Holiday Thoughts

It's the start of the holiday shopping season. But, maybe we need to reconsider our buying habits.

Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Retailers offer super deals to get consumers off to a whopping start for the holiday buying frenzy. But our consumerism is a leading contributor to our environmental problems, and our environmental problems are part of our health problems. We are like junkies, just waiting for our next fix of new stuff. And like junkies, the fix only makes us feel good for a few minutes.

Last week, public radio's Marketplace ran a series called Consumed: Is the consumer economy sustainable. It was extremely interesting and worth reading or listening to at the Marketplace website. One of the segments was about how our e-waste comes back to haunt us. E-waste is our stream of disposable electronics, and a large stream it is: Americans toss or recycle hundreds of millions of electronic gizmos—from cell phones to computers, and televisions to toys—each year.

Most e-products have a relatively short life, they seem built for obsolescence. Take our VCR as an example: We still own some tapes that we pull out once in a while, but two weeks ago, we went to watch one, and the machine ate it. Our VCR wasn't really old in terms of use, as we'd gotten it at about the same time as videos starting going to DVDs. We took the cover off it to see if, by some chance, there was something easily repairable. A small plastic arm had broken, part of the moveable mechanism designed to keep the tape snugged up against the player head. It was about as thick as a toothpick. Obviously, it was designed to wear out, and with e-products, they aren’t really designed to be repaired—the toothpick-sized piece of plastic isn't something you are going to find at the local hardware store. They are designed to be thrown out and replaced.

Obsolescence is also driven by constantly changing form and function, and heavily funded marketing campaigns that tell us how important upgrading is. We’re led to believe that having the latest color cell phone, or the newest and fastest computer will somehow make us happier, more productive, or just more fulfilled. One of the experts the Marketplace staff interviewed for the Consumed series was Dr. Peter Whybrow, a UCLA professor of neuroscience and human behavior, and author of American Mania. Whybrow says our mania for consumption is a mental disorder. It isn’t making us happier or healthier. It is leaving us “on edge” and manifesting in health problems ranging from anxiety and depression to sleep deprivation.

Ken and I are big on the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.. So we sent our dead VCR to recycling, and purchased a used one at a thrift store. But recycling of e-waste is dirty business. Most electronics sent to recycling in the U.S. find their way to China, Africa, or the Middle East, where workers, who have no protective clothing or devices, strip out the valuable metals and reusable components. The people living in villages around the third world that disassemble our e-waste suffer from myriad health problems that are directly associated with the waste they are stripping. And then, as we have seen in the last year, in a strange twist of fate, the lead and other contaminants make their way back to us in the products we import from these countries, the toys, the pet food, the cosmetics... and the electronic gizmos.

Our consumption has reached a level that exceeds the planet’s ability to replenish itself. But, each of us can make the choice to buy just a little less this holiday season. And we might just be healthier and happier for our decision.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Carol