how consumerism affect environmet

Consumerism causes the wasteful use of energy and material far above and beyond that needed for everyday living at a comfortable level.

Money is not the only way to measure the cost of an item. When one adds up all the raw materials and energy that go into the goods and services consumed over an individual's lifetime, the toll on the environment is staggering. When this cost is multiplied out over the lifespan of families, cities and countries, the proportions are incredible.

taked from: http://www.verdant.net/society.htm#environmentalcosts

consumption

Consumption in economics is the use of assets created through the production. Economists tend to consider that consumption is the end of the production process, the goal for which all production takes place. Broadly, the term includes both capital goods (example, machines and tools from the factories that produce other goods) and non-productive consumption (or use of property for purposes not productive). Economists generally prefer to restrict the term to its meaning of non-productive consumption.


taked from :Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Story of Stuff (2007) - Ch.5: Consumption

taked from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUeMVt3stAo

Difference between consumption and consumerism

Consumption is a natural and necessary act. Consumerism is an act that creates artificial problems then it can not solve. Affluent life systems in different models have been generated existential on a platform that puts material things in front of real human achievements.
taked from:http://pensamientounal.com/

consumerism

What is consumerism?
(i) The theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable.
(ii) A preoccupation with and an inclination towards the buying of consumer goods.

As human beings, we have basic needs like food and shelter, which are the bare necessitates of life. We require more than this to live more productive and comfortable lives. Goods and services that benefit mankind and become a means towards better living.

Herbert Marcuse said "The more materialistic society became in the advanced industrial countries, the higher, the standard of living rose for broad strata of the population, the clearer became the extent to which this progress stabilized misery and unhappiness". Its idea of happiness and of gratification can be realized only through political practice that has qualitatively new modes of human existence as its goal.

Consumerism has become the heart of our modern world, whereby endless shopping malls stretch from corner to corner of the planet. Products that no-one in their right mind could truly justify as necessary.Regrettably, this is considered part of the acceptable goal of economic growth.
taked from:http://qsep.com/modules.php?name=assunnah&d_op=viewarticle&aid=40