The message is hard-hitting and not easy to ignore. In the episode it tells about the dangerous conditions coal miners work in on a daily basis, also about the environmental destruction caused by coal mining. This all occurs to fuel our ever-increasing need for energy as we consume, consume, consume. 

This past week I attended a lecture given by scientist Dr. Schoonen of Brookhaven National Lab, provided by the Sustainability department at Stony Brook University. According to Dr. Schoonen the answer is a change in human action and the way we deliver as well as perceive messages about our regard for the environment and the effect our consumption has on it. He said the plan that has the greatest chance of change started and ended with us. As a well-credited official in his field, it was interesting that he believed the greatest solution to this grand problem was in the peoples hands. And we have seen in many cases, people have started jumping on this bandwagon and the message they are portraying to the public has slowly gained power.

The greatest example of this, I believe was the film No Impact Man that depicted a project conducted by Colin Beavan in which he and his family lived for an entire year without hurting the environment at all. They did not use carbon-producing transportation, did not use plastic, paper, oil or coal, and did not buy anything new. After documenting and sharing their journey, they became famous for their project. I believe it is because in a world so used to constant consumerism, it was shocking and fascinating that ordinary people were able to live like this for an entire year. It went against almost everything that is the typical American way of living. They appeared on countless news channels and television interviews. It seemed everyone was talking about this family. This lead to increase awareness of how our consuming and energy use was affecting us, and set an example that less consumption was definitely possible. It was an incredibly effective way of changing the conversation and raising the bar for human action in the future, because it showed people they too can help reduce the amount of waste in the world.

The amount of garbage we dispose of as humans is the number one contributor of tons of environmental problems. An article posted in The Washington Post titled, “Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass” written last year, addressed the amount of food we throw out alone and how it effects the earth. Americans waste almost 50% of the food they obtain and with that goes the plastic wrappings and such that are attached to it. These remnants then end up in our oceans and disturb our peaceful nature. Just like the “No Impact Man” project movie, or “30 Days Working in a Coal Mine” there have been other media outlets trying to bring awareness to the idea that we are the problem, and the solution.

An example of another movie is “Synthetic Sea”, a short movie most recently updated in 2010, that teaches viewers about the amount of plastic in our oceans. The movie is also like a documentary, as it shows real footage of the plastic and synthetic particles floating in our ocean and provides facts and insides from scientific experts. It’s successful at communicating the message ‘This needs to stop!’ as it informs us of statistics such as, in 2008 it was estimated there is 45 pounds of plastic to every pound of krill in the north-east Pacific Gyre. The material either gets digested by fish who then suffer health problems, or it washes up on shore, polluting beaches. The plastic comes from people incorrectly disposing of garbage, and is a completely avoidable problem, if people paid closer attention to messages like “Synthetic Sea”.

Through different advertisements and pieces written by environmental authors, we can see there are many varied ideas regarding the environment and our relationship with it. It has become obvious we need to pay closer attention to our carbon footprints, and positive forms of communication through media and lecture, is the most successful way of spreading this message, and hopefully leading to a change. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/23/americans-throw-out-more-food-than-plastic-paper-metal-or-glass/