Simple life, less consumption can save Earth

Pan Han-chiang, a member of the Taiwan Environmental Action Network, said it was a typical advertisement in Taiwan that capitalizes on consumer concerns about global warming.

However, while it might appear to focus on environmental protection, the ad is essentially encouraging yet more consumption, Pan said.

He also added that in the ad, “the money saved from electricity bills is used to buy a new computer, but in the end, the electricity bill will still increase.” He described the “production-to-advertisement-to-consumption-to-production” commercial model as the main cause of accelerating global warming. Robin Winkler, a local lawyer and long-term environmental activist, said that overconsumption and the globalization of products have expanded the scale of many economies but have driven environmental protection out of control.

“If governments do not change their thinking on GDP-based economy, the situation will only get worse,” warned Winkler, also a former member of the environmental impact evaluation committee of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). “Reducing consumption and returning to a simple life are the only solutions,” he went on.

Products that are over-consumed in Taiwan include not just electronics but also disposable items such as chopsticks, bottled water and drinks, paper diapers, toilet paper and tissues, and plastic bags.

Citing disposable chopsticks as an example, Liu Ming-long, chairman of the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation (EQPF), said that Taiwan consumes some 3 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year.

The chopsticks in turn produce nearly 70,000 tons of garbage and 92,700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, Liu said, adding that the carbon dioxide emissions do not include those released during the importing process.

Although polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) bottles can be recycled, many of them are still thrown into the regular garbage after use, the EPA said.

The EPA suggested that the public should continue to use PET bottles after finishing the drink they originally contained, saying that using the bottle 20 times saves the equivalent amount of CO2 required to produce a new PET bottle.

To help save the earth, environmental protection advocates urged, the public can also use air conditioners less often, drive less often, wear cotton or linen clothes rather than man-made fiber garments, eat locally grown fruit more often and reject using disposable goods.

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