I need it!

We are now into the shopping season.  Thanksgiving marks the beginning of it.  I’ve been keeping my ears open when I listen to the radio to see if there are any mentions of Thanksgiving as the holiday itself, or products and services for the holiday, I didn’t hear any.  When I’m on the street, I looked for clues of Thanksgiving, not including workers setting up for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City or delis advertising cooked turkeys.  There were any hardly Thanksgiving decoration, but Christmas decoration is all over the place.  Every advertisement points to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and shopping for the holidays.  Christmas equals shopping now.

I also felt that the boundary for “need” and “want” have been obscured.  Someone I know bought an iPhone6 Plus for a lot of money.  She said that it was “needed.”  I can’t imagine why it’s a need, I’ve never seen her do anything spectacular on the phone.  All I’ve seen her do has been making phone calls, texting, play Candy Crush, normal smart phone stuff that other smart phones can do as well.  I recently got a smart phone myself, a Motorola Droid Maxx, because I’m part of a family plan that was activated since way back, it cost me 99 cents to get it.  There was a want, I want to be able to text, read e-mails, browse the web, and other normal stuff comfortably.  I will probably never use the full potential of the phone.  It’s not like I’m a spy in one of those awesome spy movies where I’ll save the world by stopping terrorists from launching nuclear strikes against American cities off of it.

That’s the power of marketing, to get consumers to need things.  All the deals, the percentages taken off of the original price, the signs, sometimes with lights, along with holiday decorations, all the mind manipulations and sensory attractions, are all very overwhelming.  It gets people to trade in their money for material stuff.  As I’m typing this, I am considering making a purchase for dress shirts.  There was a time when I needed these shirts, when I started a job that requires me to wear them.  For one year, I just cycled through four shirts a week, we get “dress-down” Fridays.  That became a problem when an extra day popped up that required another day of me in a shirt.  If it’s an event which I needed to wear a suit, that wasnt’ not so bad, I’ll just find the less wrinkly shirt and wear it again, just had to keep the jacket on throughout the event.  Sometimes it got hot.  Other times, well, I’ll just show off the wrinkles.  Eventually, I bought four more shirts, simply for the sake of the per shirt discount.  Right now, it’s a want, I already have more shirts than the calendar week.  Maybe a semi-want, since some of the older shirts are getting worn out, I wear those when I don’t think I’ll see anybody else, other than co-workers.  Or did I just made an excuse for myself?

In our consumption society, we often buy a lot of things that we don’t need.  During the holiday season, we buy things to give, which are sometimes what people don’t need, in some cases, don’t even want.  I’m sure a lot of people have gotten a holiday gift or birthday present that’s not wanted.  How about those wedding gifts for guests?  Some of them are nicely personalized, so something that can be kept as memories.  Others are a small pouch of M&Ms, so they’re easy to get rid off, just hand it off to the next kid running by.  Then there are those that I have no idea what to do with.  What am I supposed to do with a 3D heart shaped plastic case that changes color when I turn it own that have the bride’s and groom’s name on it?

What do we do with most things we don’t want?  Either we put them away in some forgotten corner of our home and that’s where they’ll stay.  Or we send them away and make them not our business.  We simply throw them out.  How many of us kept all of our gifts anyway? There are probably some of my gifts in landfills that I don’t even remember ever receiving.

All I want to say is: Let’s practice being more responsible this season.  For gifts, give items that are meaningful. Maybe it’s okay to just give a gift card, let the recipient make its own purchase. Whenever possible, decline the shopping bag, whether paper or plastic.  If needed, try to consolidate the items from different stores into one back. I’m sure nobody wants to walk around with their arms wrapped around their newly bought items, bags will be used, that’s when consolidation helps.  Instead of having a bag for shirts from one store and another bag for a pack of socks from a different store, put the pack of socks into the bag of shirts, use one bag.  Be sure to sort what’s recyclable or not prior to disposal.  Don’t ever litter.

A little late, but a quick and entertaining video on the history on Black Friday.  Not sure how accurate all the facts are, but it’s funny.  A little note, there’s some expletive language.

Plastic is Good for Us

In a couple of my previous posts, I pretty much bashed on plastic whenever I had a chance.  Well, it’s quite damaging to the environment, yet, we can’t do a lot about not using it.  In a modernized society, it is part of our everyday lives.  I can’t imagine a day without touching plastic.

Plastic is great!  It’s durable, can be molded into just about any shape or form, and has multiple functions.  So much can be done with plastic, if you’re reading this, chances are, you’re using a device in an area that has access to the Internet.  In such a setting, all you have to do is simply look around, there’s probably plastic around.  You’re probably touching it right now.

Like all good things, too much of it is bad.  For example, vitamin C, people say taking it will keep you healthy.  I recently found out that too much vitamin C can cause diarrhea.  My doctor said that to me when I went for a physical check up, she was grilling me on vitamin supplement intake.  Apparently, it has other side effects as well, here’s what the Mayo Clinic says.

Diarrhea, that’s what the world is having with plastic pollution.  Uncontrollable amount of plastic waste is getting washed out into the oceans and causing a lot of concern.  Plastic waste doesn’t stay in their own form once out in the ocean like glass bottles.  Glass bottles stay intact, a record of a recovered message in a bottle was first thrown into the sea in 1913.  The bottle was recovered in 2014, 101 years at sea.  LINK

Plastic breaks down under long exposure under the sun, it “photodegrades.”  It doesn’t disappear though.  The smaller pieces still slosh around in the ocean and eventually come together from ocean currents.  One such congregation places is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  There’s one in every ocean, the one in the Pacific is the largest of them all.  It’s one gigantic soup of degraded plastic pieces that scientists don’t know how to track or clean.  Full environmental impact is still not known.  There are many theories, such as sea life eating them and in turn messes up the ecosystem, therefore the food chain, and our food supply.

Faced with such dire scenarios of our near future, environmental groups got politicians to pass laws to ban single-use plastic bags.  It’s one of those items that are extremely abundant in the trash world.  Tons get thrown out everyday, not only into trash receptacles for the landfills, but onto the streets, on high ways, directly thrown into the waterways, the oceans, etc.  There are so many plastic bags, people don’t know what to do with them.  I have a part of my closet dedicated to hold plastic bags that I keep for trash bags.  There’s a smaller section where I hold plastic bags that I don’t know what to do with.  They’re too small for my garbage can.  There’s simply no other uses for them.  When I’m out and about, I keep an eye out for plastic bag collection bins, they can sometimes be found in large pharmacies or supermarkets.

On Sep. 30, 2014, California became the first state to ban single-use plastic bags.  LINK

On Nov. 17, 2014, Baltimore City Council banned single-use plastic bags.  LINK  This one is quite interesting, it might get vetoed.  The veto is more of a political action than an environment issue.  Here’s one of those times when politics became more important than the issue at hand.

With single-use plastic bags banned, what can shoppers use?  They can bring their own bags.  I normally decline the plastic bag when I go shopping.  If I have a backpack, I throw them in.  It can get quite heavy if there are liquid items, such as milk, orange juice, etc.  A small price to pay to carry a heavy load for a few blocks with one fewer plastic bag used.  Other times, I will bring my own bag.  What if I bought too much stuff for me to carry in my arms and I do not have a backpack or my own bag?  The answer is the store-supplied paper bag!

If one step back and take a moment to think about this.  Paper bags, paper, paper comes from trees.  Wouldn’t this mean more trees will be chopped to make paper bags?  California requires that 40% of the paper bags must be post-consumer products.  What about the 60%?

There is an organization in San Francisco suing against the ban, called Saved the Plastic Bag.  Their website has a bunch of interesting information.  For one example, carbon dioxide emission.  Paper bags, as with most organic compounds that degrade or decompose, such as dead animals, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.  The estimated amount of paper bags that will replace plastic bags will emit annual carbon dioxide estimated to be equivalent of 92,280 passenger vehicles.  According to this theory, switching solely to paper bags will make things worse for us.  The site also went on to say that the U.S. and California governments are working on keeping carbon dioxide from being released from landfills.  Plastic bags are said to last a very long time.  During that time, nothing is released into the air.

What does this mean for us?  We’re in a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” scenario.  Others will call it a “Catch-22.”  Use plastic bags, they can potentially go into the ocean and add to the patch.  Or use paper bags, they go into the land fills and release carbon dioxide into the air.  Carbon dioxide is largely blamed for global warming.

I believe it comes down to responsibility.  If we try our best to not use store bags, whether paper or plastic, then there’ll be less waste.  Sometimes I see people buy one single small item, such as a bottle of water, and ask for a bag.  That’s silly!  What’s the point of carrying a bottle of water in a bag when it can be carried in the hand?  The hand is needed to carry something anyway.  If we do our part and pitch in to the recycling effort, then less waste, paper or plastic will end up in the landfills or oceans.

Another thing that we need to be responsible is to do our own due diligence and don’t rush to conclusions.  When passing these laws banning single-use plastic bags, did the law makers do their own research?  Did the environmental groups perform research on the alternative?

Do you know that they can turn plastic bags and other waste plastics into diesel fuel?

If you’re going to try this at home, do so at your own risk:

http://youtu.be/njIYHtFmcSs

Our Own Demise through Consumerism

The world is changing very fast.  Things really sped up in the 90’s and does not seem to be slowing down. Consumer technology exploded and things became obsolete much faster than ever before.  As individuals, if unable to keep up, we fall behind.

Take my father for example.  His mindset is still set in the late 70’s of Communist China.  Multiple attempts to recalibrate have failed.  Sometimes he gets hit by a dose of reality and for one small instant, he gets amazed by technology.  He doesn’t understand recycling as the word is being used today.  Growing up, nobody threw anything away, nobody had enough in their possession to throw things away.  Recycling was cutting up old clothing to patch up the better conditioned clothing.  He said that it didn’t even matter if one had money at the time, if you go to a store, all you can buy was salt.

Now, he’s in the United States, living the American Dream.  He worked hard, raised a family, has money in the bank account, and can be a consumer.  Something he was not able or allowed to do in China.  Consumption in the United States, the freedom to do anything, buy anything one wishes.  Quite interestingly enough, something he never saw when he was in China, or anybody else, it’s that China is now along the same lines as the United States.

Consumerism has become part of our culture.  In the United States, Thanksgiving is more and more marked as the day of eating right before the start of the shopping season than a day of family gathering and be thankful.  Commercials have Christmas themes already, decorations are already up.  Stores are now opening on Thanksgiving evening.  Christmas is more about buying things than religion and festivities.  The marketing machine of this nation is merging shopping with the holidays, holidays means time to shop.  This resulted in a lot of people buying a lot of things that they don’t need.  Eventually, these items turn into trash.  Most of the things that we throw out can harm the environment one way or another, inadvertently, we end up harming ourselves.

It has also showed up in politics.  After the events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush made a series of speeches that included the words “shop” and “shopping.”  He also said we should travel and visit America’s great destination spots, “and one of the great goals of this nation’s war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry.”  Many critics said that Bush asked Americans to sacrifice for the nation and spend more money.  In 2008, both candidates, Barak Obama and John McCain criticized Bush for saying such things.  Some even accredited the collapse of the economy on what Bush said, because now that people spent so much then, the bills are due now.  Karl Rove defended Bush by saying that he didn’t tell people to go shopping, but to “participate in the economy.”  My personal take on it, Bush was just telling people not to cower from these terror attacks and continue to go about our normal lives.  We shouldn’t be afraid to go outside, “This great nation will never be intimidated. People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshiping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games.”  However, with our ingrained commercialism mindset, Bush gave us a pass to spend frivolously.

There’s also the comfort of convenience.  Fast food trash is a very big issue.  There are tons of plastic utensils, straws, cups, food containers, etc. being thrown out every single day.  Most of those go to the landfills.  In the United States, the patrons bring their own trash to the waste bins in establishments such as McDonald’s.  Most Asian countries, such as Hong Kong and Taipei, the staff collect the trays.  The staff will separate the items on the tray into their respective group, plastic utensils into one bin, paper wrappers in another for recycling, even liquid has its own place to go.  Staff can be instructed to do the sorting, patrons cannot.  When I go to Starbucks, the contents of the landfill bin looks very similar to the recycle bin, customers just deposit their trash without any care.

An alternative is to let our children teach us how to do it, provided that they are taught properly to do so.  Most of us were taught as kids to bring our own trash to the trash bin in McDonald’s or similar places.  We were also taught other things that stick with us the rest of our lives, such as saying “thank you” and “you’re welcome,” hold the door open for the person behind us, and both ways before crossing the street.  Some kids were taught to like certain sports, certain teams, and certain players.  They can be taught to be environmentally conscious and do their part by sorting their own trash.  I was exposed to recycling in third grade, students from a sixth grade class working on a project on paper recycling gave us a presentation on it.  Then they set up a box in our classroom for our waste papers.  Have been putting paper in the right place since.

They can also be taught to be less materialistic, stemming wasteful consumerism.  At least be more responsible consumers.  There is often no need to buy the next generation of electronics.  If one wishes to do so anyway, that person should dispose their previous ones accordingly.  Once taught, they can in turn teach the older generation on how things should be.  Children teach adults things all the time.  A family was saved from a tsunami by a 10-year-old British girl in Thailand in 2005 because she recently learned about it.  Here’s a link to that article.  That’s extreme, but kids do share what they learn in school.  Parents do listen from time to time.

For every single individual willing to do their part, we are all better off.  One person might not seem like a lot, but collectively, the impact is tremendous.  If the older generation refuses to listen, at least we can have a whole generation working on it, therefore, not a waste.  Maybe it can be seen as the clean up crew.  It’s a big mess, that we are trying to “clean up.”

China is going the way of how Americans behave, but in its own way.  There is rampant consumerism and materialism.  The Chinese government is actively pushing these ideas, one method is rapid urbanization.  It is building cities, seizing farmlands to do so, then place the farmers into town homes.  All with the idea to transform the farmers from their subsistence ways to urban, consumption ways.  In a way, the planners felt that by putting a farmer who has no use for a flat panel display in their farmhouse will immediately purchase one for their apartment, along with smart phones, kitchen appliances, etc. to further spur the economy.  LINK (Fox) For those who like CNN more, here’s an opinion piece from it LINK.

China is on its way to surpass the United States as the largest economy, it has one of the largest populations on the planet with 1 billion individuals, compared to 300 million Americans.  Growing up, I’ve always been told that Americans are wasteful.  Imagine a group much larger than Americans being equally wasteful.  What kind of world are we moving toward?  Educating on environmental issues should not be a single country’s duty.  It is the duty of all nations, to every school child, especially of industrialized nations.  Politics should not be in the way of such an important topic.  Toxic air, water, and land do not discriminate against sex, religion, race, etc.

By no means do I want the economy to slow down for the sake of solving environmental issues.  It can expand if done right, probably at a faster pace.  Some industries can expand from it.  New industries can spring up.  Sure, some will go away, but that’s what progress is.  How many people shed a tear when the last shoe shine man made his last rounds on a cold January day in 2005 not the Staten Island Ferry?  How many people feel bad by sending e-mails when the U.S. Post Office is always on the verge of laying off thousands of letter carriers?  Change doesn’t have to be drastic, like China’s massive urbanization campaigns and forcing millions of people to relocate.  It can start small and pick up momentum, with change being more evolutionary and easier to adapt.  However, we’ll never know, but one thing is certain, if we are not more responsible, we will be in our own muck very fast.

Ever felt like this that compels you to buy things?  http://youtu.be/dN8vyO8ILD8