Nature

Todays western world has a lot to claim in the form of all the development and progress that has taken place around us. The innumerable gadgets and appliances, which were never there before for our grandmothers must make us proud our cell phones and computers the toys our children play with and our microwaves and processed food, because we no longer have time to cook. However, we dont realize what this consumerist culture is doing to our environment and health.

We believe that all these goods that we are consuming today are being paid for from our paychecks. However, in reality all this progress is costing us our trees and clean drinking water, our natural habitats, our fragile eco system, and our climate and health.

We are damaging the natural equilibrium of our planet without thinking of the consequences...so immersed are we shopping. The impact of consumerism, to put it concisely, is devastating for our environmental health.

Due to our greed to consume more and more, we have exposed ourselves to a number of diseases that are increasing in their intensity. Every year more than five million children die of environment related diseases such as diarrhea and malaria (WHO).

We have contaminated our bodies to a point where we have high levels of contaminants even in breast milk.

Womens exposure to high levels of toxins and chemicals in air and food is causing infertility and other reproduction related complications (WHO).

Unbridled exploitation of natural recourses is doing irrevocable damage to our fragile ecological system.

Extraction of local resources destroys the natural habitat and life style of the natives and leaves them in abject poverty.

Deforestation, combined with the emission of green house gases is not only raising the temperature of our planet, but also changing the climate for worst.

A number of developing countries are at risk due to rising sea levels.

These resources are devoured only to be treated with poisonous chemicals with utmost care, to produce goods for our consumption.

These goods include toys which are contaminated by lead, among other toxins (Rysavy).

What happens to these goods once we have consumed and discarded them is any bodys guess. Recycling is not the solution it has been made out to be.

Unsustainable production sustains the corporations but threatens our existence.

Our mental health is also in no better conditions. We have more goods and less happiness.

One link in this chain the corporations that would rather cut trees than cut their profit can be contained if the society decides to change its way of life.

The story of stuff questions the entire structure of the post WW II western world. Materialistic consumerism has affected us in a way that will take generations to rectify, if rectification is begun before it is too late.