00:01Ah, New York. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.
00:05Home of the rat that carries pizza, streets that smell like trash,
00:08and the best shopping in the world.
00:10Which is great, because if there's one thing that Americans love,
00:13it's to buy stuff we don't need, and then throw it in the trash.
00:17It's part of our culture.
00:18And it's a culture that's bred a lot of cool stuff.
00:21Without it, we probably wouldn't have Snuggies, or pizza pouches, or 311.
00:26But it's hard to argue that any of these things are absolutely necessary to life.
00:31So then why do we buy all this crap?
00:3320th century French theorist Jean Baudrillard took a look at consumer habits
00:37and theorized that we're a culture of sign form consumption,
00:40which means that we don't buy stuff because we need it,
00:43or even because it's particularly useful, but just because we want it.
00:48And really, the things we buy, we believe are integral to our identities.
00:53This is the heart of our constructed desires.
00:57Sometimes it comes disguised as a shiny plastic tampon applicator for your convenience,
01:02or the packaging that came with your laptop.
01:05Even if you rein in your desire to acquire,
01:07you're still complicit in creating demand for all sorts of things.
01:10I mean, what happens after we make that purchase, or purchases, and purchases?
01:16This kind of consumption has some pretty devastating consequences.
01:19Besides the fact that we've now taken on a bunch of shit we don't need,
01:22we've enabled the earth to have a bunch of stuff it doesn't need.
01:25Trash!
01:26I mean, I know matter cannot be created or destroyed,
01:30but like, why did you have to turn all that petroleum into pleather pants?
01:34Really?
01:35My ass looks great in those pants.
01:37The typical person produces 2.6 pounds of garbage a day.
01:41That means you're producing your weight in garbage every few months.
01:45That's a lot of garbage, people!
01:48And a lot of garbage people.
01:51What's worse is that in the United States,
01:53we make up a little less than 5% of the world's population,
01:57but we make 70% of the world's trash.
02:00And 80% of goods produced in the U.S. are used once and then thrown away.
02:05That's so embarrassing.
02:08So how did we get here?
02:10Well, let me take you back to 1920,
02:12when the U.S. economy was producing a lot of surplus goods.
02:16Back then, people would buy what they needed
02:18from stores that they walked to through 15 miles of snow.
02:21But when widget factories started cranking up more doodads
02:24than you can shake a wooden nickel at,
02:26corporations realized the best way to keep people buying shit
02:28was to get them to buy based on desire.
02:30Enter Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew,
02:34who made a career out of linking stuff with desire.
02:37He kind of invented modern advertising.
02:40He pioneered techniques like product placement and celebrity endorsement,
02:44and he claims that he was the first to associate buying cars with penis size.
02:48He was basically Don Draper, but older and real.
02:52And thus, American consumerist culture was born.
02:55And it continues to grow today.
02:59In 2013, Coca-Cola reported spending $3.3 billion globally on advertising.
03:07And dang it if it ain't working like gangbusters,
03:10because that same year, humans spent $48 billion on Coke products.
03:14So they have plenty of money to spend on global labor and environmental disputes.
03:19The problem with all this is that while we buy, buy, buy,
03:22our municipalities are having trouble keeping up with all the waste we're producing.
03:25Our country is running out of room in its landfills.
03:30Today, New York City has no place within its five boroughs to bury or burn its trash.
03:34It all gets shipped to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and upstate New York.
03:39They closed their last local landfill in 2001.
03:42And like most retired landfills, it's now being turned into a park,
03:46putting the super fun into super fun.
03:49So the next time you're having an adorable picnic,
03:51think about all the half-empty coffee cups and period-stained underwear you could be sitting on in the future.
03:58The problem is is that no matter where your trash gets stored,
04:01it never truly goes away.
04:03It just becomes somebody else's problem.
04:05And that, my friends, is one heck of an externality.
04:08The good news is is that you can take simple steps at an individual level
04:13to reduce how much garbage you're creating.
04:16Drink like this.
04:19Eat like this.
04:21Shop like this.
04:23Or shop like this.
04:25It's a conversation piece.
04:28And there's literally tons of rad stuff to be found in the garbage.
04:32Did I ever tell you about the time that I found three sanitudes in a dumpster?
04:37No, you didn't.
04:38I lived off of garbage bagels throughout all of college.
04:41All my furniture is from the garbage.
04:43My breakfast was day-old donuts.
04:46Where do you think candy corn comes from?
04:48Who would throw this away?
04:52You don't have to go straight freegan to stop consuming like a hungry, hungry hippo.
04:57Just reduce, reuse, and recycle.
04:59And take small practical steps against conspicuous consumption.
05:04And most importantly, ask yourself constantly,
05:07Is this just some dumb bullshit?
05:09Because it probably is.
