Consumption

by Jeremy Cohen Hoffing May 2, 2010

The Global Footprint Network (GFN), an organization that calculates the Ecological Footprint of various countries, has reported that we now consume the resources produced by the equivalent of 1.4 earths per year. That’s 40 percent more earths that we need to keep up with our current rate of consumption! Let’s take a look at the kind of things we consume. In the average middle-to upper-middle-class American’s 2000-some-square-foot home, you’ll find: several couches and beds, numerous chairs, tables, and rugs, at least two TVs, at least one computer, printer, and stereo, and countless books, magazines, photos, and CDs (although these last, like vinyl and tapes before them, are a dying species now, destined for the dump); in the kitchen there will be an oven, a stove, a refrigerator, a freezer, a microwave, a coffeemaker, a blender, a toaster, a food processor, and endless utensils, dishes, storage containers, glassware, and linens (or at least paper napkins); in the bathroom, a hair dryer, a razor, combs and brushes, a scale, towels, medicines and ointments, and bottles and tubes of personal care products galore; in the closets, dresses, sweaters, T-shirts, suits, pants, coats, hats, boots, and shoes and everything in between. (In 2002, the average American acquired fifty-two additional pieces of clothing, while the average household was throwing away 1.3 pounds of textiles every week.) The average house also contains a washer and dryer, bicycles, skis, other sporting equipment, luggage, garden tools, jewelry, knickknacks, and drawer upon drawer of stuff both relatively useful (like staplers, Scotch tape, aluminum foil, candles and pens) and entirely pointless (like novelty key chains, gift wrap, expired gift cards, and retired cell phones). We’ve got so much stuff that, according to builders, families often buy a home with a three-car garage so that one-third of that space can be dedicated to storage (Leonard 192). Our homes are overflowing so much that we need personal self-storage facilities. Between 1985 and 2008, the self-storage industry in the U.S. grew three times faster than the population, with per-capita square feet of storage space increasing 663 percent.

The 12 percent of the world living in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of global personal consumption expenditures, while the one-third of the world’s population that lives in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent. Globally, personal consumption expenditures (the amount spent on goods and services at the household level) topped $24 trillion in 2005, up from $4.8 trillion in 1960. In 2004-05, Americans spent two-thirds of our $11 trillion economy on consumer goods, with more paid for shoes, jewelry, and watches than for higher education. Let’s look at some global expenditure priorities:

Military spending in the world $780 billion

Narcotics drugs in the world $400 billion

Alcoholic drinks in Europe $105 billion

Cigarettes in Europe $50 billion

Business entertainment in Japan $35 billion

Pet foods in Europe and the U.S. $17 billion

Ice cream in Europe $11 billion

Cosmetics in the U.S. $8 billion

Let’s compare this to estimated additional costs to achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries:

Basic education for all $6 billion

Water and sanitation for all $9 billion

Reproductive health for all women $12 billion

Basic health and nutrition $13 billion

Eliminating hunger and malnutrition would have cost $19 million, but people spent $17 billion on pet food in the U.S. and Europe combined. The disparity is obvious in how we choose to spend our money, and consumption patterns are increasingly contributing to widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

These patterns of overconsumption aren’t limited to the United States and Europe. Most developing countries now have a rising consumer class that is increasingly adopting the same hyperconsumption patterns. India’s consumer class alone is thought to include more than 1 million households. The global consumer class in 2002 included 1.7 billion people, and that number is expected to soon rise to 2 billion by 2015 –with almost half the increase occurring in developing countries. As Thomas Friedman posits it in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, “Several hundred million new players have begun earning wages that enabled them to consume more things and produce more things. And all these consumers walked onto the global economic playing field with their own versions of the “American dream” –a car, a house, an air conditioner, a cell phone, a microwave, a toaster, a computer, and an iPod –creating a huge new demand for “things”, all of which devour lots of energy, natural resources, land, and water and emit lots of climate-changing greenhouse gases from the time they are produced to when they are discarded”.

Here’s a list of how many planets’ worth of biocapacity we would need if everyone consumed at U.S. rates in nine different countries:

United States: 5.4

Canada: 4.2

United Kingdom: 3.1

Germany: 2.5

Italy: 2.2

South Africa: 1.4

Argentina: 1.2

Costa Rica: 1.1

India: 0.4

Humanity is consuming more than the planet can handle each year, and millions of people need to consume more to meet even basic needs: food, shelter, health, education. This is not a sustainable path and we need to chart a new course. We currently have the mindset that overconsuming is human nature and a birthright. We accept it as a fundamental truth, and behave complacently. We need to object when we are labeled as a “nation of consumers”, and identify ourselves individually and collectively as a progressive nation that can moderate it’s consumption and carbon footprint. It helps to understand just how deliberately the culture and structures promoting consumerism have been engineered over the last century.

Resources

Lenoard, Annie. The Story of Stuff. 2010. Free Press: New York.

Freidman, Thomas. Hot, Flat, and Crowded.