The materialistic consumer society is completely inefficient and unsustainable and has many chances of leading us to ecological collapse or “ecocide”, as more and more economists and environmentalists warn.
The common denominator of most of us is that we work to survive, consuming the products and services that organizations that are part of our society sell us. In fact, since our lives are based and develop on a monetary system, companies do not see us, value us or treat us as human beings, but as employees, customers and consumers. That is, as a means to achieve what is currently its ultimate goal: to guarantee its “organizational survival”, increasing its economic benefits year after year.
And it is precisely this action of buying and selling goods that allows the monetary system to perpetuate itself. Although the quantity and quality of our purchases are conditioned by our position and our salary, so that the economy does not collapse, we all need to continue consuming. In other words, the end of consumption would mean the beginning of the collapse of the system.
But where do all the things we buy come from? To answer this question, it is necessary to understand how the so-called “materials economy” works, a process composed of several phases, as described by Annie Leonard in the documentary “The history of things”. The first is extraction, which is actually a euphemism, since it consists of exploiting natural resources, which in turn is a fancy way of referring to the destruction of nature. We are logging, mining, boring and destroying the world so fast that some environmentalists argue that humanity is the cancer of planet Earth.
THE ‘THROUGHOUT’ MENTALITY
“Our consumer society is, at its core, a society of destroyers, wasters and depleters of natural resources.”
(Annie Leonard)
The second phase is production. And it consists of using different energy sources to mix the extracted natural resources with a series of toxic components, from which many of the products we regularly consume are manufactured. And since many companies do not care about the impact that these chemicals have on our health and the environment, they continue to use these types of harmful substances, which in general tend to significantly reduce their production costs. At the moment, the patch that the business world is putting on this matter is to move its factories to developing countries.
The third phase is distribution, the goal of which is to sell all of these manufactured goods as quickly as possible. By having relocated the production system -hiring very cheap labor-, current mercantilist logistics has become one of the most polluting and unsustainable processes in our economy. Be that as it may, it gives rise to the fourth phase: consumption. Without a doubt, it is the heart that pumps the blood that keeps the monetary system alive.
In order to increase their sales and, therefore, their profits, companies often make decisions driven by their survival instinct, marginalizing ethics and corporate social responsibility. In fact, many organizations have an industrial design department, in charge of ensuring that all their products are made with cheap and poor-quality materials, so that they have a certain life time. The slogan is “designed to be discarded”. This is obvious if we think of plastic bags or cardboard tetrabriks. However, it also happens with many of the things we consume.
In close collaboration and collaboration with the manufacturers, the objects we buy are intentionally designed and manufactured so that they break, decompose or stop working quickly, coinciding with the expiration of the warranty period. In general, the fact that our mobile phone, computer, digital camera or television suddenly breaks down is not an accident. It is the result of a well-thought-out manufacturing strategy, which in the business world is called “planned obsolescence”.
THE INEVITABLE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
“Anyone who believes that exponential growth can continue indefinitely in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
(Kenneth Boulding)
This is why people who have been around the longest are surprised to see how today’s products, supposedly produced using processes and mechanisms aligned with the latest technological advances, last much less than those manufactured fifty years ago. It is common to hear the comparison made between contemporary cars and cars from the fifties, many of which continue to transport people in countries like Cuba. Unlike in the past, today’s world has become a business, in which companies manage in every possible way to make the consumption cycle perpetuate.
However, even through this strategy, the level of consumption does not reach the ratios necessary to achieve the self-preservation of organizations and, consequently, of the economic system on which they operate. Hence, companies, through marketing and advertising, motivate society to buy, discard and replace their consumer goods at an increasingly accelerated rate. The goal is to instill in consumers the desire to own newer products, a little better, and a little sooner than necessary. This psychological phenomenon is called “perceived obsolescence”.
Curiously, the propaganda of today’s consumer society has come to convince us that, if necessary, we throw away objects that are still perfectly useful. That is to say, that we make decisions aligned with our whims and desires, leaving common sense in the background, which is what allows us to use money to satisfy our true human needs. The paradox is that desire plugs us into a fiction built on what we do not have, preventing us from appreciating and enjoying what is within our reach.
The fifth and final phase of the “materials economy” is disposal. That is, the process of destroying the tons of garbage that we accumulate every day. Currently, the most common thing is to incinerate or bury it, which in turn pollutes and seriously damages the health of the planet. Although recycling is booming, it is still far from being able to solve this problem. More than anything because it is estimated that of all the materials involved in the extraction, production, distribution and consumption process, only 1% is still in use six months after being sold. That is to say, that the remaining 99% is transformed into garbage, causing the world to become, slowly but gradually, a great dung heap.
TOWARDS A POST-MATERIALIST CONSUMPTION
“The great advances in human history have been achieved by following better recipes, not by cooking more.”
(Paul Romer)
Given the inefficiency and unsustainability of this “materials economy”, more and more sociologists and economists are raising their voices to affirm an uncomfortable truth: that although the monetary system -through the need for cyclical consumption- generates economic growth , is getting it at the cost of the dissatisfaction of society and the destruction of the planet. Surprisingly, the more unhappy we are, the more we consume. And the more we consume, the more unhappy we are. This paradox will continue to govern our lifestyle as long as we do not question the foundations of the “old economic paradigm”, which sells us the big lie that materialism leads us to happiness.
In parallel, one of the great challenges proposed by the “new economic paradigm” is that we adopt the philosophy of “conscious consumption”. That is, buy what we really need (and not what advertising makes me want), while developing a greater ecological awareness, informing ourselves about whether what we consume is manufactured respecting the environment. As consumers, the best thing we can do is support green consumption in the full range of products and services you offer today.
And it is that for organizations to transcend their survival instinct, we must first individually change our way of consuming. That is, by stopping doing it on impulse and starting to move by values. And this is something that is part of an immutable economic law: business corporations don’t care until consumers do first. The more this awareness is awakened in society, the faster organizations will have to change and evolve to adapt and survive economically. Whether we want to see it or not, the revolution is in our hands.
