More is not enough

Abstract

Persons in today's technological environment, be they rich or poor, live amidst an ascendancy of discovery and innovation, and a corpulence of goods, gadgets and communications. Stimulated — even goaded — by the positive feedback of commercial advertising, individuals in all circumstances want (not necessarily need) more. The people who control resources strive in every way for expansion, and in a modern world where "success" is linked to "growth", the extravagant increase of demand, by an increasing longer-lived population, has yielded a phenomenal crescendo of patents, printed matter, miles traveled per capita, vehicle speed, income, and energy consumption/1/. The time is nigh when growth, in terms of increased sales and production, will have generated a Social cost far in excess of societal benefits derived. It is not enough to wait until government and others who control the money, resources, and communications exert the influence required to decrease or reverse this acceleration to catastrophe. Nor, in the face of the impulse-buying mania of "free" societies and rigid economic disciplines of others, can it be expected that the earning consumers be ever sufficiently organized — or disposed as a whole — to resist and overcome inertia and exert their economic pressure potential in order to assure their ultimate benefit. The task, it seems, must fall on those of us who Me between — those who supply the wherewithal: engineers, scientists, analysts, technicians, organized labor, and others who wish to become concerned consumers (whose concern is not "more" products, or even "better" products, but "clean" products, the manufacture of which has generated a minimum of waste and which has after-use potential and value.) Motivated initially by public opinion and pressure, and subsequent legislation enforced, and now, perhaps, by profit, the industry (and technology) involved with recycling and other commercial solid waste processing is growing. What else can be done?