Published: Thursday, 6th May, 2010 10:00am

Wilful waste makes woeful consumer society

The Bernie Comaskey Column

Phew … I came close to being found out this week: event filled time and as deadline approached I hadn't come up with anything worth writing about. ('Hasn't bothered you every other week', I hear from the floor!).

Sitting here at the desk with an even "vacanter" look on my face (there is a mirror on the wall) I slide my hand into the top drawer, looking for a pen and perhaps with it a flicker of inspiration. Out comes a fistful of pens and pencils in all manner of colours shapes and sizes. I decide to count them: there are seventeen pens and pencils in that drawer alone and God only knows how many more are scattered throughout the house. I turn back to the mirror and ask, "why do I need to have seventeen pens in that drawer?". The mirror doesn't have an answer because I do not need seventeen pens: I need two pens; one working and one for spare.

I started thinking about all the other possessions I own which I do not use or need. For the first 26 years of my life, all of my worldly possessions fitted into a suitcase - most often small enough for carry-on luggage. During the first few years of my working life I owned little more than one good suit, a working-trousers, a few shirts, ties and a couple of pairs of shoes. Then I get married and owe (as opposed to own) a house. At first the house is sparsely filled as we buy the essentials one item at a time. Eventually though, every room gets some bit of furniture or fitting and all seem to have a shelf or a drawer. There is a drawer I can put my belongings into; somewhere where I know my stuff is and I can put my hand on it when I need it: I'm a "place for everything and everything in its place" man. But it seems we always require more shelves and more drawers and lo and behold, these get filled as well.

By now we have a garage where stuff can be put "out of the way". A few shelves in the garage? What a clever idea! Now we can impose a bit of order on the garage as the junk on the floor is put up on shelves where I can always see what I'm looking for. Meanwhile the wardrobe in the bedroom is bulging with all the clothes we now own, so a carpenter is commissioned to "utilise space" by designing a built-in version. The old empty one is moved to the spare room where in time it fills up again. Every drawer and shelf in the place is full and I don't know where the polish-brush or a spare light bulb is kept anymore. The attic - that's the answer I'm told, so the Stira man arrives to solve our problems. It doesn't take long to fill the attic with stuff you can't decide whether to keep or dump.

Due to the amount of time I now spend in Spain and through our business there I have a lot of storage space, a lot of shelves and a lot of drawers. Every planner or builder recommends a few more shelves on that wall and the last screw is hardly drilled until the bloody shelf is full. More filing cabinets, more drawers, more shelves and every damn one of them IS FULL!! Right now, as I sit here sipping a mug of tea, I know there isn't space on a shelf for the empty mug unless I move something else. Tell me someone, how much of this entire stuff do I really need? Everywhere is so cluttered and cramped and what a waste of space, money and resources. Seventeen pens in one drawer and I bet it's similar in your house. Is every drawer, every shelf and every nook and corner in your house full of mostly junk as well? Anything there which we haven't used for the past two years is junk. Only now when I dwell on the clutter that surrounds me, I know I would enjoy a weight off my shoulders along with the wildest sense of freedom, if only I cleared every shelf and every drawer into a pit and started all over again with just what I really need.

All of us going on like this are fuelling what is known as the Consumer Society: Disposable this; dispensable that; throw-away other. The consumer society is a respectable name for too much waste: it means excessive production and over consumption. Much of this is driven by fads and trends, especially in the area of clothes.

The upside of the consumer society is that it has given us close to full employment worldwide. The downside is that we are damaging our planet by purchasing goods and consuming materials in excess of our basic needs. Mechanism and scientific management techniques have resulted in incredible reduction in costs of consumer items. Constant bombardment of clever advertising and "keeping up with the Jones'" has helped to ensure that the insatiable appetite of the consumer is never satisfied. The word "new" is still the most successful marketing ploy in the English language. Commercial brand names and status symbolism, such as in cars and designer clothing are excellent examples of compulsive - or at least impulsive buying. Snobbery feeds consumerism as those with a nose for who's who can identify like minded individuals by what they wear and what they drive. Some psychologists claim that this demonstrates how man is driven by an impulse to expand and dominate. Well, if that be so, here's one man with no wish to expand or dominate any further: Tomorrow I start my contraction and subservience by clearing shelves and emptying drawers for the dump … and I'm feeling better already!

Don't Forget.

The faults of others are like the headlights of an on-coming car: They seem more glaring than our own.