Are you the sort of person who is too busy to waste time adding coffee, milk and sugar to your cup separately? Nestle’s boffins have come up with the solution in the form of individual sachets. The fact that it probably takes longer to open each sachet than to add each ingredient separately is neither here nor there. They’ve identified a need you didn’t know you had and can charge a premium price for a fiddly plastic wrapper.
If we lived in a biosphere with infinite amounts of rubbish dumps or oil this sort of thing wouldn’t matter but we don’t and it does. It’s a small illustration of how what is good for one company’s bank balance is destructive and irrational for the planet. The plastics are made from oil. A lot more energy goes into producing, filling and distributing them. Let’s not even contemplate the brain power that was utterly wasted researching the product, making it practical and marketing it.
The ecological costs do not figure on the balance sheet even though 50-75% of all physical inputs into manufacturing end up as waste within one year.
But while capital seeks infinite expansion this is self-evidently a contradiction within an environment that is finite. The scale of this transformation of raw materials and energy is now rivalling natural processes. Our species is adding carbon to the atmosphere at a rate equivalent to at least 7% of the natural exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean. This is a process that can only increase under capitalism and it is simply beyond debate that carbon dioxide and methane trap heat and so cause the planet to warm.
Much of what is produced under capitalism is unnecessary for a fulfilling human existence and in many cases actively detrimental to the environment. Cars are an obvious example but the high streets are full of shops selling disposable clothes shipped from the far side of the world. This pattern of consumption is encouraged by a massive advertising industry which sets out to create false needs in people. According to John Bellamy Foster 60% more money was spent on advertising than on education in the United States in 1992. This expenditure shapes mass consciousness in a very profound way but the essential problem is the manner in which commodities are produced rather than the way in which they are consumed.
In any other capitalist economy the environment is going to come at the end of a list of priorities that includes increasing sales, reducing costs, developing new products and services, competing for staff, securing growth in emerging markets, innovation and technology. In any case every single previous advance in technology under capitalism has been used to increase production. As manufacturing costs are reduced more commodities are made, sold and scrapped so adding to the stress on the biosphere. This is not an argument in favour of arresting technological innovation but it does oblige us to consider how technological solutions are used. Increasing production under capitalism has not eliminated poverty. That is not its purpose. It’s purpose is to sell you silly little things that will contribute to radically changing the climate.
