March 25, 2014: Does Engineering Promote Overconsumption?

At what point do luxuries become necessities? Do we just have to have the latest iPad release? Corporations feed off of our consumerist society by creating endless supplies for endless demands of new and trivial gadgets. Predictably, this leads to enormous amounts of waste along every step of a product’s life cycle, from manufacturing and production to throwing it away when it breaks or becomes obsolete. It has been estimated that for every 100 pounds manufactured, 3200 pounds of waste are created in the production process alone (Woodhouse, p.132). So what is the solution to this dilemma? Does the responsibility fall to the engineers who design these products to create a more green production cycle that creates less waste, or is the onus on the consumers to finally decide that no, they don’t actually need the latest iPad Air, the old one works just fine. The obvious answer is obviously more complex than picking one group or the other, but while the engineering world is starting to make progress in both the corporate and academic world regarding a less wasteful (and more profitable) production cycle, human greed and need for consumption seem to be more difficult problems for us to master.

There are a lot of factors that go into our culture of waste, but I think it all stems back to one philosophical belief of modern consumerism: The more money we have, the more willing we become to spend it. Based on this philosophy, it’s easy to see how life can quickly become filled with unnecessary luxuries, just for the sake of having them. Another problem, one article argues, is that the 9-5 work week creates tired workers who want nothing more than instant gratification in what little free time is available (Raptitude, 2014). What do tired people with extra money do to relieve stress and reward themselves? For most people, the answer is spending money, making them consumer, which brings us back to the root of the original waste problem.

Changing the consumerist mindset of an entire society is no small task, particularly now that most things in society have become connected on a global scale. Consumerism also has tangible benefits, because spending money creates more demand, which in turn creates more jobs, which helps the economy as a whole. It’s easy to see how cutting back on spending on a large scale could be potentially disastrous for the economy, however at the rate we as a society buy things up, waste is only going to continue to pile up, faster than engineering can counter it with new innovations and procedures, and an impotent world of waste has a much bleaker outlook than a down economy in the long run.

References

Woodhouse, Edward. The Future of Technological Civilization. University Readers, 2013. Print.

“Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed”. Raptitude.com. Web. 26 March 2014.