less stuff, more life

Most of my friends know that I’d much sooner smoke a peace pipe than I would throw a piece of garbage on the ground. That’s just how I feel about littering, which is why I can’t help but express my current disgust with my employer.

My current employer is the maker of tens of thousands of natural supplements, herbs, vitamins, organic skin care, make-up, etc. As you might guess, a good portion of our customers are pretty environmentally conscientious. That’s why I’m dumbfounded by their decision to print our new catalog one-sided. Having put together most of the catalog I feel a sense of ownership and responsibility for how it comes out. Our CEO made the decision to print it one-sided this time as an experiment, and despite the efforts of many to sway his decision, including the printer we’re working with, he’s adamant about his choice. I may not be as OCD about saving paper as my boss in Japan was (who left me notes on the backs of receipts), but that decision is a huge violation of what I think is moral and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a lot of complaints from our customers.

It seems ridiculous to me that we have the knowledge of our impact on the environment and yet can act so ignorantly. I recently finished reading the book “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. This book discusses the fall of various civilizations across a broad spectrum of population size, technological advancement, neighboring countries / civilizations, etc. throughout time. It’s easy to look back and see where some of these people went wrong. For instance, when the last tree was cut down on Easter Island, what were the people thinking? But the same things are happening today—Australia sells their trees to Japan at a rate much faster than their replacement; Montana has billions of dollars worth of damages from mining companies that have since been dissolved. Some of the past societies he discusses like the Vikings in Greenland, the Anasazi, the Maya, all thrived for much longer than the U.S. has even been around before they fell. So who are we to judge them when we haven’t even been around that long, and I would argue that we’re depleting our resources at a much faster rate. Just the other day the BBC showed this picture of trash on the beaches of Mumbai that made me sick.

We accumulate so much stuff that we hardly ever use. We think we need things and they end up sitting in our houses, our garages, our basements for that rare moment that we might need them. And then we need to buy more stuff just to put our stuff in. I want less stuff and more life. I'd rather have good memories than nice stuff.