Brain Vomit #11: Earth day

Earth day Today is earth day. If you open Instagram, every other post will remind you that today is in fact Earth day. Used by many brands to show how environmentally friendly their product is or to tell you that a fraction of their proceeds will go to a charity or a cause. Which is great, I prefer they give something back rather than just take and take. But the intentions are rooted in the fact that they want you to buy more from them. Successful corporations grow, maybe the founder had a vision or ideology. Their intention was to be the best at what they make. Create the best value, a product that would change people’s lives for the better. And for a while it works great. You get more sales, which means you have to make more products, which means more employees, maybe you have to get a loan to reinvest in the company, which carries interest, so you have to create more sales, make more products, hire more people, expand into a bigger factory. This loop keeps repeating itself. It’s an infinite loop, but the resources and space are limited. Then everyone has the product, so the company has to innovate to make the old product obsolete or worse build obsolescence into the product. Or maybe a competitor has the same product for less. So you have to sell for less. So the method of manufacturing gets cheaper either by labor or by material cost. All to keep the corporation, that is now an angry and hungry monster, alive. This is unsustainable. We vote with our dollars, not our Instagram stories or whatever we use as a tool of how we want the world to see us. And sometimes holding on to those dollars is the best thing we can do for our planet. Slow down the consumerism. I don’t think Capitalism is killing our planet. Greed is killing our planet. Instant gratification over the health of the whole is killing our planet. Selfishness is killing our planet. The easiest thing would be to demand more responsibility from producers. But remember that we vote with our dollars not our words. So unless we change our consumer habbits, producers will keep up with the demands of the consumer. Shifting the flow of our dollars will force producers to adapt or die.

Of Course I want everyone to be happy, but buying the latest gadget, the latest fashion, etc. Are quick fixes to a life without substance. Buying the latest commodity to impress others is irresponsible. Is your money burning a hole in your pocket? Great! Support your local artist, buy that $7 Vegan muffin, buy a custom made suit, get that handmade bike, support your local craftsperson. Support those who chose their own path to make a living. After all the economy needs to keep moving right?

I believe that in the future all the waste we created will turn into a resource, but until we figure that out we must slow down the destruction of this planet. That's up to us. Get your phone repaired, wear those all clothes till they disintegrate on you, get your bike repaired. And when you can’t get any more patches on those jeans or it is too damaged to fix, when all other options are eliminated, then buy that new thing. But buy the nicer one, the one that won’t break, the one that the company will fix if you damage it or has issues, the quality one. Buy the new thing that wont fall apart prematurely. They say things used to be made to last. They still are, most people just choose to buy cheap things. Cheap things are costing us too much. We live in a poluted world and then we wonder why we have so many allergies, respiratory problems, obesity, mental health problems, anxiety. We live in a world of excess, we lost the ability to live it. It's time to regain that ability.

One day our grandkids are going to ask us why we didn’t do anything while we still had time. And boomers are not going to be there to take the blame.