by Raegan Densmore
The never-ending pool of replenishing instead of reusing. Buying what you don’t need, we can admit that it happens. But how much is too much and when does it become an issue? With the world’s tendency to create, use, and buy more items and resources instead of reusing the ones we already have, this overconsumption causes extreme environmental, and health impacts.
As disappointing as it is to say, I find great joy in a lot of activities that require money being spent and things being bought. Thrifting is something that I enjoy doing. In fact, I went earlier this month. As I was browsing through the lines of clothes, I noticed a common theme, Shein. This company makes a lot of trendy clothes and sells them for inexpensive prices. While donating your old clothes is a great way of getting rid of them. The problem here is that these clothing are not old, they are just out of style. They were statement pieces in microtrends. Also, because they are cheaply made, they start to wear out much quicker. Microtrends in society create great opportunities for companies like Shein to produce and sell clothing for cheap, and since these trends are micro, they go out of style fast, then these items end up thrown away, hence why there are many Shein items at thrift stores.
Fads, trends, microtrends. While these define eras in life, they also contribute to the erasure of life on our earth and cause great environmental harm. Short-lived trends cause people to buy way more items than necessary. When people are eager to follow each trend, they buy items associated with them to fit in. However, when these trends keep coming and going, this leads to people buying more instead of using the items they already have for a lengthy amount of time. Trends eventually fall out of fashion, and people begin to throw their items away, which then contributes to pollution, and the release of things such as greenhouse gas emissions.
Overconsumption is a greater issue than just society participating in trends, and it isn’t only at the individual level. It is at a world-wide scale where if we continue to use new sources instead of reusing old ones, we will cause the destruction of our planet. When it comes to the use of natural resources, more are being used faster than we can regrow or extract them, leading to elimination of natural resources as a whole. In fact, according to The Guardian, we are consuming the planet’s resources 1.7 times faster than can be regenerated.
The world’s richest countries, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and Belgium, are much more responsible for overconsumption compared to the rest of the world. 20 percent of the population consumes 80 percent of the world’s resources. In North America, the average person consumes nine times as many natural resources as the average person in Africa.
With the increasing amount of overconsumption, drastic health and environmental issues have and will greatly continue to occur. The richer countries in the world decrease the ability to provide a healthy environment for the people in their societies, especially children, not only within their own borders, but all over the world. According to UNICEF, Finland, Iceland and Norway rank in the top third for providing a healthy environment for their children yet rank in the bottom third for the world at large, with high rates of emissions, e-waste and consumption. In Belgium, Czech Republic, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland more than 1 in 12 children are exposed to high pesticide pollution. Pesticide pollution has been linked with cancer, including childhood leukaemia and can harm children’s nervous, reproductive, digestive, endocrine, cardiovascular, blood and immune systems. The Organization For Economics Cooperation and Development predicts that by 2050, polluted air will kill three times as many people as it already has, and according to the World Wildlife Fund, plastic in the ocean is expected to quadruple over that same period. These are only some of the many issues that overconsumption has or will lead to.
Overconsumption is a problem that is extreme, but is hardly noticed or talked about. With this being a world-wide issue, it may seem extremely hard to eliminate. However, it starts with the individual. When buying items, think about how much you really need it. Try to reuse items before buying new ones, and limit the amount you consume as a whole. When doing this, you contribute to the decrease of consumption in our world, and improve the state of the world’s health and environment.
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