Essay On Consumerism

One of the main causes of consumerism is directly related to one’s social status and the portrayal of one’s self image. Today’s society has defined what one must have in order to keep up with a particular trend or to represent a higher class. In a New York Times article, Juliet Schor wrote, “Driving a certain type of car, wearing particular designer labels, living in a certain kind of home, and ordering the right bottle of wine all create and support a particular image” for those heavily concerned about social status. Now, it no longer becomes a matter of “making ends meet” but instead a competition to see who has the newest “this” or the biggest “that”. As a result, consumers are facing issues with extreme materialism, leading to overspending.

Annie Leonard, a Masters graduate from Cornell University, spent almost thirty years traveling to over forty countries to study where consumer goods were produced and disposed. In her video called “Story of Stuff”, Leonard explains how consumer goods are produced. She begins by describing the mass deforestation in foreign countries, destruction of natural rock formations for precious metals, contamination of water sources, eventually causing harm to the wildlife due to their destroyed natural habitats. Leonard states that “in the past three decades alone, one third of the planet’s natural resource space has been consumed” (Story of Stuff). In the U.S. only four percent of the nation’s original forests remain, and forty percent of the water has become undrinkable. These destructive environmental issues can all relate directly back to consumerism because the more goods we purchase, the more goods manufacturers will have to produce. Leonard says we live on a planet with finite resources and after a while, there will not be any more resources to produce consumer goods. However, corporations and private businesses often show little to no concern toward environmental issues as their main goal is to make profit, sometimes even without considering the environmental costs. In her research, Leonard found that much of America’s production and disposal took place in countries such as China and India. The production of these goods releases harmful chemicals into the atmosphere and the disposal of the goods contaminates nearby water sources, making them impure. The inhabitants are forced to live in poor conditions or relocate and leave their things behind. Even though the U.S. makes up only five percent of the world’s population, it creates a third of all the waste produced in the world (Story of