The Sustainability Movement Has Huge Levels of Support
Today is the birthday of French novelist Victor Hugo, whose work in the 19th Century presented us with depths of human passion that no one had even imagined possible in his time. He is perhaps equally well known for leaving us with this: “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.”
As we look around the world today and notice the horrors that mark the existence of so many of our people here on Earth, it’s sometimes easy to forget that, right now, there are more than 200,000 groups operating on this planet whose purpose is sustainability and environmental justice.
That’s a lot of horsepower. And it just may be the idea whose time has come.
It may be that one thing has been overlooked.
Most of us have had the experience of having the failure of one part force us to buy an entire new appliance. For example, a pair of electrical contacts in the timer for my washing machine failed. The timer was designed so that contacts could not be repaired or replaced and a new timer cost almost as much as an entire new washing machine; that made no sense. So, from the economic standpoint, the only thing that made sense for me was to buy a new washing machine just because a pair of electrical points had failed.
Surely it would make sense to design equipment so that it could be economically repaired to avoid having to scrap equipment.
Another thing is excessive packing and excessive printed material. There is a prescription for nasal congestion that I have to have refilled from time to time. I’ve been using it for many years yet each time I have it refilled I am presented with the same multi-page document about the medication. The pharmacist asserts that federal law requires that. Surely there must be a solution for such waste.
Framk,
I’m afraid you’re fighting a losing battle. Planned obsolescence and the disposable society keep the population employed.
In fact, although it may seem hard to comprehend, waste is the basic dynamic of human civilized economies !
Often the most valuable evidence discovered by archaeologists in ancient dig sites, is from middens, rubbish heaps, and burial sites. Once precious jewellery, pottery, rare textiles, works of art etc, eventually end up in a burial site or broken and discarded. Fashions come and go, each expressing a period of human ambition and creativity, only to be superseded by some new example of human endeavor or fashion.
Mass production technology encourages even more consumerism while employing fewer in the actual manufacturing process. The result is more must be employed such industries as packaging and marketing.
People want to work, they want to feel useful and have a respected place in society. It’s true that most advanced societies can easily support 30%, or maybe more of it’s citizens as unemployed, and already up to 60% are employed in “service” industries invented for the sole purpose of providing employment.
Advanced economies have long since adjusted to the consumer being the most important dynamic. Obvious the basic task for consumers is to consume !
Mass manufacturing and marketing demands a cornucopia of competing goods and services for an ever hungry, better educated, diverse population, with an ever increasing number of “individual” groups desperate to be “different” and pursue the fashions they momentarily identify as representing the aspirations of a myriad of cultural sub-groups .
Thus it was in the beginning, and will continue.
I’m afraid hand-wringing, disapproval, and puritanical observations, will be treated as just one more “fashion”.
IMHO, it’s impossible to stem human consumer instincts, instead it’s better to use those instincts by encouraging more environmental technology, and fashions.