Killing the Countryside
Consumer culture, especially materialism is a large part of American culture, but it is also harmful to the environment and the mindsets of young adults entering the consumer market.
Opinion Piece by MEGAN CAMPBELL
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“Do you have this in my size? My friends and I are going to Vegas and I just need some new dresses,” a woman asks, while meandering the aisles of Charlotte Russe, a clothing store in the mall.
“Beep,” goes the scanner.
“Click,” the sensor is removed.
“What about these shoes?” another woman asks her friend. “I don’t have a pair of gray boots yet!”
Beep
Click
“Oh my gosh, I need this sweater!” a teenage girl exclaims to her mother.
Beep
Click
Beep
Click
The women’s fashion store I work for in the mall is no different from the thousands that scatter the world. We strive to meet daily dollar goals and speak skillfully to customers to convince them to purchase more.
In this consumer driven world, we make our livings by selling clothes, handbags and decorations we do not need. We spend hours at work making money that will soon be spent at a retail store nearby. Our debts hang heavy over our heads as we buy a new pair of shoes just because they are on sale. The average household credit card debt in America is $5,700 with the total outstanding consumer debt standing at around $3.9 trillion in 2017.
Each day at work, I serve countless numbers of people buying things to help their self-image, to look good or to show off. Over half of the store is clothes made for dressing up, not comfort. The sweaters have holes in the back to show off skin, not to keep people warm.
What we buy is disposable as the seasons go on and fashion companies decide what clothes we keep and what we must purchase new. We consume single-use soda bottles and use disposable utensils and straws without considering alternatives.
Cities such as Bellingham have tried to reduce plastic waste through citywide bag bans. Western will not sell disposable plastic water bottles. A total of 16 cities and two counties in Washington have put plastic bag bans in effect since 2012 but that still will not help anything compared to what the bags are stuffed with.
Western has several programs dedicated to sustainability and the ban of plastic bottles is just one outcome. Other universities in Washington such as Washington State University and the University of Washington have strong sustainability programs with UW having seven silver certified green buildings on their campus. They are one of six universities in the country that has been certified, including Harvard, Yale and Duke.
In America, there are more shopping malls than there are high schools. 5 percent of Americans’ leftovers could feed 4 million people for one day, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Over 200 million Americans used disposable food storage containers, cups and plates in 2017.
George Horace Lorimer, editor of The Saturday Evening Post once said “It is good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy.”
Relationships can be lost to the ideals of consumerism and we tend to forget what a large impact we have on the world market. If we saved our money instead of spending it immediately on the newest trendy item, we could afford to buy the more expensive organic or biodegradable options available to us.
A good budgeting rule suggests we spend 50 percent of our income on bills and basics, 20 percent on savings and the last 30 on fun like going out to eat or shopping. The average savings rate in the U.S. is around 4 percent, with the millennial generation around a negative two. Charles Schwab research found that “60 percent of millennials admit to spending more than $4 on coffee, 79 percent will splurge to eat at the hot restaurant in town and 69 percent buy clothes they don’t necessarily need.”
Tim Kasser, professor of psychology at Knox College notes that having materialistic values means that you can purchase your own happiness. Many of us working long hard hours to pay for school and spending all night in the library take in this ideal and feel as though we deserve a treat like a new pair of shoes. But this also means that we are ignoring effects of environmental damage on the rest of the world, including the land our children will inherit.
We risk our future by focusing on the pleasure that living in the now, with our collection of things, can bring us. Becoming a more sustainable country would have countless benefits to our personal happiness as well as our overall health and wellness in the world.
Washington state is working to become more sustainable and the state’s Department of Ecology supports a Waste 2 Resources program which helps reduce waste and take care of what cannot be recycled. The city of Bellingham is a region with a high number of workers in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting. The Port of Bellingham has pledged sustainability, as well as the Volunteer Center of Whatcom County.
Western works hard to be a sustainable place and the most recent Sustainable Action Plan unveiled in December 2017 pledges to become entirely carbon-free by 2035.
The plan includes chapters that deal with waste but it is also up to students to remain aware of their purchasing power outside the university and buy things they will use until it wears out or knowledgeably donate it to a place that will recycle it properly.
On-campus residence halls have begun composting their trash along with the dining halls but there is no regulation for off-campus apartments where the majority of students live. Only 4,060 of the 15,915 students are living on campus, which leaves almost 12,000 without the same resources to regulate their consumption.
By having the experience of living in a residence hall during their time on campus, students will get to learn about recycling, compost and other ways to reduce their consumerism effect on the world around them.
I am constantly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things I own, especially when the seasons change and I bring out my large storage containers from the back of a closet. As I am moving out of my room each year, the pile continues to grow and I worry if I have the space to transport it home.
Hannah Pascual, a senior in the business and sustainability major has seen firsthand the trouble students face with consumerism.
“I think for college students doing swaps and selling things to each other is important because we’re a demographic that is prone to throwing away furniture and books and all because we tend to move around a lot or don’t need certain materials,” Pascual said.
This leads to excess trash during move-out periods and problems with sofas laying on the side of the road. WWU Sustainability holds an event at the end of each school year to help students with these problems and provides a year-round responsible disposal service for large items at a $20 fee.
As a consumer in the world, it is our responsibility to make better buying decisions and to free ourselves from the consumer culture that threatens our environment. If each person lives their life more aware of their choices then maybe we can at least slow down the pace of life, learn to find happiness in one another and hopefully find a way to maintain the beauty of the environment.
It’s time to start consuming more of what matters.
Will you make the change?