The Sustainable Future

Consumer Consequences (What if everyone consumed like you?)

How many earths would it take to support all 6.6 billion people on the planet if everyone consumed like you? Consumer Consequences is an interesting new site with a "game" that's part educational tool and part sobering look at the reality of our consumption.

You start out with a score of one earth, and as you answer questions about your home, the food you eat, your transportation, etc., that score either goes up or down (unless you grow your own food, generate your own energy, never buy anything, and never go anywhere, don't expect your score to go down). At the same time, facts and tips pop up about that particular area of consumption.

I live - I thought - a reasonably low-consumption lifestyle. My home is cozy (read that, small), I work from home so I don't commute, and I'm not much of a shopper. But I still scored 4.1, meaning it would take 4.1 earths to live my lifestyle. Yikes! I think it was the air travel that really killed my score.

When you're done, you can compare how your score compares to others who have played who have filled out their information, and  get tips on how to improve your score.

So what's your score?

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UK shoppers want less packaging (and so do I!)

It drives me nuts how much packaging ends up in my garbage can or recycling bin (a better option, but still not great) after a trip to the store. There's just too much of it!

A recent survey in the UK shows that UK shoppers agree. As Ecofriend points out, "A recent MORI survey on 1000 supermarket shoppers shows that about 92% of them want a reduction in amount of packaging." The study is part of the British newspaper The Independent's Campaign Against Waste.

Here's a frustrating statistic statistic.    "Packaging volume increased by 12 per cent between 1999 and 2005. It now makes up a third of the typical household's waste." 

Think about that from a business perspective for a minute. Here you have all of these companies delivering precisely the opposite of what consumers want. Seems like the time is ripe for some kind of change on the packaging front.

Ecofriend summarizes some of the other findings of the survey:

• Some customers accept their social responsibility. About three quarters of the public are keen on accepting the social and environmental responsibility. So they shop at places like Food Co-ops where packaging is less and brown bags are used more.
• Some of these grocery stores have green credentials. This means their policy strictly adheres to saving the environment from pollution. When the customers were asked about this, they were surprised themselves. Survey Stats prove that about a third of the customers would stick to stores with green credentials.

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Freecycling

You've no doubt heard "reduce, reuse, recycle," right? Well here's another one to add to the mix...freecycling.

What's that? Here's the description from the Freecycle Network website:

The Freecycle Network™ is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free.

You sign up for a local Freecycling group (it's a Yahoo group - I signed up for Seattle), and people post a boatload of free stuff, just there for the taking. If I wanted I could score a stash of Bon Appetit magazines, a wooden table, a 4-pack of cassette tapes, or a Dayrunner calendar. All for free. And that's just from the last few minutes.

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The roots of "disposable consumerism"

I was brought up in a consumer culture. I've never known anything different. As far as I've known all my life, serial consumption is just "the way things are."

Here's an interesting article from David Suzuki that suggests that our culture of disposable goods has its roots in converting a wartime economy to peace following World War II.

This paragraph in particular popped out at me...

Shortly after the end of the war, retailing analyst Victor Lebow expressed the solution: "Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

It's an interesting read.

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