I found a great article while looking online on how we are affecting our environment. The article is called Wasting Away: Natural Resources and the Environment. It describes the process in which products are manufactured and then sold to the public, us. “Our use of natural resources has impacts that go far beyond simply using materials that are in limited supply. The environment is affected at every stage of the chain of extraction-processing-manufacturing-marketing-consumption-disposal.” Creating a product not only uses up our plummeting source of resources, it also impacts the environment in other ways. First we must extract the resources from the Earth through mining, construction, cutting timber and more. This devastates the Earth, tearing it apart from the inside out. After we have committed these heinous acts to satisfy our greed there is still more.
Gathering the materials is only the beginning of a long string of processes which makes our planet Earth sicker and sicker every day. Next we must change the raw materials collected into usable form, resulting in air and water pollution. After we do this the materials are used to create specific products such as clothing or cameras. This uses energy and thus generates more pollution. Once the product is created you’d think that this harmful procedure is over, but you’d be wrong.
Items need to packaged and publicized using cardboard boxes, billboards, magazine advertisements and more. The packaging is generally thrown away once the product has been purchased. In the U.S. packaging accounts for 35% of all household trash! (Wasting Away: Natural Resources and the Environment) Although we do not consider this, discarded packaging will be dumped into a landfill not only polluting our environment but polluting the place some are forced to live in.
Even once sold the damage is not complete. Most products we buy require energy after purchase, for example a camera needs batteries so it continue to run. This extra but necessary energy creates more pollution. Once we have used these batteries they are disposed of and after some time the product we acquired stops running in perfect working condition. “At some point, whatever the item - be it a few ounces of packaging that holds a fast-food meal for two minutes, or a two-ton automobile that lasts for years - we throw it away. But really, there is no "away." Something must be done with the stuff we no longer want.” (Wasting Away: Natural Resources and the Environment)
This is a problem on its own. How do we get rid of the things we no longer need? Some is incinerated and some is buried in landfills. Both of which cause undeniable pollution and impact the planet negatively. The article asks “How much is enough?” Do you ever ask yourself, do I really need this extra laptop, or another car? Do you ever stop and think how buying this product will affect the environment and generations to come? No, because if everyone thought like that we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Those who have good quality lives continue to consume and buy products they do not need. Those who are struggling to survive are not allowed these luxuries; they are not even allowed the basic necessities which one needs to live. A shower, a stove, even a bed, some go without, while most of us fill our houses and continue to consume. We purchase what we really do not need.
“The developed countries of the world hold 25% of the world's population, but consume 75% of all energy, 85% of all wood products, and 72% of all steel produced.” Although the developed countries are the least in number they consume the greatest amount of resources which the Earth provides. Americans have the highest consumption rate in the world. The U.S. consumes even more than people in other developed countries, although those countries have been around longer and developing for a greater amount of time. “From 1940 to 1976 Americans consumed more minerals than all of humanity up to then.”
We are not reaching a crisis. We are in the middle of it. If we do not stop consuming the way we’ve been going, there will be nothing left to consume. If there is nothing to consume we, as consumers, will no longer survive.
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