ETHICAL SPENDING & CONSUMPTION

BY JOE LEE

OVERCONSUMPTION, THE ACT of (for the most part) spending money on certain items to an excess, is prevalent in developed countries across the globe and it’s costing the environment dearly.

As students who typically rely on student loans to be able to afford food, it’s easy to forget that the grocery shop doesn’t just have to be about buying what we want, for when we want it. More and more ethically sourced food and drink appear on shelves all the time and ethical shopping is becoming not only easier with these increased options but cheaper too. But it’s more than your average grocery shop this affects, any items from clothes to electronics have their own background of environmental sustainability in its creation.

The textiles/clothing sector is one famous for being affected by overconsumption.

Sweatshops work people to the bone, unliveable wages and the smallest mistake can result in clothing being thrown out onto a ever-growing pile of waste. Shein is one of the main offenders in the industry, yet its demand remains constant. Almost every month, Shein has a new roster of clothes on the front page, trying to force the change of fashion trends, this allows them to profit more as people more focused on fashion than their own bank account will buy more and more clothes they don’t need on a regular basis. What happens to the clothes that aren’t sold? Are they donated / given away? No, they join the same pile of clothes with the flawed goods.

The idea of fashion trends is purely to the profit of corporations, clothes can have years of usable life and it shouldn’t matter what other people like and approve of if what you wear makes you happy. The same ide- ology can be applied to electronics like the phone, yearly Apple releases marginally different products and advertises it like it’s a revolutionary good. There’s even a growing bias in consumers that owning an iPhone is superior to owning a Samsung. If these companies were realistic with consumers’, the dismal homogeny among the new releases consumed (especially by the rich) and contribute to a worse world as the more the demand, the more the material wastage and the more employees are taken advantage of. would be clearer than ever. These products are over-

Ethical consumption requires careful attention and research as sometimes it’s not always as easy as looking at packaging and seeing signs that say ‘No.1 Ethical Product’. Some companies can greenwash, or even in some more interesting cases brownwash, meaning they don’t necessarily lie about their environmental contribution but oversell or undersell it, sneaking around the truth. Therefore, it becomes necessary for consumers to research for themselves so they can evaluate what they buy and who they buy from and come to their own conclusions. The main downside of this is the amount of time it may squander to get accurate information as companies who aren’t performing well environmentally could attempt to hide the information from public view, but the harder it is to find information the more likely it is negative. However, sometimes it can be as simple as checking packaging as companies who do the most to make their product environmentally friendly (rightfully) like to brag about that fact.

Sticking to strictly ethical consumption is a hard task, sometimes you truly desire something that isn’t entirely the best for the environment, and you give in and buy it, but that’s okay. The effort of just trying to make moral and environmentally virtuous decisions is enough, every time you wish to purchase something there is a decision that can affect the world for the better, if more times than not you decide for the better then that’s an achievement to be proud of.