Urna Bajracharya Urna Bajracharya
Urna Bajracharya
For my mom. Thank you for reminding me to think about the line between need and want. I’ve finally realized what you mean. And for our earth, a beauty that we must preserve.
Thank you Freestyle Academy for giving me this opportunity to make a book. Thank you, Mr. Greco – your feedback has always helped me find the right direction in my writing. Also, thank you to all my interviewees, Greg Stor, Annabelle Bashara, Margaret Black, and Seth Donnelly for contributing your thoughts and expertise.
Preface When I first heard about the Junior Documentary project at Freestyle, I knew I wanted to investigate something relating to the environment. Throughout my early research, I realized that I was interested in consumerism, a topic I had recently explored in my history paper. While in the beginning, I was mainly focused on the environment concerns of consumerism, as I my research continued, I found more negative externalities. The main challenge faced was writing in a creative way while also trying to provide my reader with informative and appealing content. The design aspect of the book provided challenges as well, but with patience and a little bit of frustration, I learned more about Illustrator and InDesign. Additionally, I did an animation on plastic waste and I found it powerful to be able to share my thoughts through contemporary motion. I tried my best to reflect my ideas through this book by getting feedback from my peers and Mr. G. I enjoyed the interview aspect of writing this book because I learned so much through my interviewees, who were all passionate about this topic. Through them, I also got more inspired that change will come only when we are more fully aware of our consumption habits. I hope readers will become more aware of their own choices, and will begin to slowly incorporate small, eco-friendly changes into their lifestyles.
“There is a lot of dust, it is very easy to catch colds, and we are hurt all over.� -Dany, a 15-year-old cobalt miner in The Dominican Republic of Congo
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“Walk into any high-end phone shop and you’ll find all the hallmarks of the luxury tech market: slick surfaces, cool lines, spotless screens.” - Amnesty International
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Need
versus
Want
The batteries for all electronics are mined for in The Dominican Republic of Congo. The mineral rich country exports $961 million worth of products every year, graphite, tin, tungsten and cobalt (used in cellphones, DVD players, laptops, hard drives, electric cars, and gaming devices.). According to Amnesty International, “Walk into any high-end phone shop and you’ll find all the hallmarks of the luxury tech market: slick surfaces, cool lines, spotless screens.” A child miner from Congo then talks about problems faced while working undergrounds mining for minerals to make a phone, “There is a lot of dust, it is very easy to catch colds, and we are hurt all over”. (“Profit and loss”.) The gap between the two worlds of a product being made and then being consumed is astonishing. It is very wretched to find that children suffer for our luxury, and we don’t even get to know about it. The most that we suffer here is when our wifi is down. More than a hundred workers die every year while mining, and a vast majority of them are children. There are health and safety measure that mineral miners do not get, and the companies who profit from human rights abuse and do not take any credibility whatsoever. Today there is no regulation of the global cobalt market. Cobalt does not fall under existing “conflict minerals” rules in the USA, which cover gold, coltan/tantalum, tin and tungsten mined in DRC (“Child labour behind smart phone and electric car batteries”.) According to multiple economists, mineral wealth sustains a climate of violence due to the imbalance of political corruption power within the government. The staggering wealth of the country eliminates a vital link in the responsibility between the government and its citizens. In the east of Congo, armed groups and government forces continued
to target civilians. There has been to more than five million deaths from the extreme measures of the violated human rights including mass slaughter and rape. The Congolese citizens and laborers are being negatively affected by the affluence in our society that continues to drive the production of electronic gadgets. Sadly, it is non essential for businesses to show where and how they obtain raw materials for their goods, causing an inordinate amount of harm to a society of humans and even to the environment. All of this is done for the constant production of new cell phones, laptops and cars, which reflects the absurdity of consumerism. The fine line that differentiates need and want is where the environmental, economic and sickness of materialism surfaces. As consumers living in the United States of America, the world’s most technologically advanced country, we often strive for the things that we want but are not able to distinguish the things we actually need. The things we want are usually things we already have, and don’t need. It is very useful to understand that the basic needs of for a human is food shelter, clothing, and human contact. We all have that. So, it should be the first to to try to solve these issues concerning societies like congo by letting go of our materialistic attachments. Research done in Knox College Illinois gives an insight that messages that consumer culture bombards saying materialism with the will make us happy, doesn’t show to be true. (Goldberg, Carey) Our materialistic attachments, the objects we want, are tied to a deeper issue.
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An Economic Virus Consumerism is kind of like a virus in the sense that it ends up infecting the minds of people by driving them to constantly consume more. Increasing demand for commodities that require an extensive amount of labour and natural resources. The profit motives of capitalism perpetuated this illness. Consumerism boomed after WW2, creating the new American pastime of materialism. In an interview with Seth Donnelly an activist and an economic teacher explains, in order to maximize profit, businesses such as Apple has to constantly convince the population that they need iphone 10 instead of iphone 9. This leads to a whole host of environmental externalities like constantly generating waste, economically this is called artificially rendered obsolescence. Products that are being artificially obsolete even though they can still be used, or recycled, or reused because that does not create profit. What creates profit is if we get people to buy something new that then leads to the environmental waste and the physiological pressure to buy and constantly update their status with new things. We get so enamored with materialism, and it gets so tied into our phycology of who we are and our well being. It’s a very dysfunctional and unhealthy codependent relationship that we have with our things. The US was the first country in the world to have an economy devoted to mass production, and the
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first to create advertising and marketing industries in order to market and sell mass produced goods. The Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford reports, “With less than five percent of world population, the U.S. uses onethird of the world’s paper, a quarter of the world’s oil, 23 percent of the coal, 27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the copper. Our per capita use of energy, metals, minerals, forest products, fish, grains, meat, and even freshwater dwarfs that of people living in the developing world.” These data indicate the magnitude of our daily consumer habits, and this knowledge should motivate us to lessen our environmental footprint. The burning of fossil fuels is the main cause for global warming and responsible for climate change. Car culture is a part of American culture that continues to deplete the environment. Of the everyday products that we use, consume, or want, we should be aware that we are actually responsible for the environment. Europe, on the other hand, has gotten pretty far in being environmentally aware and pushing for change for the greater good of our environment. One way Europe is being a role model for us is by having pledged that no new coal-fired plants will be built in the EU after 2020, and according to Arthur Neslen, “26 of 28 member states have stated that they will not invest in new coal plants a fter 2020”. (The end of coal)
“It
would be counterproductive
to try to detach or isolate con-
sumerism away from the underlying economic system which constantly regenerates consumerism.�
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- Seth Donnelly
A product’s life starts with raw materials, derived from a natural resource consisting of cutting down forest, stripping minerals our mountains, or using living organisms as our resource. The raw materials are then shipped to a manufacturer. An article written for the Human Rights Watch reports that for a product to be made cheaply it is essentially required for the manufacturer to be in places such as China and India where cost of production is very low; their income only ranges between 1% to 9% of the product on the market. In Sri Lanka the amount of money to support a family would require at least 33,000 rupees ($481), while H&M pays an average of 13,500 rupees ($197) per month.(The Retail Industry) Alice Hines writes,“They force the production costs to as low as they want because of their power in the supply chain, with the result of ultimately the workers bearing the whole cost and risk of the system.” (“Forever 21 Under Investigation) Ultimately what is at stake here is the quality of life of the workers. The point that laborers work for the manufacturer is clear. So the manufacturing company has the perceived responsibility to lay down the rules. It is unethical that brands do not do so much as provide the minimum wage or even higher for their workers.I cannot fully endorse the fact brands like Forever 21, H&M, with additions of numerous clothing websites that continue to ignore the workers rights. One example of the practice of bad ethics was the Collapse in Rana Plaza. During the Progressive era there was a tragedy in a sweatshop. An article, “Viciousness of CSR on Display in Loblaws” informed that in 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight story building in Bangladesh that manufactures clothing for stores such as JC penney, Walmart, and Kids Palace, collapsed, killing 1,130 people and injuring thousands. The workers that were killed were mostly young girls, under the age of 18 who were paid between 25 and 33 cents per hour. The building’s foundation was built over a drained pond, without proper approvals for apparel production. Similarly, Canadian retailers Loblaws, and Joe Fresh were charged with a $2 billion class action lawsuit. (Doorey David) Four years later, there was a Transparency Pledge, a coalition of unions and human rights and labor rights advocate. Human rights watch
informs that the pledge asked 72 apparel companies to publish information identifying the factories and their authorized supplier factories. Out of the 72 companies that the coalition contracted, only 17 agreed on the disclosure. Companies that have made a commitment to publish their factory information with the standards of pledge are Adidas, C&A, Cotton On Group, Esprit, G- Star RAW, H&M, Hanesbrands, Levis, Nike, and Patagonia. The companies that have no commitment to the coalition include American Eagle Outfitters, DICK’s Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, Hugo Boss, Walmart, Armani, Forever 21, Ralph Lauren, Rip Curl, and Urban Outfitter. (More Brands Should Reveal Where Their Clothes are Made) Although only few companies have agreed to the coalition, it is still a step in the right direction because an ethical business practice and a human right reform has formatively been installed to improve regulations for the manufactures. Importantly, additional change can be made through our own consumer choices.
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The Cancer Of Plastic Consumer habits affect our environment very directly. The more they buy the most waste we generate. Consequently, this has a negative effect on humans because we too are apart of the ecosystem. Plastic doesn’t always get recycled, in fact less than nine percent of waste goes into the recycle. So even if you think that you threw something away there is a high chance of it being carried by the wind because is very light. It can easily float to the nearest sewer, which will take it to an ocean and eventually it makes it way into the Pacific Garbage Patch, one of the five spots on the earth were rotating currents gather plastic debris. Thirteen million tons of plastic enter our oceans every year killing as many as one million marine animals and birds in the Pacific Ocean. As the plastic starts to travel in the ocean, it starts to break down and it called microplastics. Scientists had thought little fish like anchovies mistaken it for food, but they found that they were drawn to plastic. When plastic is mixed with salt water, it begins to release an odour that is similar to their source of food. Microplastics is really harmful to the fish because they are able to get trapped in their gills, and can cause them to feel full even though there is no nutrients in their digestive systems which leads them to starve to death. Plastic pollution tiggers series of chain reactions to slowly break the ecosystem because big fish eat the small fish. Big fish like tuna are consumed by us humans, and ends up being a major exposure to microplastics. There have not been enough scientific evidence that shows the side effects of microplastics to humans, but we can assume that it does more harm than good since after all it is chemicals. Yosemite National park is one of the most famous and most visited parks in America. It attracts many tourists for its breathtaking scenes of nature. But as more people visit, they also leave a lot of their plastic waste there. Annabell (last name) is a current resident in Yosemite, and she explains in a brief interview that the changes that they encounter within the forest ecosystem. “Especially for us it is terrifying because we live in such a beautiful place. Every year we do the Yosemite Facelift where go out and collect a bunch of trash and litter, and the majority of the trash we pick up had just been built up in a matter or days. And we see our crows carrying the little pieces of plastic and you can’t do much about it, its gonna bring it back to their babies. We see the bobcats or the coyotes walking around the plastic bags. It’s such a beautiful place and it’s getting so damaged. ” (Basahara Annabelle) As consumers of the plastic, we must have to think about and where that plastic is going to end up. The most simple ways to prevent plastic pollution is to reduce the amount we buy. In recent years many cities have become aware of this problem and have started to ban the use of plastic bags which is a great tool to eliminate plastic waste. Additionally, we just have to be aware that our consumer decisions have a huge impact on hindering or helping our living planet. Ways to get involved in your community to help eliminate plastic waste is by connecting with Greenpeace. They consist of people nearby that discuss ways we as ethical citizens can help. Greenpeace also offers ideas for the reduction of you personal plastic usage.
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Plastic waste hung up in San Francisco University. (right)
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The Leeching Of Resources The resources required for our consumers products are leached from earth’s forest, mineral, and the living organism as food a resource.There are a lot of factors that keep us from seeing the present damage. One reason being, we export most of our population abroad. An environmental enthusiast, Greg Stohr explains to me in an interview, “All of the air pollution and the labour associated with the factories and people who make them is all in someone else’s country, and not ours. When we go to an Apple store, and we buy the shiny iphone, none of the pollution and really seems to come from the phone. We don’t see it. It’s in a different country.” Consumers are so easily enticed with materialism and aesthetics that we fail to question its origin. Karl Marx, a phycologist and an economist, analyzed political economy and introduced the term “Commodity Fetishism”. It is a perception of social relationships with commodity. The product that is in a department store had to first be mined, and then manufactured. Human labor and natural resources are both being exploited in this process. When it is advertised to us, or when we see it in a store, we only see the surface and the material, which have a alluring sense of their own. This becomes an autonomous source of satisfaction for the consumers, creating a veil over the process of production when the commodity is brought into the marketplace. So, as consumers we have an ethical duty. We should always consider the process that went into making a product in a store and ask ourselves, do i need it or do i want it?
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ADVERTISEMENT The Disease Ads are made to inform the customers about the product. And most ads do this, but with an extra twist to create an appeal, it may be rationality, sex, humor, fear, or bandwagon. Consequently this creates a spread of physiological disease that advertisers use to entice the consumers. We are all aware that it is incorporated in our everyday lives through social media, television or the lofty billboard signs in the freeways. The industry has an advantage over population’s spare time, so they are able to find its way into the psyche of the population. Humans have a deep need to belong, and it starts to impacts our consumer choices. Through advertising, we are constantly told that we will reach a higher state of happiness and belonging. Advetisements are able to scatter our emotions by generating an urge it but it doesn’t end up making us happier. In an interview with Balch Margaret, a psychology teacher, explains, “We then look and see somebody who has the next best thing and in phycology, we call this term: relative deprivation. Where we then feel relatively deprived by our lack of whatever it is that they have. We get accustomed to whatever “normal” level this is, and this is also the adaptation level of principal, which is basically where you always want more. We see that when we consume, that isn’t going to make us happy, we always are going to compare ourselves to others, and feel that we have less. We always adapted to whatever level we’re at, and want more. Unless, we’re able to really learn gratitude and how to be happy and grateful and content with things that are not physical things.” By understanding this tune of reality, as consumers we should slowly look to detangle ourselves from consumerism. 25
MINIMALISM
The Cure Consumerism has a deep tie to our emotions and this can be detrimental because we may feel tied to the cycle. It may feel as if material is something that we have to go through to achieve contentment. The truth is, living with less things to think about, is the way to fill ourselves with gratitude. We can chose to be more fulfilled. The ideas of minimalism is able to aid us to be more content. It incorporates ideas that you really don’t need a lot of to be happy and it is true. If we slowly begin to value our possessions that we already have, resisting urges of advertisements, we will find our deeper needs in life. There may be some minimalists who take this thinking and put it to an extreme measure where they only own two shirts and two pants. They are trying to make a big change at once and I applaud them, but it just isn’t plausible. Big change comes slowly. And it can be done by incorporating this idea that the less we want, the happier we will be. As we begin our journey as a minimalist, we will find that we are much more appreciative of things that we already do have and seek importance in the things we need.
Conclusion Consumerism has creates a host of problems for the minds of consumers, society of miners and the lives of manufacturer, and the only one profiting from this is the big companies that create this in the first place. It has spread like a disease that we are all infected with, and we only have our mind sets to save ourselves and others. Our resources are very limited and we are exploiting minerals at a higher rate which has created a huge strain on our environment and that comes back to us via plastic in our seafood or the weird weather. And none of these problems will be solved if we continue the way we live right now. Firstly, we have got to shift away from materialism to address to this issue, we have got to stop wanting more. As consumers of the most affluent society in the world, we must believe that we can create change. It is our responsibility to do what we can in out part as consumers to find ways to help the lives of other humans and sustain our beautiful and only home.
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Work Cited Buskirk, Richard H., and James T. Rothe. “Consumerism. An Interpretation.” Journal of Marketing, vol. 34, no. 4, 1970, pp. 61–65. JSTOR, JTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1250713. Accessed 12 Apr. 2018 Blach, Margret. Personal interview. 14, March 2018 Doorey, David. “Vacuousness of CSR on Display in Loblaws’ Victory in Rana Plaza Class Action Lawsuit.” International Union Rights, vol. 24, no. 4,2017, pp. 18–20. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.14213/inteuniorigh.24.4.0018. Accessed 12 Apr. 2018 “Exposed: Child labour behind smart phone and electric car batteries” Amesty USA. 19 Jan 2016.https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/child-labour-behind-smart-phone-and-electric-car-batteries/ . Accessed April 19 GoldBerg, Carey. “Materialism is bad for you, studies say” The New York Magazine, Feb 8, 2006 https://www.nytimes. com/2006/02/08/health/materialism-is-bad for-your-studies-say.html Accessed 3 Mar. 2018 HRW. “More Brands Should Reveal Where Their Clothes are Made” Human Rights Watch, April 20, 2017.https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/04/20/more-brands-should-reveal-where-their-clothes-are-made Accessed 12 Apr. 2018 Hines, Alice. “Forever 21 Under Investigation For Using ‘Sweatshop-Like’ Factories In Los Angeles.” October 26. 2012. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/26/forever-21-sweatshop-investigation_n_2025390.html. Ac cessed 12 Apr. 2018 Johnson, Ian. “Plastic microparticles found in flesh of fish eaten by humans”, July 26, 2017. https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/plastic-mic oparticles-fish-flesh-eaten-humans-food-chain-mackerel-anchovy-mullet-a7860726.html Lears, Jackson. “The Significance of Advertising.” World War I and the Jazz Age, Lezhnev, Sasha. “A Criminal State: Understanding and countering institutionalized corruption and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo”, https://enoughproject.org/reports/criminal-state-understand ing-and-countering-institutionalized-corruption-and-violence-democr . Accessed 15 Mar. 2018. Nield, David. “Our smartphone addiction is costing the Earth” Aug 4, 2015,https://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/our-smartphone-addiction-is-costing-the- earth-1299378/2. Accessed Mar. 30, 2018 “PROFITS AND LOSS: MINING AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN KATANGA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO” Amnesty Usa. June 2014 https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/profits-and-loss-mining- and-human-rights-in-katanga-democratic-republic-of-the-congo/ . Accessed Mar. 30
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“Republic of the Congo.” OEC - Republic of the Congo (COG) Exports, Imports, and Trade Partners,Accessed Mar. 10, 2018 atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/cog/. Spelliscy, Ciara. “Blood on your Handset” Sept. 20, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/09/conflict_min als_from_the_congo_is_your_cellphone_ made_with_them.html . Accessed Mar. 15, 2018 Stohr, Greg. Personal interview. 7, March 2018 “The Retail Industry.” American Decades, edited by Judith S. Baughman, et al., vol. 2: 1910-1919, Gale, 2001. U.S. History In Context, http://link. galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX3468300380/UHIC?u=los42754&sid=UHIC &xid=157888aa. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018. “The state of consumption today”. WorldWatch, 21 Sep. 2011,http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810. “Use it and Lose It” Scientific American. 15 December 2017. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/ Accessed April 20
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About the author In 2009, Urna moved from Kathmandu, Nepal to California. Her hobbies include painting and yoga. She is currently doing animation at Freestyle Academy of Arts, and has started digital art as well. She hopes her path will lead to learning, creating art and most importantly happiness. Self-reflection is an important aspect of her life because it helps her grow from the past. She has begun to have a deeper passion for the environment and through exploring the roots for its damages, she has discovered a whole range of social, political, and psychological issues that is connected from consumerism. This book has given her a way to step higher for a better view of reality.
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Urna Bajracharya Urna Bajracharya