portfolio # 2 essay 2

Material economy

Introduction:

 The cycle of stuff moves respectively from extraction to production to the distribution to consumption to disposal. This system is interacting with cutlers, economies, and the environment. Because of consumerism, the natural resources are running out quickly as we cut down trees, demolish mountains, and wipe out the animals. Today there is 80% of the world’s forest has consumed, as a result, the CO2 emission which is the major cause of global warming has hugely rose up and the environment got polluted.

Extraction:

As stated in the Story of stuff "Extraction means taking the planet’s resources- wood, minerals, coal, fossil fuel, water, plants, animals, and soil out of the earth and starting their journey through the materials economy"(2007). This through decades have changed the climate, wiped out species, used up potable water and create environment pollution affecting our health and increased illnesses and serious diseases threatening our life like cancer.

Worker who are directly involved in extraction process get exposed to health hazards and fatal accidents at work. Therefore, it is highly recommended to start from now eliminate our consumption of resources and improving our extractive habits and find ways to preserve the natural resources and increase material by looking into other alternates to secure our forthcoming generations.

Production:

Production process relies basically on row materials, energy and chemicals. Ultimately we consume huge amount of natural resources to produce toxic products and eventually polluting the environment. This process utilize water, trees and minerals lead after short time to health problems as most of the products contain harmful toxics affecting our health and the environment like climate change, water depletion, waste, air pollution and toxics everywhere around us causing serious illnesses. Poor factory workers from both sex exposed to toxic chemicals in the workplaces everyday more than others and. As stated in the story of stuff  "Recycling and composting are necessary steps in the path to Zero Waste – and we can do much better than subsidizing polluters and pretending we’re too broke to invest in a healthier future"( Wilson, 2012)

.Distribution:

Distribution is to sell out as much as product as quickly as possible with the most minimum cost in order not to increase the price and get more customers and subsequently secures materials movement. However the distribution needed and the energy consumed, is not taken into account when costs of stuff are measured. The environment impact here is very obvious as the used energy for transporting the products and temperature control to keep the stuff in good conditions and the area of transporting and storing the huge stuff around the world eating more lands and affecting the wildlife and farms. In order to keep low price, companies using cheap workers for long term without health care. We therefore should plan to reduce the negative impact against environment and society by following efficient strategies like fair trade agreements, green buildings, sustainability in land use.

Consumption:

Consumption is the practice that we do to any substance of things lead to damaging them, like utilization of goods or services that affect our income and the natural resources. The ways of man consumption is not fair and need to be changed to preserve all related aspects that might be affected as we abuse consumption behavior like environment, health and natural resources. Obviously the consumption level is rising as more people using more resources and energy which generate more waste affect environment. The huge development in the world made us hungry to own the latest products, and people work much more under stress which leads to negative impact to our families stability and health. Therefore, we start these behaviors and consume the least as needed, we need to get rid of consumerism and start thinking differently.

Disposal:

As stated in the Story of stuff "Virtually all the resources flowing through the materials economy eventually end up as waste to be disposed somewhere, usually dumped or burned or recovered for recycling" (2007). All wastes will need to be disposed properly either by dumping, burning  or recycling, where each of these ways has negative impact to the environment and land space which in turn reduce the natural resources. Disposal process whether landfill or recycling has contamination emission which threat all creatures health including man who either directly or indict get exposed. Therefore, we need to eliminate our consumption to our need, reduce the amount of waste and start thinking in efficient ways of disposing process with less contaminates.

Consumerism in UAE:

As stated in the National "A prevailing state of consumerism has hindered the strengthening of Emirati society for the last generation"(Humaid, 2011). Consumerism is often observed as a desire to spend more, for the last two decades, UAE became one of the most growing economy in the middle east where both local and expatriates are living very high life standard. This lead to growth of consumerism and had greatly affected the social, cultural and economic structure of UAE society. The high desires of individuals to change and improve their living conditions had led to negative impact and helped consumerism to increase in the lives of people as they earn high income in comparison with their Arab counterparts and they became unethically customers in exercising their rights in the marketplace. In order to eliminate the level of consumerism, people need to be aware to how to preserve and respect the legacy of the first generations to be more creative than consumers.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, as explained above, the main factors driving the cycle of stuff movement are extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. Each one is virtually affecting our life in different aspects as lack of natural resources, pollution to the environment around us and subsequently threating to the new generations future. Awareness sessions should be conducted to educate people of the disadvantages of abuses and irresponsible exploitation of the natural resources.

NAME: SALEH SALEM ALKURBI

WORDS: 980

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