Stop wasteful manufacture

Dr Valerie Yule describes how our economic system removes our ability to choose what we really want and need.

The Great Dilemmas

A major reason why we do nothing to stop our experiment in destroying the planet is that reining in our wasteful life styles would cost jobs and profits.

Stephen Emmett, an Oxford professor of Computational Science and head of the Microsoft Computational Science laboratory in Cambridge is the star of Ten Billion, a theatrical work which shows our planet's environmental tragedies with ‘compelling impeccable logic.’ He thinks we are ‘already fucked’ as humanity's experiment with the planet destroys ecosystems, eradicates other species, pumps more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, temperature rises, swelling populations, rising middle-class aspirations, and spoils the ocean, air, water and soils. (Account in Guardian Weekly, by Robin McKie, ‘Climate change is big drama’, 17 August p 21)

Humans vs nature

Humanity is now using nature’s products 52 percent faster than what Earth can renew, according to Global Footprint Network’s latest data, published in the 2012 edition of the Living Planet Report.

And we do nothing.

A major reason why we do nothing is that reining in our wasteful life styles would cost jobs and profits. These would be especially in travel, production of really-not-needed goods, and retail.

Every one of us – including me - has some habits that could be changed to save resources and greenhouse emissions. Let us look at what would happen to a typical single-person household, if recent advances in waste were to be cut. (They are recent. Our grandparents were not so wasteful.)

Food – Eat less, especially processed foods, and be less obese – although this will cut jobs and businesses.

We heat our homes more than needed with central heating and cool them more than needed with air conditioners. That is because we have open-style housing and cannot shut the doors to where we are. We do not dress according to the weather. We could sit with an electric rug over our knees rather than heat the room.

Yet, change our ways and we cut jobs and businesses.

Our homes are designed to be ever more wasteful. Perfectly good houses are pulled down to build McMansions with no eaves, no gardens or yards, dark roofs and enormous rooms not all really needed.

Bathrooms at several per house, with square handbasins and baths with claw feet, with no regard for cleaning and waste of water. People wash their hair daily, and usually themselves, whether they need a shower or not.

Yet, change our ways and cut jobs and businesses.

We use appliances not only when needed, but when we really could do with ‘household exercise’ with carpet-sweepers, manual lawn mowers, and twin tub washing machines. Then we drive to the gym to get exercise.

Yet, change our ways and we cut jobs and businesses.

We wear the latest fashions and throw out rather than re-use the old.

Yet, change our ways and we cut jobs and businesses.

Travel on holidays and business include too many trips by plane. We go to our many conferences by plane, even when video-conferencing and email give us communication we did not have yesterday.

Yet, change our ways and we cut jobs and businesses.

Commuting to jobs and shops is usually by one-tonne family-size vehicles, although many households have two cars. One of those cars could surely be a compact two-seater, that would save fuel, energy in the making, and cut traffic snarls in half. This would open a new field for car manufacturers.

In the laundry: Our appliances are made for big households for children and workers with lots of dirty clothes. We have these big appliances using excess water and energy for small households, with most of the washing being only to refresh most clothes. Yet people change their clothes whether they need to or not. They use hot water and too much detergent. They get new washing machines regularly.

Yet, change our ways and cut jobs and businesses.

Retail stores benefit particularly from selling big appliances that need replacing soon. We do not have updated electrics for the old carcasses.

Yet change our ways and we cut jobs and businesses.

We use electric dryers – often because there is no room for outside dryers. We iron. Today’s fabrics rarely need ironing – even pillowslips and hankies go smooth if folded and put away.

Yet, change our ways and cut jobs and businesses.

Furnishings are not mendable or renovatable. We could have mendable furniture and washable stretch coverings. Instead Council hard rubbish pictures show goods that have minimum defects as examples of what to throw out to the tip. Microsoft Spellchecker does not even recognize the words mendable or renovatable.

Yet, change our ways and we cut jobs and businesses.

Schools are large and centralized, so that whereas two generations ago most children traveled to school on foot or bicycle, now parents add to the traffic and costs by ferrying them. Small schools are better for small people, and can share online materials and specialist teaching. They would increase useful jobs – but to sell their land aids developers.

Families: Parents are still described as ‘generous’ if they have large families, whereas today to have a small family oneself and care abut other people’s children is true generosity. Most of the children that come into care were unwanted in the first place.Why encourage people to have children they do not want and cannot care for?

Pets: Do people consider that pets that eat meat, are over-large, and are too many. put another burden on the earth’s resources? Working dogs of course are another matter. Many people need cats to keep down vermin, but let them out at night to catch our wildlife birds and small creatures.

Yet change our ways and we cut jobs and businesses.

Our lifestyles have also become more wasteful with children’s toys, garden prunings, plastic bags, quickly obsolete electronic gear, waste of paper, re-using rather than recycling. Look around your home.

We need to go back to our grandparents’ saving ways and many of their appliances.

We need also to go forward – in sewage, for example, with separation of liquid sewage for local use as fertilizers and solids for centralized production of equally useful sludge. What a saving of water!

New jobs and new businesses could employ thousands, and people-care is still under-serviced.

The poor of the world look to live our life-styles. The planet staggers as they try. Our life-styles can be full of pleasure, and healthy too, in giving more chance for the earth to survive.

Valerie yule

About Dr Valerie Yule, M.A., Ph.D, Dip.Ed., M.B.Ps.S. Academic positions at Melbourne, Monash and Aberdeen Universities in departments of Psychology and Education; Teacher at all levels, from preschool to adult and migrant literacy and PhD supervision; Clinical child psychologist at the Royal Children’s Hospitals, Melbourne and Aberdeen; Schools psychologist chiefly but not only in disadvantaged schools, Present research on imagination and literacy.

[Image Source: Material Excesses of Christmas are a Moral Problem: Objecting to the Extreme Spending, Borrowing, Materialism
Image © Austin Cline, Original Poster: Library of Congress, USA]

If full environmental costs were embedded into consumer products pricing, then the price of high environmental cost consumer products would rise, making them less affordable and so their consumption would fall. Rampant consumerism is unaffordable to the planet anyway. But what we pay for consumer items is artificially subsidised by leaving out the environmental impact costs. Throughout the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, developed countries have partied with free lunches, and now we are learning that there is not such thing long term. The planet and its nature is now paying for that free lunch. We need only read the next article below by Bandicoot 12^th November, 'Are we witnessing the death of our planet?'

Conspicuous consumption and decadence deserves taxing, because its costs are destructive on the planet and need to be curbed.

I propose a 'planet cost' measure on all products and services globally. This being the full lifecycle cost of a product/service in terms of its environmental cost on the planet - from manufacturing/procurement, inventory, marketing, distribution, to its consumption and waste ('dust to dust' so to speak).

Planet cost needs to be mitigated by imposing behavioural changes on human consumption. Carrots only encouraged those who want to change, so a behavioural stick (aka a 'planet tax') is needed for those conspicuous consumers who don't and who don't give a rats.

In order to determine the tax rate, simply apply a planet impact global test base on severity and scale relative to the other products/services.

So a plastic bottle of phosphate-based laundry detergent used in standard sewerage (so 20^th C) would be priced at $30, whereas a reusable glass bottle of phosphate-free detergent used in a grey water reuse system would cost only $15. With such disparate pricing, behavioural change wouldn't take long!

"Some of the money spent on Christmas wrapping paper, decorations, and unwanted gifts might do some good feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and tending the sick." [Austin Cline, Austin Cline's Agnosticism / Atheism Guide].

Do the planet a favour, buy fewer xmas gifts. Catch up with family and friends instead!

Happy holidays!
:-)

Further Reading:

War on Xmas

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia

Many of us use costly elephants to do jobs that don't need an elephant. What do I mean?

In a small household of one or two people, the elephants are the machines bigger than are needed for everyday - such as the washing machine that takes 20 minute and 75 litres for a few clothes that really only need freshening, the 1 tonne car for six people plus luggage with only one person in it, the power motor for a pocket lawn, the ducted heating for a house when the occupants are in only one room.

What can be done? Sometimes there are many people in the house, or small children or sickness, or time-demanding jobs, so that these elephants are useful at particular times. But not always.

Some people solve this by living in group houses that share the big appliances.

Another solution is to have homes with space for 'small elephants' as well, for everyday help. These can include a versatile little twin- tub, which makes even hand-washing easy, a carpet-sweeper, a light hand-mower, a bicycle, motor-scooter or minicar, and a way to shut doors of singly-heated rooms or to use environmental ways of keeping warm. Over time you save the cost of buying these- and often they can be bought cheaply second-hand, since they cost less to use, as well as being responsible for less greenhouse gas. The big elephants also last longer, with less use (if a way is found to stop car batteries going flat).

Quality of life includes comfort. Average Westerners live in comfort unthought of even in my childhood - but risk it all in part through unnecessary excess. This excess is paid for by our future, through its effects in helping to drive climate changes, resource shortages, pollutions and environmental damage.

The big problem - our economy is at present geared to require average Westerners to live with excess to keep the wheels turning and the whole show 'growing'. So there is excessive production, advertising, carbon emissions and waste.

Let us imagine one of the ways in which we could still live in comfort, but without wasteful production and wasteful trashing.

We could stop always using elephants at the times that we may only need miniatures.

If we could travel in a small two-seater car when we did not need the family size. (And of course, when public transport or walking is possible, take those options.)

If we could do the laundry with a water-saving power-saving twin-tub when we did not need the full power-washing machine. (And there is always hand laundry too).

If we could cool the room with a fan to stay under 24 degrees when frail people did not need the air-conditioner (and of course have insulation and all that too).

If we could warm ourselves with clothing and exercise and some neat innovations to keep a bit of local warming around us over twelve degrees, so we did not need space-heating (and of course have insulation and all that too).

If we could dry our laundry in the fresh air when emergencies of climate or illness did not make indoor drying a boon.

If we could use drip-dry so that we never had to iron except for special things at special times.

If we could give our small lawns the 'Australian lawn' look with a fast light hand-mower when we did not have large areas of bumpy lawns needing power mowing. (The 'Australian look' for lawns is unwatered dry brown in summer, resulting in a fair amount of green flatweeds in with the actual grass in winter, mowed to look tidy and lush, but not the close-shaven English lawn.)

If we could use fast economical washing-up methods with top basins, soap and a proper dish-rack - no tea-towel drying - for when we did not need the full dishwasher load for piles of dishes.

If we could sweep with a broom, or brush with a carpet-sweeper, for when we do not really need the full vacuum cleaning.

If we could use - and re-use - modern no-pins simple-wash snazzy cloth nappies, keeping disposables as a boon for the emergencies of travel or illness.

If we had durable clothes that we could adapt to the latest fashion with accessories, as Korean girls used to do with their national dress.

If we had a kitchen system that used and re-used everything - including bones for soup and scraps for worm-farms - so that the trash- bin hardly ever had to go out for collection, and the recycling bin only sometimes.

If our gardens could be used for healthy outdoor exercise, including gardening, and operated on its own environmental cycle with the help of kitchen scraps and even human liquid sewage (saving flushing and water bills) and with minimum or no input of problematic items like artificial fertilisers and no environmental spoilers like river sands or mosses.

If we kept healthy with 'thrifty housework exercise' and the walking substitute for the car. We could 'lift weights' with buckets for using grey-water or tank-water.

If we shopped with a quality waterproof shopping jeep.

If our kitchen equipment was minimum plastic, so that it was durable.

If we could bake food in the ashes of a garden stove fuelled with prunings and other unusables.

If on hot days we could bake with a solar reflector oven, and heat water outside in buckets. And shower outside from the tank.

What does this do for the economy?

It would mean that lucky people would have to have the space to keep these 'mini-aids' as well as the elephants, or have some sort of neighborly sharing system.

Our present wasteful housing design must be more flexible. Acres of new housing are going up with wasteful designs and materials and 15-year lives - how can this be stopped?

Jobs and businesses would be needed to supply 'little elephant' duplicates for everyone. But the equipment would be durable and updateable - so would not have to be chucked out through built-in obsolescence. So with a stable population, markets would not be infinitely expandable, and manufactures would need to be more flexible.

But the equipment would all be repairable - and it would be worth our while to have jobs for repairers. Repairing tends to be a field for small businesses rather than multinationals. At present, far too much is thrown out 'to save labour' - the cost of mending is too often more than the cost of buying new, unless you count in future cost that you yourself do not pay - the cost of all this wasted embedded carbon and raw materials and energy for the making and freighting.

But what does this saving and re-using do for variety in life? People today throw out socks just to have the variety of new ones. Rethink the variety needed in life - to enjoy the biodiversity, the social-diversity, the immense amount of variety in thinking and imagination and creativity and learning about the world. You don't need to buy a new thingo. Or a new big elephant.

See also Valerie Yule's home page at home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas including Economic & Political Ideas, Planned Obsolescence of 27 May 07, Cutting waste - saving the planet without destroying economies of 7 Feb 08, Unchecked consumption will waste the planet of 31 Oct 07, Rubbishing on about plastic bags of 30 Apr 08, Climate Change at Animal F of 28 Feb 08.

I am so sick of buying printers. Each new series has more bugs and expenses than the last. Every time Windows comes out with new software or I upgrade my computer I run into problems. At the moment my HP Photosmart 3100 series refuses to print all black, despite a brand new cartridge (ridiculously expensive and small) until I replace the magenta cartridge. My friend, who uses Linux, has an ancient little printer which prints without special programs, without fuss, without self cleaning... it just does the job. It can be filled with generic inks and the cartriges manually refilled. It does not waste my time. HP Photosmart 3100 series WASTES my time. I hate it. I resent the several hundred AUD I spent on it. And I have another printer - a Canon laser. It simply refused to collaborate with my new computer. So now that my HP Photosmart 3100 series is holding me to ransome (and another member of the family has a car so I can't go down and blow some more money on a magenta cartridge in order to print in black and white) I tried printing with my other computer (you need a few; they are so damn jinxed by windows XP [I certainly won't be buying Vista]) using the Canon, but, wouldn't you know, there is a big blaze of white down the centre, so I will have to fill out the missing words in biro so I can take the article to read at my radio show. I think I may mention the problems with printers there. We customers are simply being hung out to dry by big business which is commercially all in league to herd us to less and less useful, more and more complex, resource intensive 'solutions'. I guess it keeps us out of politics a little more than we otherwise might be.