Needs, wants and survival.

The UK’s GDP has doubled since 1971. The World’s has increased 5-fold since then. You feel like you’re in a better financial situation, don’t you? For most of us, the answer is no.

An annual salary of £21,000 doesn’t get you very far in this economy – most would see that number as a very poor income for the average civilian. In reality, that amount makes you rich compared to the rest of the world. A “bad” salary in the UK would get you very far in third world countries but not in your own. We’re consuming more than ever and paying a much higher price for it too. Food, rent, transport, fuel, it’s all going up.

However, we’re seeing a rise in renewable energy and recycled produce – we must be making some kind of progress, right? It’s not as easy as that. Recycled and renewable produce despite being a great incentive, has become a trend. While it’s great that many more people are putting effort in to spending their money on the more environmentally friendly options, there are still insanely large quantities of these products being produced. These products also require dyes, packages, labels, inks, shipping etc.

Should we cut out all renewable products? No, but maybe the issue is with the mentality towards what we need and how we produce these products.

In modern, 1st world countries, we don’t have nearly as much to worry about as we used to. We live with abundance all around us, with easy access to health care, education, entertainment and pretty much any luxury we can imagine. In our day-to-day lives, do we have any real issues that require our human, instinctual, mental energy? Not really. Most of us don’t need to worry about finding fresh food and clean water, hiding from bombs and wondering if our families are safe. These are definitely not things we should have to worry about, but the lack of direct, first-person issues has allowed our empathy to latch onto other meaningful issues, which are much harder for us to tackle. The most obvious issue is global warming.

It’s great to see the number of organisations opting for recycled materials and using renewable processes. However, we see them aiming for this “sustainable” label as a badge of honour rather than an attempt to actually improve the environment. There are so many products that didn’t need to exist, that have been created solely to profit off this “good willed” action of recycling. You can find picture frames made from circuit boards, tote bags made from polyester, toothbrushes made from bamboo. All things that on the surface seem like a step in the right direction, but in actuality are just fuelling a never ending product manufacturing beast that is the modern world.

20 years ago we had a boom in the amount of products being created with materials and processes that are harmful to the environment. The majority of these products were of a high level of necessity, computers, telephones, cars etc. In more recent times we had an even bigger boom in the number of products being created with recycled materials and renewable processes. Despite some of these applications overlapping, we’ve now ended up with an even bigger pile of “stuff”. So, what if it’s made ethically, do we actually need it?

Technology has advanced so much in recent years to the point where we can easily create things through processes that aren’t harmful to the environment. However, we don’t have the infrastructure for this. We don’t have the ability to put this to good use yet. Roads, cars etc are all too old fashioned for modern day tech. So what are we left with? We’re left with businesspeople capitalising on re-modelling traditional businesses with a sustainable badge on. Ultimately leaving us with more “things” than we know what to do with.

This is the tricky part.

To resolve this, we need to either stop all production of unnecessary products, cut out everything we don’t need and only make essential items. That would really slow down environmental damage. If we only all do 1% e.g. using a cotton tote bag over a plastic bag, we only achieve a 1% change globally. We need something drastic.

With drastic change comes drastic sacrifices. What do you actually require to live a good life. A lot of the stuff we enjoy is detrimental to the health of ourselves and our planet. Maybe we need to focus on truly living, finding more enjoyment in our own minds. True civil development doesn’t come from having a pot that makes the washing up easier, it comes from human interaction, connection, sport, music, art. We need to address genuine human needs and find where enjoyment lies in that. We can’t live a fruitful, full life without some level of unnecessary enjoyment, but we can’t live at all if we extract everything our planet has to offer in exchange for a more lazy existence.

Best case scenario: we extract the harmful emissions and turn them in to re-usable, essential, products.

More money, more problems.