Microcosm of consumer waste creation - overflowing plastic

So much packaging, so much plastic - both are unsustainable

In Beth Gardiner's carefully researched book, Plastic, Inc., the relationship of fossil fuel companies and plastic production is described in detail. Oil and gas from fossil layers are the basis for plastics in myriad forms and performance characteristics, much of which has unknown effects on the human environment and our bodies - let alone effects on the many other life forms we share planet Earth with. All of the plastics, though, break down into microplastics and then into nano-plastics so small that we breath them, we drink them, we eat them, and we accumulate them. As the Green Economy grows and fossil-fueled consumerism shrinks, the oil and gas pumpers see expanded plastic use as a new outlet for their destructive extraction. If people use less oil and natural gas, then they can buy more plastic things and throw more of it away to make room for still more.

Places with small land mass do not have the luxury of piling and burying medical, construction, manufacturing and consumer waste like the volume now flowing in USA. Incinerating the increasing volumes of packaging, delivery containers, takeout containers, and breakable (cheap, disposable) plastic products also has consequences unfavorable for the environment and what lives in it, including us. Various forms of plastic require additive chemicals which are released into the air and water, therefore into the food and drink we consume: whether burned or buried or littered, the plastic and its baked in chemicals break down and roam freely. Rich or poor, all must breath, eat, and drink. Pricey or not, the digestive tract gives the same result. The only answer is to produce less of the single-use (throw-away) plastics: Reduce and Reuse, as the Green Movement declares for all materials, not just plastics.

This photo on Sunday morning, when the city main library is closed during summer hours, is a good illustration of the nature of the plastic problem: too much (quantity) and too dangerous (quality) for waterways and places clogged by litter escaping the landfill pipeline from bin to burial. The sticker price makes plastic seem so cheap as to be negligible. But that is only the market cost for 1000 plastic bags or 100 plastic toys or 10 synthetic tires. The total cost for extracting, transporting, refining, and then producing plastics from the original oil or natural gas is much greater than the day's stock market price per barrel of oil or cubic meter of gas. There is the inherited legacy cost of aging infrastructure, capping old wells, tracing the gas leaks of the greenhouse gases from old or abandoned wells. and clean up or remediation that is passed onto other countries storing our plastic trash. And future generations dealing with our consumerism is an even bigger cost that is not factored into today's sticker price. There is damage from well-field roads and spills. There is the cost of micro-plastics filling the air, land, and sea - including plants and animals everywhere. Worst of all, there is documented damage from untested chemical releases in the microplastic breakdown to act as endocrine disruptors, affecting the hormones responsible for reproductive success of animals, including DNA of humans. Ready or not, unwanted or not, plastic convenience may literally be the death of human reproduction and the species. The Neanderthals had a good run of nearly 350,000 years that we have evidence for. But anatomically modern humans have been going for less than that.

Use Less Stuff as the author, Robert Lilienfeld, wrote in a book by the same name in 1998. Or take the slogan of the War-on-Drugs, "Just Say No" to throw-away plates and cups and knives, bags and extra wrapping.

Life is Good, so it says

 

Consumer drabness pierced by pithy strings of philosophy like this.

In the dollar store parking lot this jeep displayed a bit of encouragement to anyone who cared to read the text on the spare tire cover, people stopped behind the truck at a stop light, neighbors passing the person's home, or those passing by in this parking lot. Like most aphorism, the short exhortation can be read a couple of different ways: stay true mean could "don't lie or make reality any more complicated than it is already," or stay true could mean "keep doing what you are trying and don't be daunted," or it could mean a compass reference for guiding one's path by reference to the unchanging North Star - hold your course heading.

"Life is Good" is a folk expression to remind others to pause from their stringing, anxiety, and preoccupying thoughts to admire and appreciate the many good things that surround the person, both the ones that are apparent and obvious, but also the things often overlooked or taken for granted. A line of casual clothing also features this friendly line. But seeing it on the back of a Jeep and paired with the "stay true" saying is much less commonly seen.

When daily routines are filled with money, price comparisons, recurring bills to pay, and many temptations urging the person to buy still more stuff, it can come as a refreshing pause to spot a bit of folk wisdom - commercialized or hand-made - and to reflect on the possible meaning of itself, but also as it intersects the person's thoughts in that place at that time; like some spellbound messenger that captures the person's attention for a moment.

It would be interesting to know the kinds of motivations and models that shaped the designer's patterns here. Perhaps there is an earnest wish to tap the shoulder of strangers and offer them some perspective: when times are tough, this keepsake miniature message is there to offer encouragement and a larger perspective on the aggregate of Human Experience. Or maybe the primary focus is to seize upon a compact catch-phrase that will fit on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and tumblers to add a dash of glitter and (potentially cliched, worn-out) sophisticatedness to their lives and (selfie, self-admiring, self-gauging) lifestyles. The driving force in the designer and the layers of management signing off their approval can be a mix of both of these, and others, too.

There is no need to excavate the meanings, though, to read it at face value and enjoy whatever the reader may take away from the unexpected encounter with the message.

Mingling popular, commercial, national, and personal Christmas meanings

 

Around the time of Thanksgiving the Christmas lawn art goes up

The colorful and large pieces of store-bought lawn art attract some attention of passing traffic in mid-day, but at night the accompanying lights attached or internal to the inflatable figure stand out especially vividly. This business benefits from visibility on a main road in the city so they rotate the themes of lawn displays four or five times in the annual cycle: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, maybe Easter, possibly something patriotic from Memorial Day (end of May) weekend and into Independence Day (start of July). Without asking the proprietors it is hard to say what may be the mix of motivations or to estimate which of them is strongest: business name recognition/visibility, community spiritedness, tradition of the earlier proprietors or family memories, creative impulse to express publicly, and so on.

The figures in the photo include the 1966 cartoon adaptation of Dr. Seuss' (1957) How the Grinch Stole Christmas (reindeer dog and green Grinch), the Snowman from the 1964 stop-action animation of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, and at the right edge of the frame, partly protected by the roof overhang, is the standard Santa Claus (or Saint Nicolas) figure in costume. Both of the Christmas TV special productions concern gift giving, cold weather, community spirit, and wishes fulfilled in spite of obstacles faced by the protagonist(s). And the Santa (or British and colonial Father Christmas) also has roots in the church calendar and stories, too. None of the figures quotes Bible scripture or sings church hymns, though. But this ensemble has a cultural logic that makes this mix of figures coherent.

There are many ways to view the scene, depending on one's own interests and beliefs about the best way to kindle a Christmas spirit and acknowledge the holiday's original and its present-day meanings. Some will foreground the happy, fun, and spendy feeling of the weeks before and maybe a few days after the December 25 calendar date. Others will mainly feel a communal and nation-sized synchronicity with fellow citizens all doing something along the lines of celebrating good things in life (or grieving the absence of those things due to recent losses, change in fortune or health, and nostalgia for not achieving remembered and imagined heights of Christmas celebrating). Worshipers organized into religious bodies will celebrate congregationally with seasonal food and music and orders-of-worship to retell the story of Jesus' birth and its lead up, too. A few may resist the headlong consumerist compulsory gift-giving and disengage from the swirling mass media, pop culture, and annual merry-making; not disrespecting all those others enjoying themselves, but withdrawing from the general busyness of the season and clinging to the somber theme of the shortest days and weeks of the Earth's rotation around the Sun at winter solstice. None of this approaches is mutually exclusive of the others since a person can feeling all of these things to some degree in sequence or at the same time. Many others have religious life other than the Christian calendar at the end of the year (or none at all). So all the special efforts present a prominent, dominant, but otherwise low-relevance repeat each year.

Compared to 50 or 100 years ago, some dimensions of the Christmas season remain the same, while others bear little resemblance to what came before. As a young child the whole transformation of routines at home and out in public is wondrous and seems effortless: it just happens, like a force of nature. As an older child there is less magic and more active participation in the making of Christmas decoration, food, atmosphere and socializing. As an adult with or without children there is much more involvement in producing Christmas for others to see, to participate, and to reflect on prior experiences, too. So those life-cycle perspectives probably are similar in 2023, 1973, or 1923. But the scale, expense, and excesses of the business cycle of today surely dwarf the way things went in those earlier lifetimes.

Seeing this photo in daylight, or again against the darkness of short days, the first spark of meaning from the season's figures brings a smile of recognition and the associated positive memories when having first seen the stories they belong to. But by thinking beyond that initial reaction, it turns out that there are many layers of meaning, depending on a person's age, formative years (decade), budget, social obligations and network, primary connection to the holiday (religious or not, businessperson or not, USA born or newly immigrated) and so on.

Living high and living low near the Grand River

Lighted north-south passage under the bridge protects campers from prevailing west wind

 Fall colors point to the winter nights ahead for the many downtown residents living outside of traditional housing for private or for group residence. Shelters may not always be full, but some prefer their own company no matter what the weather may bring. Day centers allow warming up, as do public places like the bus terminal and library. When the problem is heat of summer, not cold of winter, then the same public places and a few dedicated "cooling centers" also are open in the heat of the day.

This photo is from October 2023 in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. The juxtaposition of one of the multi-story condominiums or apartment rental buildings puts the thin fabric of 21st century tents in stark contrast. With many gaping cracks in the USA system of social, medical, mental health, financial and educational support, even relatively secure members of society can go through a series of unfortunate events and have no fixed abode; sometimes sleeping in car or truck and other times losing even that piece of personal property. Perhaps some segments of the city dwellers in ancient Roman also went through loss of means, of property, of dignity, too. But for 2023's "richest" country it seems impossible that cities and also rural areas across the continental USA and indeed in all states and territories count among their residents so many who are visibly unhouses; and many others who "pass" (not visibly unhoused).

Described in the language of computer studies, this problem of no roof over one's head is the result of at least three categories of failure. One is "hardware"; that is, places and physical standards of minimum care, wellness checks, and so on. Another is "software"; that is, policies and organized groups of people, but also social institutions both religious and secular to serve those lacking an address. Finally, there is "heart-ware"; that is the often unwritten rules, expectations, reward and punishments woven into the relationships, attitudes and ideals of the society. In 2023 USA the overpowering celebration of youth, consumerism, and rugged individualism all contribute to "making invisible" people who do not fulfill these models. A person who is no longer youthful, who has no discretionary income to spend, and who does not strive to be some kind of Epic Hero does not attract praise or even validation of their identity and place in life. 

Retail power to source, promote, sell, respond to customers, and profit

 

Pre-Christmas gift-giving in late December 2022, busy shoppers

Even with 4 cashiers cheerfully accepting returns and taking payments for new purchases or goods ordered online for in-store pickup, there was a line with 6 or 8 people during the first hour of morning business on Thursday, three days before Christmas day. Much of the store inventory is displayed all through the year, but other things change with the seasons since this store specializes in outdoor sports and recreation. Winter clothing and equipment is featured from fall into winter before attaching "clearance sale" signs to attract buyers at the end of the season so that the upcoming goods can be arranged for sale when shoppers' thoughts turn to the months soon arriving. Elsewhere in the store one or two display racks are flagged "clearance" whenever the store (or corporate central offices) decide to reduce inventory on particular products, colors, sizes or styles. In addition to end-of-season sales, members-only pricing on selected products, and the clearance rack, returned merchandise (used, damaged, or simply undesired) is documented and refunded to the purchaser to be reduced in price and displayed at the "re/supply" (also known as 'in-store garage sale') section. For normally priced items seen online or in the store, here and there prominent signs exclaim "20% off," for example. Some shoppers are trained with tunnel vision to look for items somehow cheaper than original MRSP (manufacturer's recommended sale pricing) due to the above discounting, or the signs affixed to otherwise normal list prices. The buyer logic sometimes bypasses the reasoning for visiting the store in the first place; e.g., in search of replacement running shoes. As a result of the siren call of the mark-down flags, shoppers sometimes rationalize purchases surplus to the original reason for visiting the store. For example, instead of buying replacement shoes, now the person also has a deeply discounted rainproof hat that did not suit its initial buyer.

While waiting in line and looking around the sections of the store for backpacking, biking, jogging, and so on, the myriad invisible threads connecting manufacturing source to retailer to end user suggested themselves to my mind's eye. Some goods have frequent turnover, no sooner put on display than they sell and end up in somebody's garage or stomach (edibles and impulse purchases exhibited near the checkout counter). Others are the reverse, sitting on the showroom floor for months or possibly years before the buyer lays claim to the thing. In-between the extremes of frequent turnover and seldom sold items, there are many articles that arrive, go on display, and a few weeks or months later are sold. Viewed in this telescoping (longitudinal) timescale, the retail shop can be understood as a kind of bus stop where traveling goods arrive and have a lay-over before their connecting travel takes them to the end user's location. There is a constant inventory flow into the store and then out again, sometimes being quickly restocked, but other times being displaced by a new model or different product altogether.

The complex choreography of this modern, Internet-connected, and corporate office-linked business operation is a marvel to behold. There are the multiple time scales for inventory washing in and washing out, like a tidal flow. But there is also a geographical dimension of complexity, since design to maker to wholesale hub to retail outlet comprises so many routes and the accompanying invoicing of money changing hands from one account to another. This photo in the foreground from the queue near the cashier counter shows the small, low-cost, and cute items meant to tickle one's emotional response and bypass the thinking mind to trigger an impulse purchase. In the distance there are a few shoppers handling things of interest, looking at cost, features, and construction quality. The photo serves as a prompt to think about the inventory dance with different items flowing in and out at different rhythms, and also geographically, to appreciate the wonderment of the many suppliers whose goods intersect within the walls of the retail establishment for a limited period of time before ending up in one household or another.

Consumer glee - short-lived and shiny

Particularly during and after WWII the idea of disposable (single-use, discard, landfill) products and planned obsolescence has grown to the point that any other relationship to one's tools, chattels, supplies, and stockpiling is hard to imagine. Before the age of consumerism many people selected things in terms of value (function, durability) for price paid. In those days there were fewer choices of maker, design, and retail source. But now a given item can be bought new, used, donated, cannibalized from other parts. And there will often be several styles, build-quality, status (brand name) perception, and so on. Besides the historical changes in the buying, using, repairing or discarding life cycle, another set of questions concerns the emotional sequence of events that culminates in purchase.

neighborhood dollar store with diverse stock of low-priced items (author photo 12/2019)

 At first glance it might seem that parking your car and going into the brightly-lit, abundantly stocked, colorfully packaged and cheaply priced dollar store would be so different to a suburban indoor shopping mall or a city center department store as to be impossible to compare. That may be so when it comes to prices and expectation for employee service, but looking at the buyer's emotional response perhaps there is a similar stimulus-response pattern at play.

Sales experts learn to recognize "buying signals" that point to the person's willingness or objections to completing a transaction. These vary by personality, financial experience, and conditions of engaging with the potential purchase and way of coming to a decision. But normally they say that a decision begins with emotional force - either attracted or repulsed by the matter at hand. Later on some reasons can be produced, if necessary for self or others, to tell why the particular item was needed or was merely desired. This same order of operations (first emotion, afterward reasoning) can be found whether buying a house, a heifer, or a hat. So in this way the dollar store, above, or a fancy boutique on an exclusive street have something in common when it comes to tickling the buyer's imagination or tugging on their heartstrings.

The in-person experience includes deciding to travel to a retail location, making oneself presentable to go out in public, browsing without aim or consulting with a worker to find a product, admiring the labeling and packaging, making a comparison of the brand-name item with the store-brand item, and then committing to one to take to the cashier for purchase. Many times now it is possible to return an unopened item that is accompanied with sales receipt to receive refund or credit for another purchase. But a generation or two ago this was customarily not allowed.

Beyond the in-store shopping experience now there is the added complication online of being able to window shop endlessly for items of an even larger inventory of things still being produced as well as some things that are vintage or no longer in production. With the spread of commercial and home-use 3-D printers, maybe even long ago items can be ordered and "printed" on demand, thus expanding the universe of possible purchases back in time to very old models indeed.

Money and research time is spent on understanding the science of marketing and purchase-decisions. But so far very little study has gone into the end of the life-cycle to understand the factors surrounding a decision to abandon, give away, throw away, or shove to the back of the storage area (pole barn, basement, rental storage space, spare closet, attic or garage) to make possible a whole new purchase. In other words, what sorts of things trigger a change in status from trusty tool to useless clutter: broken, difficult to use after one's powers weaken or change, fashion, eclipsed by newer or better instance of the thing, and so on.

In contrast to the universe of meanings and materials for ancient humans who were highly mobile and were burdened with relatively few pieces of material culture, nowadays there is a constant stream of shiny new things to gaze at, covet, and sometimes obtain as gift from others or by oneself, or simply purchase outright in cash or by credit that is divided into monthly or weekly payments. The idea of "retail therapy" has been described by others to mean the momentary elation in claiming ownership of a tastefully packaged item of delightful design. The psychological equation of having more things with having more joy, social status, or peer respect is surely present in some instances of browsing or purchasing. It does cause a temporary boost in self-esteem or feelings of being unrestricted in getting something that fulfills a desire or even an impulse. So whether a shopping cart is cashed out in the dollar store or is paid for in a luxury boutique, the consumer narrative of seeking (hunting and gathering?) and finding the object desired seems to be about the same, although the size of the bill will differ in each of these two very different locations. And while very expensive-looking cars park at the dollar store right next to vehicles that seem to be near their end, at the pricey shops it will only be the fancy cars parking nearby. But all consumers setting out to buy something are rewarded with that emotional response that comes from completing a transaction and leaving the store with the new possession in hand.

Will the consumerism mode of economic life ever go back to the pre-consumer patterns? Or will things somehow combine both logics: one of durable value, the other of disposability that leads to the next new thing. Those questions belong to the future. But, of course, in the words of near-future writer William Gibson, "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed" (quoted December 4, 2003, The Economist).

Summer's final weeks - product life cycle: use and discard, repeat.

Summer arrived late and seems to be finishing early in west Michigan. The big yellow school buses are once more running in the morning and again in the afternoon. Some workers are setting aside sandals and short-sleeve shirts and donning their cool weather clothing. For the coldest mornings, outerwear is coming out of storage again, too. Meanwhile the plants and wrapping up their growing season and offering the fruits and vegetables in the harvest time. Seldom seen birds are just passing through on their cold season migration. A few people come to the fish ladder to see the migrating fish homing in on their nesting places upstream; other people want to eat the fish. (click photo for larger view)

two dozen fishers near the Grand River fish ladder angling for steelhead trout in migration

Insects, too, are getting ready for the shift from hot days to cool nights and temperate daytime temperatures. Some will escape from the killing frost by moving south; others hibernate or their eggs and larvae remain dormant until the Earth is ready for them to emerge again in the spring.

katydid collecting sunlight on dark windshield ahead of the cold season

Meanwhile, in the society of 2019 humans the habit of consuming and discarding continues. While a few people hoard things with a view to repurposing them, many more simply dispose of the unwanted item, as in this photo of an inflatable water toy. As a friend once remarked about solid-waste landfills around the country: these are not places of final disposition, but rather "long-term storage solutions" that relocate unwanted purchases, gifts, debris and refuse. The things may be "out of sight & out of mind" for the person who sets out a bag or bin for the collection service, but the cumulative clutter does not vanish in any final sense, it just moves from the consumer's curb to the city's pyramid of rubbish.

soon after the Labor Day weekend this yellow-top recycle bin shows water toy at end of its lifecycle

Tracing the lifecycle of this water toy, it began with an idea, then once a decision to produce and distribute the thing was made the next step was to design it (with or without reference to competing products already for sale), then come up with production lines of tools and workers and inputs (plastic or vinyl raw materials for molding). The stream of items coming out of the production site then needs to be packaged, promoted, distributed, and all parties involved need to be paid. Once a consumer makes a decision to own this one instead of the competing ones, then there is the packaging to dispose of, the owner's manual to study or download (for things more complicated than inflatable toys), the storage of the thing when not in use, and once no longer required, there is the matter of loaning, gifting, or discarding the thing, as illustrated here. A similar sequence can be described for food, clothing, cars, electronic products, and so on: use and discard, buy anew and discard.

Eventually there will be no place to put discarded solid-waste. When that day comes, but hopefully long before, people will find ways to extract all possible value from unwanted materials in order to reduce, reuse, or recycle unwanted things of one's own, or of one's neighbor.

Sign of the times? Call up the experts - consultants for bankruptcy

As seen at the intersection this evening, heading east.

The public discourse, popular culture, peer to peer conversations all contribute to reproduce the dominant worldview of consuming goods and services; the more the better. But the results of easy credit (short term indebtedness in fact) can confuse or disorient a person into the self-image of unlimited means to satisfy desires for more stuff. This roadside advertisement is a symptom of "Affluenza," as the documentary named this sickness of consumer society that has run amok.