Do we know the true cost of all we buy? With the global human population now numbering over eight billion and still growing, even if we only ‘consume’ at our current rate, demand on the world’s resources will continue to grow as well. Have you stopped to think about the true the cost of the things we buy and the impact our consumer culture is having on other species around us? 

It is first important to raise a term you may not have come across before, ‘speciesism’. This is defined as discrimination based on species, and the assumption of human superiority – our belief that other animal species are inferior. In this context it is the assumption that our needs and our desires are more important than those of other species. But, we will circle back to this later.

So, what is ‘consumption’? One definition is the act of using up resources – the purchase of goods and services for use by households or individuals, perhaps for one of these reasons:

• Satisfaction of basic needs and wants
• To highlight our social importance
• To boost our wellbeing and happiness
• To make us seem more attractive or to show affection
• To show our identity to others and provide a sense of belonging
• Habit.

Consumerism can be an economic and societal way of viewing the economy, where increasing the consumption of goods and services is always a desirable goal, and a person’s well-being and happiness can depend fundamentally on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions.

There are some benefits to consumerism:

• Creating jobs through the production, distribution and sale of goods and services
• Fuelling economic growth on a local or national level
• Providing pleasure for the individual making the purchase
• Keeping prices competitive whilst providing consumers with choice, as companies encourage us to buy their products over those of their competitors
• Driving the development of technology to improve our lives (and ultimately sell more products).

However, and it is a big however, our consumer habits are at the heart of the planet’s environmental crisis. Whether contributing to climate change through factory emissions and transportation, or impacting biodiversity through extraction of raw materials, pollution, habitat destruction and waste materials, our need to own the latest electronic device or follow the latest fashion trend has led many countries to consume natural resources at a rate that far exceeds the planet’s capacity to renew them.

BORN FREE’S GREAT DEBATE

“Whether contributing to climate change through factory emissions and transportation, or impacting biodiversity through extraction of raw materials, pollution, habitat destruction and waste materials, our need to own the latest electronic device or follow the latest fashion trend has led many countries to consume natural resources at a rate that far exceeds the planet’s capacity to renew them.”