I remember when my children were young and came to me pleading, “I neeeeed ice-cream,” and how I took that as an opportunity to clearly distinguish between need and want. I would always remind them of this whenever a similar appeal resurfaced for chips – or anything else that would cross this distinction.

Fast forward 35 years and today, my four-year-old granddaughter holds her tummy, making a face as if it were about to burst, saying, “My tummy’s full,” pleading to leave her breakfast unfinished, but in the same breath she says, “I need a snack!” I laugh at that because the parenting responsibilities are not mine anymore. Nevertheless, the blurring of boundaries between need and want has become a huge social question. The entire bandwidth of social upward mobility lies between having access to ‘needs’ and moving towards grabbing ‘wants.’

A measure of success and station in life is moving from hand to mouth (where the salary carpets the entire month) to moving towards the goalpost (having a disposable income). It is there the descent down the slippery slope of ‘buy more, consume more, eat more, waste more’ begins.

What does this have to do with climate change and sustainability? Almost everything.

The science is now settled; we are living in the Anthropocene era of human-induced impacts, even on a natural phenomenon like the climate. Scientists have gone back in time to trace when the acceleration of the widening human footprint started, and the consensus is that it began with the ease of life brought by the Industrial Revolution, with its mass production and economies of scale.

Mass production and economies of scale were the key triggers that kicked the natural system out of sync. Their vehicle was the use of fossil fuels and their emissions spewing into the atmosphere, resulting in global warming and the ensuing domino effect of climate change. Today, the planet is facing a ‘triple planetary crisis’ of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

While scientists grapple with mapping the hotspots of climate change and modelling the intensity of its impact, social scientists also have their work cut out for them. They have to map the impact of climate change and environmental degradation on human societies and, more importantly, look at it as a lifestyle and human behaviour issue, not just a meteorological one. For context, let us remember that within the span of just a couple of generations, we have seen the concepts of ‘thrifting’, ‘waste not, want not’ and ‘don’t fix it if it ain’t broke’ fly out the window.

Yet such concepts are an essential part of parenting. A wasteful lifestyle was frowned upon rather than aspired to and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ had a negative social connotation. Now, two generations down the road, the concept of ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ is actually having to be taught; whereas previously, they used to be lived. The compulsion to buy because of peer pressure, marketing pitches and advertising bombardment has contributed to making people dissatisfied with perfectly good, functional products; be they appliances, clothing, personal products or home décor. You name it and everything goes out of style and has to be changed.

But have you ever wondered where all the ‘discarded’ stuff ends up? If not in second-hand shops, most of it will end up in landfills – further violating planet Earth. However, even worse than the ‘discard’ culture is the proliferation of a ‘disposable’ culture. The most significant impact here is the plastic that has become part of our food chain, thanks to all the plastic and the microbeads in our haircare and cosmetic products – ingested by the fish we consume.

The richer and more developed parts of the world (which careered down this disastrous path with full abandon) are, of course, starting to come to grips with the problems arising from these wasteful practices, by developing technology and systems to deal with them. However, this has also further widened the chasm between the haves and have-nots, be they communities, countries or regions. Countries like Pakistan, which lack the wherewithal to deal with their own ‘discard and dispose’ cultures, are finding themselves buried under mounds of waste, with plastic shoppers flying everywhere.

While increased production and consumption are seen as positive economic indicators, we are losing the craft of repairing skills. Try taking your older appliances for repairs and nine times out of 10, you will be advised to ‘not waste money’ on repairs and just buy a newer version. This practice of ‘planned obsolescence’ has a huge role in the creation of junk as it spurs buying sprees – while the aspirational role of advertising being ‘in touch with the times’ clinches the deal.

This is exactly what happens in the high-end fashion and accessories industries, while at the lower end of the scale, mass-produced varieties of low-quality goods mean a faster discard rate, making it increasingly difficult for people not attuned to concepts of sustainability to jump off the wheel. So, we continue to buy shrink-wrapped goods and walk away happily after putting them in shoppers, and if they are consumables like chips or biscuits, we struggle with their non-biodegradable packaging and chuck the wrappers out. Those who are more aware may not throw the wrappers on the road, where they make their way into the drains and result in urban flooding – for which climate change is erroneously blamed. Instead, they may take these wrappers home and put them in their own bins, where they will end up in landfills, releasing toxic fumes. Whichever way we look; overconsumption is stripping the earth of its resources faster than they can be replenished. 

Until we understand the impact our own environmental footprint has on the scale of sustainability, we will remain in our consumption spree mode, further damaging the prospects for the next generation. Layer this up with the inequities of distribution and injustices of access to resources, and one cannot help but think of Mahatma Gandhi’s quote: “There is enough in this world for everyone’s needs, but not enough for anyone’s greed.”

For a sustainable future, we need to say bye-bye, to buy, buy!

Afia Salam is a journalist, climate change advocate and member of the National Climate Change Council.