In my last post, I explained the issue of overconsumption
and its role in global resource depletion, as well as the links between
consumption and population. Here, I’ll go into some of the factors feeding into
the growth of this issue.
One great contributor to the waste of resources is planned obsolescence,
a natural side effect of a system governed by the pursuit of wealth. Planned
obsolescence occurs when a company purposely produces a product that will not
last a lifetime. Though the materials to manufacture products that will
continue to function properly for decades do exist and are available, it is far
more profitable for a company to create products that will need to be replaced
with new products after a set amount of time. On one hand, this is an obvious
waste of resources. However, from the perspective of the producers, this is the
only way for their business to thrive. If products of high quality were
produced, there would eventually be no need for consumers to buy any more of
the company’s product, and the company would go out of business. For this
reason, the integrity and sustainability of a system of production centered on
the gain of wealth is called into question. How can we create a system of
production that is both secure for the producers as well as environmentally
sustainable?
A possible solution to this problem is to severely limit the
amount of resources that can go into the production of certain products, as
well as limit the number of releases of minutely upgraded versions of these
products. A pertinent example of wasted resources can be found by looking to
the company Apple. Apple has many slightly upgraded versions of their products
over the course of the past 10 years, and while a great deal of ingenuity and
genuine improvement has occurred, there is also a great deal of waste due to
the intermittent release of these upgrades. While the technology for, say, the
iPhone 2 was better than that of the iPhone 1, it is incredibly likely that the
technology used in the iPhone 5 was available during the time of the production
of the iPhone 3. It’s not impossible that the technology was available before
that, but I’ll give Apple the benefit of the doubt because the point remains
clear regardless. By limiting the amount of improvements that are released with
a new product, Apple is able spread the release of the technology over the
course of 3 or 4 different products, increasing the amount of money they can
make from selling those products. Smartphones and computers require some rare
materials to properly function, but instead of saving some of those resources
for future technologies, it is being wasted on slightly upgraded versions of
products in order to produce more capital gain. These resources often end up
thrown into dumps, which serve as embarrassing reminders of our wasteful habits
and practices.
The question is, how can we limit this waste while still
preserving the freedoms of businesses and consumers? A harsh reality that we
must come to terms with is that we will not be able to preserve these freedoms
entirely. We will not be able to continue living life in the same manner as our
parents and grandparents. For us to save the future of our planet, we must be
willing to make sacrifices in our consumption. Our personal freedoms and
desires cannot supersede protecting the future of the world. However, these
sacrifices do not imply that we will have to give up everything that brings us
joy; instead, we must simply insure that we are not wasteful, that we recycle
the resources that can be reused, and that we work together in preventing
others from committing the same atrocities against our planet that we are
guilty of. I believe that the way to do this is through education; by
explaining the gravity of this situation, and by providing information that can
be used to help prevent waste, we might be able to slow down what seems to be
the inevitable decline of our society.
You're right, when weighing "the freedoms of businesses and consumers" against sustainability and survival it's clear that things must change. And you're also right, these changes don't mean the end of joy. What joy it would be, to finally shake free of fossil fuels and the wastefulness of "planned obsolescence"!
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