Rubbish is capitalism - capitalism is rubbish

March 19, 2020

Economy or ecology - it’s one or the other

And you have to choose. In times of corona virus, and climate change, sh@@ is really hitting the fan. Whilst people’s lives are at stake, also our firm believes are at stake. They are put at stake by a stark experience of truth, of having to face reality. We are knowingly or unknowingly put into a position where what we so firmly hold true and dear is put into question. On the one hand, we finally see a decline in CO2 emissions and everyone in lockdown behaves more positively towards the environment - less flights, less shopping, less unnecessary stuff. At the same time, stock markets are down to a record low and the world economy’s look into the near future is dire.

With all respect to the victims of corona, we can still take advantage of the situation in some way or another. This situation of standstill that weeks ago would have been unimaginable. What arises from that situation is the crass dichotomy and paradox of our everyday lives. On one side, we want to live in an inhabitable generous and healthy environment. On the other side, we want economic growth and wealth as a society as a whole as well as individuals (generally speaking). However, we right now see, more clearly than ever that these two ideas are mutually exclusive the way we currently pursue them. What you can have is one or the other, less CO2 emissions, less consumptions, less litter, less pollution. Or you can have economic growths. Yet, we can try use these extraordinary times and standstill of the world to re-think some of our actions. Do we really want the world to go back to normal? Do we want to go back to continuing to destroy and brainlessly consume? Maybe, maybe not. We may also use the time of isolation and slowdown to reassess how we live our daily lives and what we can do differently. And maybe we can go back to a better world.

So, let’s talk a bit about consumerism and litter. First of all, there appears to be an ongoing argument between producers/companies and consumers about who is to blame for e.g. lots of the plastic waste. The mindful consumer shouts something along the lines of I wanted the product, not the plastic it came in. It’s all your fault for wrapping it in this damn plastic to which they companies and conformists usually reply something like but (the great god of) capitalism gives you a choice as consumers.. And there are some other arguments for sure. One can go about it and argue until the end of time by splitting hairs. I shall tell you why I strongly agree with the mindful consumers example response. For starters, buying something vs not buying is not a fair choice and valid reasoning. Whilst we, of course, are almost all guilty of constantly buying non-essential items, the arguments too often gets twisted into whether you should have bought something in the first place and you needn’t have bought it. This is blending two different arguments in a twisted way though. One argument is about whether you should have bought something in the first place (if you care about its environmental impact/plastic wrapping etc.). The other argument, and this is where the capitalists twists your words and reasoning, is about choice. The capitalist tells us consumptions is good, they tell us also that due to competition we should be able to select from a variety of competing products, and that we have free will; and freedom of choice and a right to self-realization. Hence, arguing that complainers are wrong for complaining about the eco-unfriendliness is invalid. You cannot go and tell people that more and more consumption is good and then go tell them you could have not bought xyz if you care about the environment. So for the second argument we must not compare buying vs not buying, but buying A vs buying not A (but B or C or D). Let’s leave the precarious topic of what is essential and needs to be bought and what isn’t behind, at least for now, and focus on buying A vs buying non-A. Of course, you can tell people they should go to one of these packaging free stores and buy ethically and so on. You have choice after all and there are an increasing number of small ethical businesses. Don’t get me wrong this is an amazing trend! However, it won’t solve the problem of litter and plastic waste.

For many varying reasons people on average will not go for these products. One reason is people don’t care because they don’t know better or they simply don’t care. Either way, we, us as a society, have to educate these people. Just as you educate someone that it is a bad idea to empty your old engine oil or dump your fridge into the nearest lake. Another reason is lack of time. People have busy lives and often the amount of extra time needed and inconvenience to be added to people’s lives in order to be more ethical consumers. The next is lack of money. More ethical choices are often (much) more expensive and not everyone can afford them. Surely, it is possible for more and more people to by non-wrappped, organic foods and goods. But the average person or household cannot. A question much argued about that I cannot or don’t want to answer is whether people should care or desire to do so and whether we should or even can blame people for not caring enough for the environment for instance. But arguing is about that is not going to lead us to a useful place now. I do argue, though, that effectively people chose to some extend and are put into in some other a life and lifestyle where you only have a certain amount of money and certain amount of time and energy you can spend on supplying yourself. The average person can’t and shouldn’t have to go to 7 different shops that are all over town to get basic supplies that are much more expensive than the supermarket once. And the supermarket will have all of them in stock, in only a single store. How tempting is that? Because by buying from the supermarket people are able to free up time and time is precious to them. Do you rather want to spend your free time after work running around buying stuff ethically or do you want to get on with life? Would you rather play an instrument, meet friends or watch Netflix? Most people do. And that’s not going to change that easily whilst it is also a great achievement that we don’t need to spend all our time on covering basic needs like food.

What some people already know and I am sure companies do as well, but happily remain silent about, is the true price of cheap consumer goods. Cheap stuff, bad quality and non-recyclable items, things wrapped in plastic are all a more “economic” option, at least in the current system. Yet, whilst big and small companies are cashing in on them, the true price is way more expensive. We are currently destroying rain forests for planting soy (to feed animals in mass production), we dump toxic plastic waste off the coast of poor countries. We currently just care enough for produce and use. After that we care little to not at all. It is not the consumer who should be punished to giving in to the commercial brain wash. It’s not the consumer’s fault mainly for caving in to all the ads and commercials. There is only so much one can resist and even more so the case that politics wants economic growth and consumption, because it’s a feedback loop the government is cashing in on. The true price of the current way of consumption is already paid elsewhere and will be paid by future generations. With their money, their health and their lives. The Netherlands, for instance, are already spending a rough third of their GDP on not being swallowed by rising sea levels. That is everyone’s money. So the tax payer is already paying for partaking in the causes of climate change which causes the sea levels to rise. It’s caused by buying and using cars way too much, by wanting cheap(er) groceries shipped from halfway around the globe and wrapped in plastic. It’s our desire for a low price tag that already has a higher price in reality. It would be higher already if we didn’t just dump stuff in the oceans or off the coast of Ghana. This out-of-sight-out-of-mind attitude doesn’t work in a connected and globalised world with the current levels of consumption. It’s only a matter of time before we have to suffer the consequences. And if for you who doesn’t care now or doesn’t care about the environment, you will care. The more we destroy the planet, the harder and hence more expensive essentials like food will become.

In fact, one solution is already there. We all go live as hippies in self-build huts and tents in the woods, farm our own food and live off-grid. But, of course, as a collective or collectives of modern people, we don’t want to do that at large. And there is nothing wrong with that and you won’t see me argue for that as a solution. Yet if we want to avoid eradicating lots of live, including humans, on this planet we need to change modern life and consumption radically. We also can continue playing the blame game blaming big oil and pharma companies. And, yes I do agree that they are evil. Yet we all consume their products and contribute to their vile and vicious ways of getting richer and richer. So, as a collective we need to seek alternatives and agree on arrangements to protect ourselves.

As a result, what does need to change is the options to chose from for the ordinary person. No more cheap excuses like but you can not buy it in the first place or buy something more ethically. You can’t go round bombarding people with ads to buy stuff basically 24/7 and then blame them for doing so. What we can do though as a society is decide to not allow these choices to be so poor. There is an interesting documentary with creative solutions on how to achieve a more wholistic approach to consumption from which I will steal a few ideas or touch upon them and blend in a few others that might be partially my own. Although who ever really has original ideas!? Me probably not so much.

Currently companies don’t care about much other than selling their product and possibly customers buying again. They don’t care about the plastic wrapping it comes in or the possibly toxic ingredients in their products. Mitigating toxicity for instance currently only works quite limitedly. Of course, toxic and harmful substances in food or plastic products get regulated, but that is done insufficiently and mostly in a reactive rather than preventive manner. But what happens to the things we discontinue using or the byproducts like packaging? The producing company in most cases stops caring as soon as they have received the money for their product. The consumer usually stops caring at the point the bin the packaging or sometimes even before that. One suggestion from the documentary is to have companies keep ownership and hence responsibility for the materials used (You might wanna give that a watch). So, for instance, instead of buying a light bulb and binning it when it breaks to have the problem debris and litter shipped to someone else’s front door the companies would have to take back the broken bulb. They would own the materials all they way so have a vested interest to disassemble their junk and reuse it for something else. Before retelling the entire film, go ahead and watch it yourself. It’s definitely worthwhile.

Regardless of whether we chose approaches from the documentary or other ones, we certainly need to change drastically. Putting loads of junk into landfill as an afterthought is poor at best. And the solutions can be easy if we demand them as a collective. Single use plastic - ban it. Ban it from supermarkets. Plastic packaging? We can do without entirely! IMHO even recycling plastic is just down-cycling plastic. Let’s send it to it’s grave. It’s going to make items more expensive, maybe. Maybe bio-degradable packaging is more expensive? Maybe we can shift to bringing our own re-usable containers. Maybe a mix of both. Either way, it’s not that hard, it’s hard to change habits, but honestly, we have internet, self-driving cars and managed to step foot on the moon (Ohhh wait, bad example - you might think that was a hoax…). Anyone who is going to tell me banning plastic from our daily shopping is unimaginable, B****, please. Should be a piece of cake if we just want to do that genuinely. There are other products to consider though. Take a set of headphones for example. What are you going to do about the plastic case and what about all the metal in there. Here is where it’s getting a bit trickier. The suggestion from the documentary might actually be a good shout here. Imagine you bought the Headphones (which wouldn’t come in a plastic box). And by buying them you have the right to own them as long as you want and do with them whatever you want. But instead of throwing them away or going to the electronic waste you would have to hand them back to the manufacturer (Although, manufacturer from the Latin word manus for hand, is factually not the correct terminology these days. Maybe something like machifactory would be more appropriate). The manufacturer then has the responsibility to do something with their now disused product that is not throwing it into an ocean somewhere. This way the entire choice of materials and industrial design process would change. Items would no longer or at least less so be soldered together to make them unrepairable. They would not be made to be entirely unusable when one part breaks and most importantly they wouldn’t be designed for making a quick quid. The entire chain from raw material, to product to consumption to rubbish would change. Appallingly, these days we don’t even use things until they break very often on the one hand and when we disuse them they are mostly toxic and/or non-degradable junk. If we manage to change the latter we can keep the first aspect a bit more out of it. People want innovation, new phones new computers and so on. Although I personally like using things for as long as possible, like my 6 year old laptop (proudly running Linux), lots of people don’t want to and in many cases need more up to date hardware. If we manage to not turn items into toxic junk by discontinuing their use, much can be improved. I’m not arguing to go back to 1000 years ago. I’m arguing for making people and corporations take responsibility for what they sell. To take responsibility for their pollution and to introduce a way where companies are not only held accountable but have a vested (financial) interest to pollute as little as possible, because what they care for in the first place is how big the number in their bank account is after all.

Lastly, and that goes back to the supermarket section, buying seasonal and local should not be the fancy option for switched on academic people or smelly hippies. Produce from overseas should be heavily taxed, and with that tax local farming could be subsidised. That way everyone is encouraged to buy and eat what growth around the corner at the time and you can keep buying avocados from Mexico or apples from New Zealand - they’ll just be 8 quid a piece :P. Trust me local stuff is nice and you’ll enjoy your strawberries more if you can have loads once a year in summer as opposed to be eating pretty tasteless ones that are full of pesticides all year round.

At the same time I urge everyone to consume as considerately as possible. Of course we can all do our fair share today already to contribute to preventing our planet from turning uninhabitable. But we also need to push for change, demand that the representatives of our collective, that apparently work in our interests, ensure we are not handed destructive and polluting options wherever possible. Start with a little contribution today, a small good deed and spread the word. And don’t let them corporate wankers sell you some junk and blame you for pollution in the ocean.