| Page(s) | Quote | Keywords |
| 78 |
"Post-war America is the undisputed champion of material consumption. Where the US consumer leads, the rest of the world aspires to follow. Bill Clinton presides over an America that eats more meat, uses more water, drives more cars, watches more TV and produces a greater volume of domestic refuse than any other civilization has ever done." |
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| 79 |
"Worldwatch Institute's Alan Durning identified three world consumption classes in his book How Much is Enough? First come the poor. Numbering 1.1 billion, they earn 2 percent of the world's income, eat almost no meat, drink dirty water, travel mostly by foot and struggle to find adequate shelter. Then comes the middle-income clase, who account for a third of global income and include 60 percent of humanity. They have and adequate diet, better sanitation, solid housing, access to electricity and basic stocks of durable consumer items. Durning's third group is the consumer class, and they are us: the 20 percent of the world's population which earns 64 percent of its income, lives on meat and processed food, which drives cars and flies off for vacation taking along the latest in consumer gadgetry. The consumer class is also responsible for much of the world's water pollution, most of its toxic and domestic wastes, for the manufacture of the vast majority of synthetic chemicals, and is the source of approximately 80 percent of global air pollution. Pollutants are now the chief products of the consumer society." |
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| 80 |
"This economic revolution spawned a situation where even in 1992, President Bush could prepare for the Earth Summit - the largest gathering of heads of state the world has ever seen - by claiming as he got on the plane to Rio, that jobs came before environmental protection. His Vice President, Dan Quayle, headed up the Competitiveness Council, a White House unit set up specifically to block and dismantle environmental legislation perceived by business to be hindering it in the pursuit of production. All this followed a decade from 1985 to 1985 when more than 300 of the 'Fortune 500' companies had been convicted of serious environmental pollution offences." |
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| 82 |
"Europeans buy more than one and half billion pairs of shoes each year, 19 million fridges and freezers, more than 7 million cookers and as many microwave ovens. These go along with annual sales of 21 million colour TVs, nearly 11 million video recorders, 14 million cameras, 4 million electric blankets, 16 million hair dryers and 6 million toasters. History does not yet record how many Mickey Mouse peanut dispensers, dancing Coke cans, plush Garfield car mascots or electronic dog whistles the average European buys." |
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| 82 |
"The modern consumer seems to satisfy a bulimic urge to gorge on goods, vomiting forth a constant stream of waster packaging, obsolescent durables and rubbish, before returning once again with an empty feeling to binge at the trough of commercialism. The amount of garbage flowing from the spending frenzy is prodigious - approximately 350 kilos annually per capita in Europe - and it has been estimated that five times as much waste is generated in manufacture and 20 times as much at the site of original resource extraction. Apart from the pollution, the resource wastage is phenomenal. Domestic water needs, for instance, could be met almost everywhere in the world with about 100 litres per person per day. It takes this much water to produce a kilogram of paper, and 50 tons of water to make a ton of leather." |
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| 86 |
"Aside from aluminum cans, packaging of all kinds in now under the spotlight of environmentalists' attention. In the US, packaging waste accounts for roughly one third of municipal solid waste, while in the Netherlands domestic packaging is thought to make up 22 percent of the total waste stream." |
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| 86-87 |
"The fact that packaging pollution is moving up the political agenda in Europe also can be seen from the new (1991) German Packaging Recycling Ordinance, which requires that manufacturers must take back and recycle packaging materials. Targets have been set for the compulsory recycling of between 64 percent and 72 percent of all packaging materials by June 1995. Less than a year after the law came into effect, there had been a significant move from the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and other plastics to paper and card, and a trend towards reduced packaging overall." |
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| 88 |
"Plastics pervade the lives of the post-war generation and of the consumer class. The US has 700 times more plastic flamingoes in its backyards than real ones in natural habitats. In Japan individual fruits are packed on polystyrene trays and wrapped in clingfilm. Fresh orange and lemon juice in Switzerland comes in plastic bottles. No trip to the shopping mall or market is complete without a plastic bag. Electrical goods like video cameras, radios and CD players are encased in plastic." |
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