Have you ever wondered about what is consumerism? What cause it? Have you ever had hundreds of different colored pens? But most of them are only something you see when you open your cabin? Have you ever had any clothe that even the tag was not pulled off, when you realized it was there, and already too small? This is the action of consumerism.
Consumerism is the action of buying too many things, such as clothe, pens, books, and food. First, the overbuying can cause resources waste. Second, the wasted paper, plastic or batteries all contained toxin that will make many species go extinct. Last, we can solve this problem in many ways. Consumerism really does produce bad repercussions.
Nowadays, people don’t even know how many things they want to buy, however, they just think that buying can maintain happiness. “Many consumers run out of room in their homes to store the things that they buy”.
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Nowadays, quite many people decide to buy things according to attractive advertisements or pretty colors. People don’t really think about if this the stuff we really need. It’s quite common that people followed closely with the phone company for their new models, the new one launched the old one was put aside, but actually the improvement is not big.
How to get rid of the old one? Another example, my cousin likes to buy things when price is really good. Once, when I visited her, she wanted to give us milk to drink, but when she gave us the milk, it is brand new but already expired a year ago. I noticed that she doesn’t even know that milk was in her refrigerator. This is a really important problem in real life.
Many resources such as plastic, paper, and batteries, are partly landfill, partly dumped into the sea. Then the dumped wastes will slowly sink into the sea. The animals in the sea will ingest the wastes without noticing. According to “An Environmental Crisis Exists”,“Indeed, in 1994 U.S. plastic production was responsible for 111 million pounds of toxic air emissions and 12 million pounds ozone-depleting chemicals.”(An environmental crisis, Brown). The dangerous of waste is really a crisis. If every year, 123 million pounds of toxin are released, human will also be extinct in a few hundred years. Even if the organisms are animals, they will get extinct easier than us “As the demand for goods increases, the need to produce these goods also increases. This leads to more pollutant emissions, increased land-use and deforestation, and accelerated climate change.”(Negative Effects, Green Tumble)
As technology improve, the resources amount will increase too. Adding the effect of consumerism, the wastes will increase too. “According to scientists, up to 12 million tons of plastic enters the ocean every year, forming giant floating garbage patches all over the world”（Negative Effects, Green Tumble） As research shows, there are already 12 million tons of plastic in the ocean. But what if consumerism became more serious, the problem will be more difficult to solve. As research shows, pollution is also a crisis for consumerism.
People can think of three questions in their mind: “ If I buy it, what is the purpose of it” “ If I buy it, How long will I use it for?” “Is this item really something I really want?” This can help people decide about the reasons they buy the things. “Whether we desire new cars, houses, clothes or something else, we are mostly controlled by greed and fear of what other people think about us.”(Way to reduce, Tran)
Some people now are controlled by greed, they are just buying everything that they think will have some purpose. However actually it don’t have a lot of purpose. As an example, when people go to MUJI, they might want to by 10 pens or even 20 pens, but the truth is, they only need 2 pens. The other 8 pens are just sitting in the cabin, waiting for people to see, but not actually to use it. Another way to help is to make a list of items and why.
Before buying, people can make a list of things they want to buy, and also a list of WHYs. This can help people to get an idea of things they buy each day, and they can also write a reflection too. The third way is to learn, when people learn about their mistake, they will have chance to improve it. People can look up things about disadvantages of consumerism. They can instill exotic information about what they do will cause pollution, loss of resource, and even some defects that connected with their life. This is also a great way to let people notice their overbuying is a mistake.
To sum up, Consumerism affects us a lot, in environment, such as pollution. In life, such as over buying. We must start to reduce the things we want to buy by making lists or reflections. By reducing waste and unnecessary consumption, we will protect our environment, other creatures in the world. Pollution and resource loss involves the most, and the most important, the ocean, we need to reduce the spread of consumerism!
