By Ashlee West, Staff Writer
In modern-day society, overconsumption is slowly eating away at us and changing the way our brains perceive shopping and material items. Dating back to the 18th century, overconsumption started based on the rise of mass production that came from industrialization.
Shops were displaying items in the windows to specifically market and bring in customers, and factories were overproducing more than what was being bought. Now, in the 21st century, it doesn’t appear much different. Boredom leads us to what we call “window shopping”, and fast fashion companies like SHEIN and H&M are rapidly producing low-cost products that have cheap quality. When it comes to our natural resources, we spend and use them as if they won’t eventually run out. However, that’s not the case. Overconsumption is leading to the rise in substantial financial issues into a downward spiral of mental health and an environment that is close to irreversible damage.
Financial illiteracy is what many may possess, which is the lack of knowledge regarding how to make responsible financial decisions. When we continuously spend without awareness of how it affects our wallet, or how we’ll manage to get through to the next paycheck, we fall victim to the mindset that companies are aiming for. Marketing teams for brands are trained on how to target people and their desires. By digging into the issues that are rooted within us, we hand over our money without a second thought. In the past couple of decades, the saying “living paycheck to paycheck” has become more and more prominent as well. At the Financial Health Network, an expert review was done by a Vice President, in which she stated that one of the main reasons for this increase in falling short between paychecks is due to people falling into a pit of debt with credit card companies. It isn’t rare for someone to make an impulse purchase on their credit card, but then realize that they didn’t ultimately have the funds to pay off the money borrowed from the financial institution. Getting stuck into these loopholes of spending income wastefully is slowly but surely ruining our ability to stack up a satisfactory amount of savings, and placing importance on what we need, rather than what we want.
Whenever we purchase something that we’re excited about, our brains get a high of dopamine from it. We feel as if we’ve been rewarded, and whether you’re waiting for the item to be delivered to your house or you bought it in a store, the excitement doesn’t wear off for quite a while. Unfortunately, the excitement does eventually go away and we search for that same feeling again. The solution? Buying more unnecessary things. The societal standards and trends are in a constant state of motion, too, and this isn’t beneficial when trying to stay up-to-date on the most recent fashion trends or the new Apple device that makes you appear fancy. When we’re unhappy with what we possess in the moment and live in a consistent state of desiring more things, we only add more stress onto ourselves and diminish our self-worth. Self-worth isn’t based on what you own, but perhaps other fulfilling things in life.
Overconsumption is making detrimental changes to our environment right before our eyes, and a blind eye has been cast for too long. Companies are producing more than what is being bought, and as a result, the wasted products are thrown into landfills and into our oceans. Especially for fast fashion, microplastics are produced, and these typically end up in aquatic and wildlife environments, therefore ruining their ecosystems. The rise in pollution has been hard to ignore too – each summer is longer and hotter, and carbon emissions from fossil fuels are to blame. They’re adding to Earth’s average temperature, rapidly adding to the issue of climate change, and resulting in more frequent droughts. The environment is not only at risk, but we as humans are, too. Once these issues become irreversible, will people then take a look at what their mindless spending habits have impacted?
Taking the steps to combat overconsumption in our everyday lives isn’t easy, but becoming aware of what we purchase and how frequently we do so will, in time, help these problems not become irreparable. In some aspects of life, the majority of the population can relate to overconsumption, and recognizing its harm will bring more light to its impact on us. Jacques Yves Cousteau, a world-renowned conservationist, once stated, “Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”
ECC Cornerstone 