On Your Mark, Get Ready, Consume

By Nicole Cruz

Picture a long day at work, you come home and put your feet up and wind down. The first part of that statement is called work, the last leisure. And normally work and leisure don’t go together. Well I disagree personally. I happen to work as an animal care volunteer at the NY Aquarium, and there I enjoy everything I do. I mean who wouldn’t, working with sea otters, penguins, and walruses. I don’t need to come home and wind down or find some fun to do because I had my fun feeding those small to large sea animals. Though, while I may find leisure in work it’s more common not to. Believe or not there is cycle to all this crazy madness, and it starts from work to relaxation. The pedal pusher is none other than consumerism.

In Communicating Nature by Julia B. Corbett, she has a section in which she discusses the conundrum in which we work toward leisure. It’s explained that more people today work longer hours and have less time for leisure or any type of pleasure; “In current times, the workplace and the marketplace may not be of much help in your efforts to reduce work… In addition, employers generally don’t offer-and employees don’t demand-trading income gains for leisure.” Sleeping and eating is taking up the little free time workers have and your simple enjoyments aren’t being spent at all. This is where the cycle comes into play.

Did it ever occur to you why you feel the need to spend, or how any of the material items you purchased were manufactured? This attributes to the cycle I just mentioned. The circle of life that we have now put ourselves on. I feel The Story of Stuff can better explain this, due to the visual images shown throughout. However this just shows how little were aware to this whole sequence. We’re unconsciously being taught that we work to spend, and to work more because we need to keep up with the latest gadgets. This is easily supported by Communicating Nature when Corbett talks about the “buyosphere.” “Ubiquitous consumerism is arguably the religion of the late twentieth century for it has reached far beyond the mere provision of material goods to the fulfillment of a pseudo-spiritual life;” which completely demonstrates the state at which we live in. It’s not only when we kick our feet up after a long 40-hour work week, in which we turn our TV’s and are told to ‘shop, shop, shop!’ It’s also happening when we least expect it. It’s hidden during our supposed leisure time (when we actually find time).

Take Disney World or Disney Land. Corbett uses this as a prime example of how while were enjoying our time away from work, we’re simultaneously being brought into the never ending cycle of consumerism. Seriously think about it, when we go to these theme parks, we’re advised to stay there, dine there, and purchase all these souvenirs there. They do it, so you don’t need to leave. Also they have all this artificial “beautiful nature” there, so it falsifies your own environment. It reminded me of the Dr. Seuss book, The Lorax, where they had artificial air and cut down trees and the air supply was bottled and sold. Just food for thought, but I digress.

Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff lets us ask the question, where does all this stuff that we supposedly need come from. And she does an excellent job at portraying that, for example with the animation of the Earth and all the resources being taken up, or the animated sequence of the manufacturing to the large super store where it all ends up. But what I think really brings it home is an episode from Morgan Spurlock’s show 30 Days: Working in a Coal Mine. This episode centers around a coal mining family and the work ethic and damaging effects that comes from working in a coal mine. It’s quite disheartening to look at all these coal miners and see they have no choice because they need the money. They come home dirty and grimy, and face the potential of black lung disease. More than one coal miner was asked if they wanted their child becoming one and they all said no. They work in these conditions, which could cost them their life because they want better. You understand why they undergo these harsh conditions, like breathing in coal, the heat, the huge amount of labor input, and the risk of losing their life if something were to go wrong. It also makes you appreciate the people that work to keep your electricity going.

This also poses the question, is it environmentally safe, and the answer is no. But it’s not like you can avoid electricity right? This is where the big word I’ve been using this entire time, consumerism, comes back into play. This all goes back to consumerism and how our “lifestyle” is ultimately hurting the environment with all we consume. This is where No Impact Man shows us that a “green lifestyle” can be achieved. Do you remember the “crazy guy” Colin Beavan who was on The Colbert Report and Good Moring America. He wanted his family to reduce their amount of consumption for a year so in phases he went without electricity and only ate local food. He wanted to know if one person could make a significant impact because let’s face it NY isn’t all that concerned with lessening consumption (I speak as a native New York City New Yorker) but it’s difficult and not for everyone. It’s not an easy accomplishment considering consuming is all we really ever know. Beavan really explores how much we ingest and digest and the small things we take for granted, like the farmers market that they buy locally in season fruit and vegetables. It was effective to me, in the way it just showed how much I use and what maybe I could cut back on. Just think about all that you’ve consumed and what you could do to reduce it.

Having trouble of knowing where to start? How about reducing your plastic usage because that’s a big problem right now. So much of our plastic that we throw away winds up in the ocean degrading its beauty, not to mention harms all the marine animals residing in it. In Synthetic Sea Charles Moore shows the debris accumulating in the ocean as he narrates and shows the devastating effects it has on the environment. Something that struck with me, given the work that I do, is seeing birds eating this plastic and dying from it.

I could lessen my plastic usage (as well as you) by buying a travel mug and carrying lunch in a reusable bag. To reduce more consumption I can turn off the lights and other electrical items when not being used. Walk instead of taking a car or public transportation if I can. Monitoring my water control by shutting off the faucet when I’m brushing my teeth to not waste water and taking shorter showers. If that’s not enough check out The Environmental Working Database. Here you can see how your normal household products rank in terms of how good it is for the environment as well as your health. In this example, the marketers advertise this product as earth friendly, when it’s actually the exact opposite.   There is much we can do to reduce our consumption but it’s something that takes time and you need to be dedicated too. If you want to know more about reading labels and learning about what’s in your household products, check out this YouTube channel and video Gorgeously Green Lifestyle, where Sophie Uliano, the author of Gorgeously Green helps you read labels on common household products that are quite toxic.

Wasting the Earth Away

By Chad Marvin

In the summers, I work for The Town of Hempstead parks department. One of my coworkers there is quite interesting, he’s five feet eight inches tall, has plenty of stereotypic Italian bravado, he’s macho, he knows plenty of girls, he can infuriate you and get under your skin and yet part of you will still feel like you want to be his friend. One day while working with him as we trimmed a partially broken limb off a tree, he told me the story of why in college he created his own fraternity: I wasn’t about to let a bunch of assholes beat on me, when I should be beating on them” he eloquently explained. He felt as if he held a natural status of superiority over the others in his environment even though the system of that environment had functioned fine before he got there. While such a statement coming from such a person might seem like something you just say “yeah ok” to as you continue on with your daily affairs, the truth of the matter is there is much more than just the declaration of the alpha-male being expressed here.

What this is, is an aged anthropocentric idea, that we as humans need to go into an environment and clear all of the trees out, build a home with what was a home to many on what was a home to many as well, and then with those same materials, we must build a fence to keep the “assholes” my coworker had described away. Humans were not the first to occupy earth, if you’re a religious person you may even believe that the land and the animals were put on earth first. You may then too believe that man should "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth “(Genesis 1:28).”

Today after humans have ruled over the earth and everything in it, acting as the dominant species instead of acting gratefully towards all the species who allow us to live we have done irreparable damage to the earth. Moreover we have even moved away from the “fish of the sea” and “the birds of the sky” and created our own system in which people must partake in if they wish to “live” as we do now. The problem with all of this is that while humans have created their own environment, the one first presented to us still exists and is being smothered by the garbage and waste that we rapidly rear off into the world we live in.

In chapter four of Julia Corbett’s Communicating Nature, she discusses many of the issues that have arisen as a result of our work and consumer culture. Corbett says “Most of us live indoor lives, and the natural world is very much in the background of- if not divorced from- daily life.” She is describing the detached reality we have created as humans where we work in a capitalistic system crunching numbers all day so that we can have food on the table at the end of the day. But why not just grow the food and skip all of that? She goes on to explain the muck that we as humans have forced ourselves to trudge through in talking about how we essentially work to buy a house, to buy stuff for that house, to buy a car, to buy clothes; all so that we may have leisure time to relax… before we have to work again to keep all of things in our possession.  

Corbett comments on the mayhem that has ensued from this artificial atrocity we call our “lives” in saying “While it is true that consumerism is a culture in itself, it is a sad commentary to assert that we express and come to know ourselves best through shopping.” What she means here is that we are so far isolated from nature, that we have lost any true connection to it and now in a state of jumbled-disarray we supplant with material goods. And as we continue on this course of action we are exceedingly losing nature for we are literally burying it under the ample material goods that our lives revolve around in the forms of: food wrappers, plastic, e-waste, and the box that you got your new HDTV in. Corbett closes out her calling out of human consumerism in saying “Thinking that we can find solutions to our individual problems by buying products can only serve to detract from community life and broader public concerns, not the least of which is the environment.” If we continue to live the same way that we are now there is no telling how far this divide between humans and the environment will stretch.

Corbett continues to explain the wrong doings humans have impressed onto the environment in chapter five talking about leisure in nature as commodity and entertainment. First she discusses leisure and how its true definition is time in which you have “the self-sufficient activity of the mind, a mind which is its own best company, one that is not dependent on external stimuli for its action.” This is something that is quite rare today, for there are few places other than nature where one may be able to achieve this without being distracting by the unrelenting arms of consumerism. Corbett says “today’s marketplace encourages us to think of free time as yet another consumption opportunity and recreation as just another market.” This is true, in the world today do people not often shop for groceries or for the new charger they may need on their down time. Furthermore if you ever do have downtime and you want to buy a fishing rod or maybe some hiking boots are you not looking in the recreational activities section? It’s kind of funny how you will think of adults as the most superior people, who know the most when really all they do is go to work do what they are told, go to a store buy what they are told they need and go home to enjoy the things in their home they perceive to be necessary like watching TV.

There’s almost a sense of brainwash when thinking about this. And in due time will adults not tell their child to stop playing outside so much so they can “focus” and have all the great things their parents have. Wouldn’t it be greater to have the freedom to enjoy true leisure? This is a point Corbett is making. We live in such a fake world today where we have to do all of these things that we created in order to live, as if before humans occupied the planet or even industrialized it there was just no way to stay alive and safe while enjoying leisure time. Now if we are interacting with nature we are tending to our lawns or taking a walk through the park that probably cut down a bunch of trees to make the nice concrete path it has for you. Regardless, it is all centered around humans and regardless, we continue to smother nature and lose our connection to it. Corbett stresses in the end of her chapter “Commodification of nature is a theft of value from the natural world that cheapens it and does nothing to clarify or deepen our relationships to it.” We aren’t just hurting nature by living as we do, we’re hurting ourselves, and that surely isn’t something that is supposed to happen in the humans first world we have made so…

Perhaps we need to change our ways and rethink. In the documentary No Impact Man, we see Colin Beavan and his wife Michelle Conlin along with their daughter trying to live a year without having any environmental impact. This means no electricity, no throwing out anything, no driving or even public transportation, and even no toilet paper! Through the story we can see many ways in which humans are living a lifestyle that hurts the environment. Is it that hard to use sunlight during the day and when it’s dark, actually deal with that reality? Imagine all the trash he collected in a year of not throwing anything out, this documentary really points out just how far away we are from nature and how much danger we are doing to it because at the end of the day all of this families findings were only three peoples, imagine what billions of peoples pollution put together would look like. An article, Effects of Consumerism by Anup Shah details all that we are doing to the land in living in the materialistic culture that we live in. Through this article one can really begin to understand just how deep of hole we as humans are digging ourselves into. “Someone has to pay for our consumption levels” is just one line stressing the destruction we are causing. Humans have to change. This may seem hard but it really isn’t because all we have to do is return to basics. It is through farming, living communally and only using what we need that we will be able to live perfectly well without any negative repercussions. Through such routine actions we can change the minds of people like my coworkers and live better lives, and if not well, they’ll be the assholes.

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.

Consumption

By Heather Mattsongrosso

A huge topic in the eyes of many environmentalists is "consumption" and how we can reduce it.  There are some who consume more or less than others and then there are those who simply do not care.  Some have radical approaches, and some just do what they can.  

The film "No Impact Man" was about a project created by writer Collin Beavan, who made the decision to eliminate all of the consumptions that he and his family make for an entire year.  Collin, his wife Michelle, and their daughter Isabella transitioned from what Americans consider normal to completely depriving themselves from consuming materials, such as toilet paper and toxic cleaning products, transporting using cars and buses, using no electricity, and eating vegetarian as well as only locally grown produce.  Collin's motives for committing to a full year of no consumption was to see if it was truly possible to live a "no-impact" life.  The effort for no-impact actually created a giant impact on not only his family but as well as the general public.  While the film was presumed to show how the way every individual's consumption impacts the environment, the focus was more on how the project impacted his family as well as people as a whole.  I felt that the Beavan family was the perfect fit for this project because Collin and Michelle, although a couple, were at opposite ends of the spectrum in regards to the premise of this project.  While this was Collin's idea, his television and takeout loving wife was skeptical to the entire thing.  

There were also many skeptics on the outside looking in at this kooky family's 12-month plan to save the world.  Because the media was all over this project and Collin kept a blog, critics were able to keep up and vocalize their opinions on the project. Many critics claimed to "hate" the family, or at least Collin for coming up with the idea.  I felt that there were two reasons to why so many people hated the idea of the project.  First, the fact that the project would be the topic of Collin's next book led the public to believe that this was just a publicity stunt and his motives were insincere.  In a New York Times movie review of the film, "Portrait of a Marriage: Eco-Geeks Unplugged," A.O. Scott vocalizes that the film is merely just Collin trying to publicize that he is an eco-conscious American who will make sacrifices to be seen as a noble environmentalist. "It provides no new scientific insights or political arguments, and celebrates various behavioral changes without assessing their value or importance. 

Mr. Beavan's evangelical, self-congratulatory demeanor has the effect, especially early in the film, of playing to the unfortunate perception that what drives many environmentalists is, above all, the need to feel superior to their neighbors and fellow citizens." The discouragement of others brings me to the second reason why I believe many did not support Collins.  The project made people feel as if the only way to lessen their impact was to completely pull a 180 as the Beavan family did, and change their entire lifestyle.  This may leave a bad taste in the mouthes of most people and for that, they will resent even making small strides towards reducing consumption.

Ultimately, I felt that "No Impact Man" was less of an eco-documentary and more of a family-oriented project on how making complete lifestyle changes could affect the overall dynamic of a family.

Another environmentalist who is supportive of the elimination of unnecessary waste is recent NYU graduate, Laura Singer. Singer promotes living a sustainable lifestyle by not using any plastic waste.  The article, "23-year-old hasn't produced any trash in two years" shows how Singer was forced to make her own products like shampoo and beauty aids, since almost everything comes in a plastic container these days.  I felt that the article on Singer's lifestyle changes was much less intimidating than others, because it is made clear that rather than completely changing the way that she once lived, she simply just creates less trash.  Singer says, "You don't have to be a stereotype of anything to live a sustainable lifestyle.  My style is the same.  My taste is the same.  I enjoy the same things. I just don't make trash."  

I felt that the approach towards bringing attention to those who live sustainably was portrayed in a better way by the article on Laura Singer rather than the film "No Impact Man.” I thought this because the article was a less in-your-face way of saying that you can make minimal changes and still make a big impact.  You do not need to completely cut out everything that may or may not have negative affects on the environment to do something healthy for yourself and the planet.

Another piece based on production and consumption in the United States was a twenty minute video called "Story of Stuff.”  Within the first minute of this video, it was clear to me that this was going to be another educational video that could leave many of it's viewers disengaged.  The speaker in the video came off as if she were speaking to elementary aged students in front of a green screen, which was following along with stick figures and simple animations.  Although I do understand that there is something to be said about simplicity, this video seemed to lack any sort of hook to grab onto the viewer.  The speaker also made a, what I felt was very offensive comment about the military within the first three minutes of the video.  By the tone of her voice, anyone would be able to catch that the makers of this video were against funds being put into the United States Military. Everyone is entitled to voicing their opinion, but once you expose your beliefs, you are subject to losing a certain group of people.  This is why I personally was incapable of being engaged with the video and basically tuned it out within the first three minutes.

While trying to reduce consumption and live sustainably is beneficial to the environment, there are people that will be negatively affected by these efforts. In Morgan Spurlock's  "30 Days: Working in a Coal Mine," Suprlock spends the month in West Virginia joining the coal mining industry.  During this month Spurlock is not only exposed to these labor intensive and highly dangerous conditions, but works alongside the men who do this for a living and put their life on the line every day to make sure Americans have electricity.  Coal mining is so important to our country as Spurlock explains that fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal.  Although a very dangerous job, coal miners work these rigorous hours the same reason why all Americans get up and go to work in the morning, to provide for themselves and their families.  "30 Days: Working in a Coal Mine" puts things into perspective, providing a sort of "behind the scenes" look at a coal miner's life and the risks that they put themselves at such as black lung.  This piece forces people to question things like alternative energy. Although yes, it is beneficial for our planet, in eliminating energy created by coal, jobs are also eliminated for thousands of hard working Americans.  This just shows that there are pros and cons to everything.

Reducing consumption does not necessarily mean that you have to reduce the amount of granola bar wrappers you throw away or the amount of energy you use.  Upcycling could be considered another way to refurbish materials for other useful purposes. In a recent article: Upcycling, underground: Huge bike park opens former limestone mine, a Mega Underground BMX Park was opened in Louisville Kentucky.  This 320,00 square foot park lays about 100 feet beneath the Earth's surface.  The significance of this park is that it is an upcycled former limestone mine.  Utilizing mines for a parks are great ways to upcycle land and benefit a community.  Parks like this are at the forefront of bettering lives and putting a good use to things that we already have.

Ultimately, we are all capable of minimizing our consumption to certain extents.  It depends on a person's willingness and motives to how much they will "give up" in order to reduce consumption.  And if you do not chose to reduce how much you consume, you can always upcycle the materials that you have.