Over the last week I have conducted some further research to strengthen the concept for the 'Cemetery of Consumerism' project. I have specifically been looking at the growing need for considering the environment in our 'throwaway culture' but also considered how this would affect the built environment. I feel the words that people have stated will illustrated this better than I can, so this blog post is a summary of quotes followed by my personal reflections:
"Architects and the wider built environment sector have the opportunity to contribute directly to the UN SDGs by designing sustainable buildings and retrofitting existing stock that is fit for the future. These goals apply to all countries, developed and developing, and it is only by collaborating across continents that we can truly prevent climate change from devastating our planet.”
- Ben Derbyshire, RIBA President (Reflecting on the IPCC report)
Quotes on Climate Change & Impact
“We all like to put the blame on someone else, the government, or businesses. … But between 60-80 percent of the impacts on the planet come from household consumption. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well,”
- Diana Ivanova (From Suzanne Jacobs' article)
"[The Earth] now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters."
- Pope Francis
"Whilst anthropogenic (man-made) climate change, resulting from the burning of fossil fuels is due to various factors, a lifestyle based on rapacious desire for all things material is the key underlying cause. This is made clear in a University College London (UCL) research paper, which states that, “although population and demographics are considerable factors in carbon emissions and consequent global warming, consumption patterns remain the most significant factor………consumers, rather than people, cause climate change,”although in the world of big business and amongst some governments, these appear to be synonymous terms."
- Graham Peebles
"Replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which “entails learning to give, and not simply to give up. It is a way of loving, of moving gradually away from what I want to what God’s world needs. It is liberation from fear, greed and compulsion”.
- Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (From Pope Francis' letter)
After examining the issue in great depth with the aid of specialists, Pope Francis reached the same conclusion; he points out that blaming “population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues.” To blame population growth is, he goes on to say, “an attempt to legitimise the present model of distribution [of wealth and resources], where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalised, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.”
- Graham Peebles
Unrestrained consumption and perpetual growth is essential to the success and profitability of the neo-liberal project, which, without such consumerism would collapse. And so insatiable desire for material possessions is virtually insisted upon, by governments, obsessed with economic expansion, and businesses that depend on sales. This itch, which is constantly excited by persuasive advertising, a culture of comparison and narrow definitions of self, feeds an urge to continually consume. The aim in such a world is not simply enough, but excess, abundance. And whilst the ruling elite is indifferent to the destruction of the planet and the health of humanity, the prospect of the collapse of their cherished ideology is unthinkable.
- Graham Peebles
"Collection systems matter. Furniture reuse networks are important for the future. Children’s cycles on a library style loan basis – exchange the cycle as the child grows! The Electrical and Electronic Equipment Sustainability Action Plan (ESAP) is the collaborative framework for sharing evidence and implementing sector-wide actions to improve business efficiency and the sustainability of electrical and electronic products."
- Christine Cole
"These problems are closely linked to a throwaway culture which affects the excluded just as it quickly reduces things to rubbish. To cite one example, most of the paper we produce is thrown away and not recycled. It is hard for us to accept that the way natural ecosystems work is exemplary: plants synthesise nutrients which feed herbivores; these in turn become food for carnivores, which produce significant quantities of organic waste which give rise to new generations of plants. But our industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations, while limiting as much as possible the use of non-renewable resources, moderating their consumption, maximising their efficient use, reusing and recycling them. A serious consideration of this issue would be one way of counteracting the throwaway culture which affects the entire planet, but it must be said that only limited progress has been made in this regard.
- Pope Francis
Personal Reflections
The idea of repair and reuse is not just a lifestyle or a new way of living but is essential for the wellbeing of both the planet and mankind. We cannot remove ourselves individually from the big picture, as this undermines the collective responsibility we all have. We cannot just look to a system to fix the problem.
Repairing, Sharing, Re-using, Creating these are all essential activities to creating a circular approach towards our objects. This is what is needed to create a cemetery of consumerism and to revive the object. There really is an urgency to this. Without this we cannot move forward in good conscious, by consuming without considering what the impact would be. This project needs to deliver on this sense of urgency in order for it to be credible.
Being innovative and creative to solve issues relating to broken items is a lost art form in the West, and also losing ground in many other places in the world. As objects become more difficult to alter and mend (eg. Apple products), as people place less of a time priority to mending due to multiple factors (cheaper products, lack of tools etc.) and as frameworks make it difficult for others to help you mend (liability has to be fully placed on the owner) - it is also no wonder that we have ended up where we are.
I want to:
Bring back value to the art of mending
Make it simpler and more accessible to the wider population
Sources:
Cole, Christine Cole (December 4, 2015) Climate change and the repair, reuse culture, Available at: http://www4.ntu.ac.uk/sustainability/document_uploads/182938.pdf (Accessed 28 February 2019)
Francis, Pope (18 June, 2015) Encyclical Letter on Care for Our Common Home, Available at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf (Accessed 28 February 2019)
Jacobs, Suzanne (February 24, 2016) Consumerism plays a huge role in climate change, Grist, Available at https://grist.org/living/consumerism-plays-a-huge-role-in-climate-change/ (Accessed 28 February 2019)
Royal Institute of British Architects (8 October 2018) RIBA responds to the IPCC report on the impacts of climate change, Available at: https://www.architecture.com/knowledge-and-resources/knowledge-landing-page/riba-responds-the-ipcc-report-on-the-impacts-of-climate-change (Accessed 28 February 2019)
Peebles, Graham (December 20, 2016) Rapacious Consumerism and Climate Change, CounterPunch, Available at: https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/20/rapacious-consumerism-and-climate-change/ (Accessed 28 February 2019)
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