The end of a year is often synonymous with quality family time, celebration, huge dinners, and wonderful lights in the street. It is, however, also bringing its lot of consumption, starting with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and, of course, Christmas. Whether they are known for their exceptional promotions or the emotions in children's eyes when opening their presents, all these events present the inconvenience of being closely linked to Mass Consumerism.
Starting from the 18th century in the UK, and hugely democratized during the Glorious Thirty, consumption became a way of life and spread throughout the entire globe. For almost a hundred years, consuming was associated with happiness: satisfaction when buying a product, first, but also indirectly thanks to the favorable consequences of consumption. It stimulates the economy, generating growth, boosting trade, and; therefore, creating jobs. But, over the last decade, voices started to speak up about the negative effects of this mass consumption. Specialists, scientists, climate environmentalists, social activists kept pointing the reverse effects of the globalization of trade, leading to price as low as the wages paid to workers abroad. Several scandals supported their arguments that Mass Consumption was not only bringing joy and economic growth. Numerous documentaries are available online, talking about Mass consumerism's impact. We recently published a movie review on the True Cost, highlighting the flaws of the Fast Fashion industry. Similarly, A Plastic Ocean shows the damage of single-use plastic associated with our daily consumption, and its impact on nature. Overall, activists' and scientists' voices converge on one point: our current consumption habits, and the industry associated with them, are not sustainable and need to be changed. But one can wonder why and, above all, how.
Consumerism is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Consumers buy goods produced all over the world, with an extremely polluting product life cycle from its production, to its waste disposal, not without mentioning its transportation and use. Several examples exist. Today, 100 billion garments are produced each year, requiring a high amount of water to be produced, and generating 13 million tons of textile waste each year. Simultaneously, big firms like Amazon, which sells over $410 million worth of products every day and propose more than 12 million products on its platform, are encouraging mass consumerism. By proposing services like Amazon Prime, delivering your parcel to your door in one day, or proposing cheap prices on their platform, they stimulate customers' willingness to buy enormous amounts of goods. Every year, 1.3 billion tonnes of edible food go to waste. The rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million hectares per year between 2015 and 2020, mostly to grow soy. An estimated 50 million tons of E-waste are produced each year when firms like Apple or Samsung keeps launching new products every year without solving the problem of planned obsolescence. 8 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans every year and, by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans. All these numbers are alarming. More water, more energy, more oil, more land are needed to sustain our daily demand. And as humanity is expected to reach between 8 and 10.5 billion living people by 2050, this is not expected to change if we do not reduce or change our mode of consumption. The Covid crisis provided us with an example of the repercussion of delocalized productions, with several shortages on many products, and also gave powerful support to some schools of thought promoting local, ethical, and responsible consumption to support small businesses rather than big MNCs like Amazon. Both the lockdown and the global pandemic offered an opportunity to rethink our consumption, our needs, and our values. Even if some examples showed that everything did not miraculously change, as we can see with the pictures of people queuing to enter Primark or Zara shops as soon as the lockdown was lifted, this gave an open door to the democratization of alternative way of thinking and consuming.
The first way to sustain our consumption level, while meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet, is to change our production system. In 2017, Kate Raworth came with the Donut Theory of Social and Planetary Boundaries, better known under the name "circular economy". This theory underlines seven main purposes. When producing, firms need to consider the social and environmental impacts of the resources they use. When conceiving a product, they need to recognize, since the very first steps, all the environmental impacts of the product life cycle and work on them to reduce them. It includes the improvement, management, and recycling of all the waste linked to product production, use, and disposal. The circular economy model also tackles the problem of built-in obsolescence. It argues for an increase in products' useful life, through reparation, better components quality, or by buying second-hand products. The Donut Theory supports the reuse of waste materials in the economic cycle. In the same vein, this model promotes the synergy, mutualization, and optimization of resources among different economic actors (for instance, regarding water, energies, or infrastructures). The Donut Theory also acts as an incentive for responsible consumption. It encourages consumers to favor use over possession, to do mindful shopping, and to analyze the social and environmental impact of the product they are buying. The Donut Theory is today well known and this model of a positive and responsible economy could make UE save 600 billion euros each year while reducing our waste and GHG emissions.
Another solution rest with a school of thoughts that emerged in the early 1960s: minimalism. This movement is all about living with less, and only with the things you need. Its adepts get rid of excess stuff and only keep the useful objects. They are free from the desire to buy and accumulate more and find happiness in people and experiences rather than in material consumption. Owning fewer material products would not only be good for your mind but with this reduction in consumption, it would also be good for the planet. Minimalism always goes along with a zero-waste lifestyle, but this time, focusing on happiness. Netflix proposes on its platform a really good documentary on the minimalist lifestyle. Its film director defines his decision to become a minimalist as "the active intention of paring down so you can focus on what matters in life". Minimalism invites people to question what they want, what matters to them most, and what their ideal life would look like. By not buying anymore, focusing on meaning rather than ownership, its defenders find happiness. However, fulfillment is not the only benefit of minimalism. By reducing his/her consumption, one-stop contributing to the whole consumer society. Not buying from big MNCs, not purchasing useless Christmas Presents for an unknown coworker at the annual Secret Santa, focusing on experiences rather than material possession are great ways to reduce one's environmental impact. Additionally, less consumption goes along with less waste. Less consumption implies good quality products, that last for a while, preventing having to buy new ones regularly.
Overall, minimalism can be seen as the next step of the Donuts Theory. Not only did it take into consideration the 7 pillars of Kate Raworth's model, but it improves it by increasing the consumer role in this circular economy. By reducing consumption, while focusing on long-lasting products, made from responsible sources, human's consumption stops having its negative impacts. A good example of minimalism's positive impact can be seen now, in this Christmas period. Offering services as presents, like offering tickets for a concert or an escape game session with your friends, not only reduce the carbon footprint of your product but also produce lasting memories with your close relatives. Why not giving it a try this year?
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