Capitalism has worked well in the past to promote growth and development, but as nations are entering a new era of development, it is proving to be flawed and over-stretched.
Negative environmental impact has been a by-product of industrialization and production, especially due to the direct effect of carbon emissions, toxic waste and other byproducts.
Capitalist principles are rooted in greed, as the system is based on consumerism. Consumerism is the need to acquire more goods. An example of a newer capitalist concept aimed at increasing consumerism is planned obsolescence.
According to economist.com, planned obsolescence is a strategy that businesses use when designing products so that they become unfashionable and obsolete quicker and need to be replaced more frequently.
For this to work, there must be a constantly improved version of an older product.
Planned obsolescence has been around for years, but was usually prevalent in the fashion industry and had little environmental impact.
This trend, however, is becoming popular with electronic products — especially computers and cell phones.
According to an article in Ecologist, a UK ecological periodical, due to the short life cycle of products when they are designed, problems of disposal and waste emerge – especially with electronic products.
Some have tried to find ways to improve this system.
The green movement has created strategies concerned with finding better ways to exercize free market principles of capitalism. One of these is eco-capitalism.
Eco-capitalists essentially make money by making products using materials that most people would think of as waste.
TerraCyle is one company that has been successful in doing this. TerraCyle claims to make their products — which include recycled soda bottles, boxes, spray nozzles — from 100 percent recycled waste.
According to an article on ecosherpa.com, they have been successful in selling their products to Home Depot.
Although, eco-capitalism reduces environmental damage and may be in the process reducing waste, it is still a consumerist practice. The above-mentioned problem is only covered-up not tackled.
The solution is frugality.
Frugality is the principle of using consumer resources sparingly. It includes being economical in expenditures and purchasing only when necessary, instead of spending for the sake of using money.
Being well-informed about the products sold to you as a consumer is important.
Though some may argue that it harms the economy to reduce consumption, reduction in spending may be beneficial for capitalist economies that have experienced a global financial crisis.
An article entitled “Making Frugality a Habit” on newyorktimes.com, on making frugality a habit, shows how effective saving and encouraging people to save was in managing the financial crisis.
Frugality is a simple, but useful concept. It is one of the thirteen principles that Benjamin Franklin lived by, and even today it can be just what we need to protect our environment and our economy.
Camilla Chebet can be reached at cchebet@spartans.ut.edu.
With all due respect, you are mistaken on what capitalism is. In its entirety it is a theory therefore in practice, no economy can be fully capitalist. The Govt always has a role to play otherwise when their is market failure the economy will collapse. Although, America’s economy is not entirely capitalist, it is to the greatest extent Capitalist as capitalism can be in practice.
Also, capitalism is an economic system that works by about allowing market forces to determine what will be reproduced, how and for whom, the only way this can happen is by giving the public private ownership of factors of production. So private ownership is what allows capitalism to work. With regard to capitalism being rooted in voluntary exchange for mutual benefit, I wish to respectfully oppose to that.Mutual benefit is not always the result of capitalism neither is voluntary exchange.
Hey Camilla,
Just want to help you out as I think you have a couple errors…
Capitalism: “an economic system based on private ownership of capital”
Capitalism is a system rooted in voluntary exchange for mutual benefit.. The current economy we have is not capitalist, the government is far too involved in the economony with their monopoly on violence to call this a capitalist society. I only get to own around 50% of my capital as the government demands the rest through taxes (state, local, federal, sales, property, etc) under threat of seizure or jail….