January 13, 2010 ESSENCE
Curb Your Consumerism
ILANA KRONICK
To consume, or not to consume:
that is the question. A growing
consensus among advocates in the
public and academic spheres is that
we must practice sustainable con-
sumption. Unfortunately, much of
the industrialized world continues
to consume material resource at an
alarming rate, and with no concern
for ecological or societal health. The
prevalent ideology, that more is bet-
ter, has successfully ushered in an
era of over-consumption. While hu-
mans fail to curb their consumerism,
our planet is trying to tell us to slow
down; though few are responding to
the plea. The health of our oceans
is waning everyday as biodiver-
sity continues to decline; Cousteau
writes in The Oceans: No Time to
Lose - 1971, we humans continue to
look “longingly at the oceans to feed
our booming populations.” We must
heed the call and realize that humans
are in the unique position of being
able to care for the planet. Unfortu-
nately, we have not done a very good
job of caring for our planet and now
is the time to take steps towards a
sustainable future.
The contemporary film Cloudy
with a Chance of Meatballs, based
on the 1978 children’s novel, is an
interesting commentary on over-con-
sumption and portion control. In an
island town where there is nothing to
eat but sardines, an aspiring inventor
creates a machine that can produce
food out of water. Unfortunately
however, the mayor’s unshakable
desire to be the biggest and best in
the world, leads him to take advan-
tage of the machine’s abilities. The
sheer amount of food demanded is
too much for the machine to with-
stand and the result is a deadly
storm of over-sized hot dogs and
pasta that threatens the existence of
the town. Although, in the real-word
Completing the Cycle
JULIA BENNETT
Do you recycle? When asked this
question most people will proudly
answer yes, but few know what re-
cycling really means. It is a common
assumption that recycling only in-
volves returning recyclable products
to the appropriate place; however,
this action is only one part of the re-
cycling process.
The universal symbol for recycling
is a mobius loop. Returning materi-
als is only the first step in this cycle.
The second involves reprocessing
returned items.
The third step, which completes
the loop, is buying or using recy-
cled goods. This final step is often
absent from people’s perception of
recycling, but it is an essential com-
ponent of the process. In order for
materials to be reprocessed there
must be a market for recycled goods.
Without this demand, many tons of
recyclable material will remain at
transfer sites and possibly even be
redirected to landfills.
The Recycling Council of Alberta
defines recycling as “Diverting
9
where the likelihood of over-sized
hot dogs threatening our existence is
minimal- the film’s message to con-
sumers is clear. If humans continue
over-exploiting valuable resources
VITAL RESOURCES MAY BE DESTROYED IF WE DON’ T CURB OUR CONSUMERISM.
catastrophes will be inevitable.
Those of us who are taking action
to reduce have come to understand
that our “culture of consumption
[…] leaves little time or incentive for
political engagement or the cultiva-
products from disposal at the end of
their useful lives, sorting, transport-
ing and processing them to produce
secondary sources of materials that
tion of civic virtues” as M’Gonigle
writes in Minding Place: Towards
a (rational) political ecology of the
sustainable university, 2006. We un-
derstand that it is now unmistakably
PHOTO BY: JULIA BENNET T
vital that we make time for political
engagement to avoid global catastro-
phes, such as the loss of biodiversity
and vital food sources. Events such
as Waste Reduction Week in Canada
(October 19th, 2009) and the Interna-
are subsequently used in the pro-
duction of new goods” which will
PHOTO BY: JULIA BENNET T
“reenter the recycling loop”. Closed
loop recycling involves reprocessing
Growing and
tional Day on Climate Action (Octo-
ber 24th, 2009) demonstrate that steps
towards a sustainable future are pos-
sible, but more steps must be taken.
Becoming a planet caretaker and a
sustainable consumer must be our
way forward.
Mainly, people need to be aware
of the environmental impacts their
consumption choices have, and try
to minimize them. Products are
put on the shelves solely to be con-
sumed. Endless amounts of different
lip balms are strategically laid out
on store shelves to attract consum-
ers to buy more - even though they
do not need them. By being aware
of the consequences of merchandise
production, consumers will have
more control over the consumption
choices they make.
Educating oneself rather than
turning a blind eye is a major hurdle
that many individuals must over-
come. There is a lot of information
providing many sustainable alter-
natives, though the demand for this
information is limited. For instance,
while researching for this article I
wanted to go to the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans’ (DFO) web-
site to learn more about our oceans’
declining biodiversity. I typed DFO
into Google’s search engine and to
my surprise the first site was DFO
(Department Factory Outlets). In a
world where our oceans are losing
vital species, one would hope that
global inhabitants would want to
learn more about this daunting phe-
nomenon. The complexity of these
issues is intimidating but the more
we turn away from the hard, com-
plex issues that are setting the stage
for our future, the worse off we will
all be.
The time is now, fellow consum-
ers, change your habits, open your
minds and your ears, and heed the
call- consume sustainably from here
on out.
materials into the same or similar
items that they began as, whereas
open loop recycling involves re-
processing materials into different
items.
Necessary consumption should
be done responsibly. If we want to
call ourselves recyclers we need to
take responsibility to complete the
cycle and to make an effort to buy
recycled goods. Products such as
recycled paper and notebooks are
easy to find and can be purchased at
the UVic bookstore. Other less con-
ventional products such as paint, oil,
and woodchips are also available in
recycled versions. More informa-
tion about where to return recy-
clable products and buy recycled
goods can be found at the Recy-
cling Council of British Columbia’s
website: www.rcbc.bc.ca. In Alberta,
recyclable products can be found
through the Recycling Council of
Alberta’s “Enviro Business Guide”
at: www.recycle.ab.ca.
Complete the loop. Return recy-
clable products and buy recycled
goods. That’s really recycling.
Consuming
Media
MARK WORTHING
In the same way in which we are
composed of what we physically
consume, we are informed in our
decision-making and daily activity
by the information we consume.
Therefore it is important for us to
be as careful as we are in selecting
a local organically grown apple as
we are with the selection of our
media sources. Fortunately in Brit-
ish Columbia, and elsewhere in the
democratically free world, indepen-
dent media, new media, and fresh
media are sprouting up as rapidly
as local markets, local artisans, and
local green economies.
Organic and local media is what
will nourish British Columbia’s socio-
political environment into one that
can be a leader in tomorrows Green
Economy. In true systemic form, the
steadily growing Green Economy will
reinforce the health of organic and lo-
cal media.
Major media corporations were
originally established for the mass
distribution of news and information.
As with any functioning, breathing
democracy, disseminated informa-
tion is the air it breathes. Likewise,
the large agricultural companies
were established in a similar manner
in order to sell mono-crop goods at a
lower price to a larger market. The
globalization of communication as we
have experienced in the global north
revokes major media companies’ ser-
vice of mass distribution, leaving it
as an isolated corporate mono-crop
of news and information in a market
full of people with their own back-
yard gardens.
The hanging of Saddam Hussein
was captured on a cell phone camera.
The oppression of Burmese Monks in
the Saffron Revolution in 2007, the
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, the
2005 London Bombings, and the 2009
Iranian elections protests, cell phone
cameras all played a surprisingly im-
portant role in the dissemination of
pertinent images around the world.
In an October 2005 The Tyee Online
News outlet Survey of 4,000 found
that readers were “54% male - 46%
female, 93% post-secondary level
educated, 80% seek out ethical prod-
ucts, 90% rate The Tyee as “brilliant”
or “good”, and 67% e-mail articles to
friends.”
In a recent interview conducted by
Martlet contributor Kristen Nelson,
Ted Grant a World-renowned Ca-
nadian photojournalist, notes that
“everybody and anybody that has a
digital camera can go “click”...never
mind a digital camera, they’ve got a
cell phone.” “I think any photogra-
phers who are still clinging to film
quite frankly are idiots.”
Online media outlets like Mostly
Water, Resist.ca, The Tyee, Rabble.ca,
Kelowna.com, Indymedia, or blog-
culture among others, are our com-
munity gardens of media. They allow
local citizen journalism the space and
exposure needed in a highly stifled
environment of news.
Confronting consumption is not
only what we physically consume,
but also what we consume emotion-
ally, politically, and intellectually.