Consuming our own Future-Unpacking the Truth of our Society

Abstract

The world today has become “a throwaway society”, where people replace their goods with newer ones. People have enough money to purchase goods in plenty. This isn’t good. We’re already seeing very real and devastating examples of the environmental impact of our throw-away society. Whether its food, housing, energy or consumer products, we are taking more from the planet than we ever have before, and there are more of us doing it. Most of us eat more, use more, buy more and have more than we need. And we throw more of it in the garbage. But why? The reason is the term, “consumerism”. The economy, today, is judged by the production and selling of goods. The more goods produced and consumed by society the higher the growth rate of the economy The economy is considered to be “doing well” if the purchasing power of the people is high. Consumerism is the equation of personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material possessions. This leads many scientists to question whether the Earth can sustain the ever-growing human population. We are at present in a situation where the planet’s ecology is not coping with all the pollution because of a huge, continuously increasing, consumer demand. This excessive demand for consumer goods has created most of the current ecological imbalances.