Welcome urban nomads. In today’s article, I will be talking about green capitalism and analyses if it is indeed beneficial for the environment as it claims to be. Recently, I noticed that there are many influencers on social media promoting their efforts in trying to live a sustainable life. This got me thinking about sustainability in everyday spaces.

An influencer who is seen using a metal straw in an effort to ” fight climate change”

Upon self-reflection, as a tourist, even though there are sustainable practice in place to ensure sustainability, how true of a reality does it reflect? Tourist, like myself often go hunting for eco-friendly gifts for friends and family when they are overseas, thinking that these products can help contribute to more sustainable way of living. It could be workshops like batik making on reusable cloth bags, which may have encourage tourist to bring back such gifts for their love ones; killing 2 birds with one stone, deriving enjoyment and engaging in sustainability.

Batik painting reusable tote bag as a souvenir

However, these reusables are not as environmentally friendly as they seem. Similarly, many of these reusable products to tackle climate change found in our daily life are not as environmentally friendly as they seem.

Climate change is not a problem but merely a symptom of another problem that is on a larger scale which we are unable to see. The failure to understand and address this core problem (which has been the main cause of other problems as well), we would be unable to tackle the issue of climate change (Wallis, 2010). The key issue resides with humanity’s core problem of capitalism and the relentless expansion- our inner desire to consume more (Wallis, 2010).When there is a rapidly expanding population, like Singapore who demand an increase in consumables without developing successful alternatives, this can create a problem in an already limitless plant with little resources.

An image to represent green capitalism

The pursuit of green capitalism have been introduced to overcome this issue, and have been permeating into our culture ever since; bombarding us ( Singaporeans) with supposedly “ eco- friendly products” and persuasive marketing from even pollutive industries like BP.   The fundamental reasoning of using green capitalism is an approach to leverage on  the market based approach to fix the already broken environment. But yet the very existence of these measures do not tackle the root cause of the problem which is our blind capitalism (Wallis, 2010).

The use of recyclables have been marketed as a solution to tackle climate change. It is everywhere, from not just on social media, but also down to the very products we see on the market shelves. According to the Brundtland report on sustainable development, which refers to development to meet our needs without compromising the needs of the future generation. In an effort to achieve sustainability, how does the supposedly “ greener reusables  alternatives” come into the picture.

Suppose you are thinking about taking up this new habit of being eco- friendly, and in wanting to play your role as a green consumer, a simple google search about plastic alternatives brings your attention to the metal straws on the world wide web. After keying in your credit card details and clicking order on the free shipping online store,  you have now inadvertently contributed to over 2.6 billions pounds of toxic waste from the mining material, over 15 percent of marine litter from international shipping and about 1 million tonnes of waste that arises from the packaging (Wallis, 2010). Congratulations on being part of a larger group of consumers who like yourself,  have fallen prey to green capitalism.

Fancy buying your first metal straw?

In order to combat plastic waste, metal straws have been touted as a good alternative to the single-use plastic straw, focusing on its reusability. However, there is an environmental cost when it comes to metal straws (Chichilnisky, 2019). Although little research has been done on analyzing the positive impacts of using metal straws, there has been a lot of research done on the environmental repercussions of using reusable shopping bags, which have been similarity advocated for its reusability (Berghoff et al., 2017).

By switching to reusables, it can save up to $200,000 in disposable costs and more than 800 plastic bags per reusable bag. However, consumers need to realize that they have to use the green bag at least 104 times to have any significant difference in the environment. These reusable takes up even more material and energy to produce as compared to single use plastic bags (Berghoff et al., 2017). A 2009 study found that  reusable bags which were used for only 52 times generate more harmful impacts on the environment compared to single-use bags.

Reusable canvas bag souvenirs that tourist can purchase

Perhaps, going eco-friendly is not as simple as it seems. There needs to be a radical change in our lifestyle habits in order to reduce our carbon footprint and tackle global warming (Chichilnisky, 2019). Maybe next time, we can save on purchasing the green reusable bags and perhaps bring old plastic bags to the supermarket during grocery shopping, or we could simply drink from the cup instead of relying in straws to consume our beverages. It is important to note that there is no single item that is more sustainable than the other. Most of these items ( green or otherwise)  leave behind carbon footprints which can hamper the ecosystem in more than one way.

To conclude, it is time to reflect on how it is not the products we use that deem us as “eco-friendly”, but rather how we use them. Instead of boasting about how many sustainable products we own, it is our sustainable behavior which counts the most in tackling climate change. Now that is something for us to all think about.

An interesting video on green capitalism

References

• Wallis, V. (2010). Beyond “green capitalism”. Monthly Review (New York. 1949), 61(9), 32. doi:10.14452/MR-061-09-2010-02_3
• Chichilnisky, G. (2019;2020;). green capitalism. Journal of International Affairs (New York), 73(1), 161-170.
• Berghoff, H., & Rome, A. (2017). Green capitalism?: Business and the environment in the twentieth century (1st ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.