Comparing the charts “Needs and Wants of 24hr Items“ and “Spending and Not Spending Money in 24hrs” I see a similarity between both of them and they are a co-relationship. I believe my spending in these 24hrs was somewhat a waste because I already have what I need. What I wanted was what I spent on.
For my consumption journal, I tried organizing my information into a couple of different categories. Firstly, I differentiated between the things I used that were necessary and the things that I used that I didn't really need. 57% of the things I consumed were necessary and 43% of the things I used were unnecessary. I think this is pretty good, especially because I was very strict with how I defined necessary and unecessary. Another interesting way I organized my material was between expensive and inexpensive. I didn't realize until I started how difficult it is to decide what expensive really means. To a very poor person, a $10 hairbrush might be ridiculously overpriced, but I defined it as inexpensive. I decided that whether something is expensive or not is a personal thing that depends on the person who is defining it. I found that 63% of the things I consumed were inexpensive, and 37% of the things I consumed were expensive. The last comparison that I did was things that I bought for myself, and things that my parents provided for me. I found that 51% of the things I used were bought for me by my parents, and 49% of the things I consumed were things that I bought for myself.
I found that the majority of the things I use during the course of my day contributed to a constant, "running" cost. 62% of the products I used (including the frequency of their use) were a financial liability in terms of some aspect of their general application. What the hell, now I know why I'm so broke.
Nate Kuehl, 2305548
The information that I gathered demonstrates that my time is spent engaged in private and isolated activity almost in equal proportion as it is spent in societal interactions with objects. In total 248 contacts were made with objects that are part of my daily experience. Approximately 100 of the 248 interactions took place in the public domain. This represents 40% of all my daily activity. Most of the private interactions involved utilizing objects that I considered essential. These contacts are important in preparing me to join my external community. These readiness interactions involved eating; brushing my teeth, and negotiating the space in my home to access areas that I needed to so that my basic needs for food and hygiene can be met. These interactions represent a total of 60 out of 248 or 25% of total interactions and 60% of all private connections.
The connections made with the external world within a societal context primarily related to utilizing objects in the service industry that allow me to negotiate distance. To travel to my needed destinations, approximately 68 interactions occur where contact is made with objects that allow me access to a specific location. This represents 27% of all interactions and 45.9% of all societal connections.
This information implies that my consumption is focused on completing the essential tasks in my day in a manner that allows me to socially fit in. My contact with objects is primarily linked with the reality of my work day.
The thing I found most interesting about my consumption journal was not what was on my list, but rather what I had originally forgot to put on my list: my eyeglasses, all light sources (from the bathroom light to my desk lamp), the toilet and toilet paper, and the refrigerator. These are things I use absolutely everyday and can’t imagine living without, and I seem to have taken them for granted. But when you realize that much of the world’s population live without many of these things, it really puts into perspective just how lucky we are.
The most meaningful analysis I made was categorizing the data according to which needs the items satisfy on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Once again, I’m struck by the fact that I’m on the fourth level of the pyramid, while billions of people around the world are barely past the first level. It reminds me of the site globalrichlist.com, in which you can enter your annual income and see where in the world you rank. While someone in Canada who makes minimum wage might think of themselves as poor, they are still among the wealthiest 15% of people in the world, richer than more than five billion other people!
This assignment has made me realize just how lucky I am. With the world economy not looking so good at the moment, this just might be the right mindset to have.
P.S. Those who have Karen Simpson have probably seen this really interesting site that’s related to consumption: http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=?view=XXX_09NNN/. It features the work of an artist who assembles prints from thousands of smaller photographs to depict the actual number of items consumed in a certain time period (For example, the number of plastic cups used on airline flights in the US every six hours.)
Let me start off by saying I was surprised by the results of my consumption journal. After spending an entire day trying to track everything I used I noticed how long my list got. I could not believe the amount of times I did things, or the amount of times I drank or ate etc. So I made a few graphs to record my work. One thing I wanted to bring up was the amount of times I used water. I think water was something I used the most in my day. I made a chart to show how many times I used water, and in what area of my life. I divided the information into four different categories: using the washroom, hygiene, drinking, and cooking.
To be honest, I wasn't totally surprised when I made my first graph comparing essential vs. non-essential things I consumed throughout the day. Although I thought there would be a greater percentage of non-essential things than essentials, but then I realized that I look at a lot of my activities/property as essential (ie, computer used for work, schoolwork, artwork). Though these things were not necessarily essential for living, I believe they are essential for my overall happiness and well-being.
What really surprised me was the huge difference between manufactured goods I had consumed compared to everything else. About 86% of everything I consumed in one day was manufactured in one way of another and I would not be surprised if that number is actually higher. I then began thinking of how all these things affect me and how they effect my everyday life. I thought about where all this stuff came from and how many other people had/used the same things as me. The very thought of it was almost unbelievable. For instance, how many cigarettes I consumed in that one day was around 10. All ten of those cigarettes ended up on the sidewalk or street somewhere (sorry) and I'm not the only one who does this every day. There are about 5.4 million smokers in Canada... that's roughly 5.4 million Canadian smokers throwing cigarettes on the ground! If each smoker threw only one cigarette on the ground outside just once a day for a year that number would amount to 1.9 billion butts on the ground in Canada alone!
I thought about many other things that I do not need or can live without and it's almost ridiculous. I almost don't know where to go from here....
-Michael
Every Sunday I travel to London to teach dance classes for 8 hours. Yes, it does requite a lot of travel within my automobile, but throughout the week I never drive and always walk whenever it is feasible. While at school, home or any public facility, I try to take stairwells rather than elevators but as I live in an apartment and my dog is of the basset hound bread I must use the elevator to avoid long term damage to his leg's bones and muscles!
I decided to break down my information into essential and non-essential, because I feel like I got the most out of that graph. A lot of things that I use everyday seem so non-essential, when just considering my primary needs, but so essential when just considering my personal needs. I mean it is possible to walk to school and not take the TTC, but how long will that take? It is also possible to not have a cell phone, but that little device has slowly become apart of my life that I didn’t even realize until I was making this chart. I began wondering about things that I use everyday and wondered if I really do need them, like the cell phone. This made me realize the days when I forgot my cell phone at home, and how helpless I feel when I needed to check the time, make a call or just using it as entertainment device to pass the time. It made me realize that even thought it may seem like some of the things that I use seen like it is non-essential, they have slow became essential things in our everyday modern life.
I also wanted to know when in my day do I use the most. I feel that if I can figure that out, maybe I can cut back a little and save some energy or materials during that time. I have realized I use a lot during my mornings and afternoon. It could be because I did my journal during a school day, when I was busy, taking the bus, printing projects, sketching for my classes and so on. I have also notice that at nighttime, I hardly use much, except for things that I might have on the whole day, like my cell phone. I have also notice I use my computer quite a lot and it seems like I cant live with out it. Just going through my list, I can’t even figure out which items I should keep and which I shouldn’t, this got me thinking about how much I have been brought in by this whole consumption driven economy.
It was a pretty big surprise to take a look at all the things I consume during a day of doing nothing but sitting around at home. And looking over my list now I can think of a handful of things that I used that are so ingrained into my daily life that it didn't even occur to me to write them down! Like my cellphone, or the refrigerator, or my bedroom door.
I split things up into the typical category of essential vs. non-essential, which was harder than I expected. There are so many things that, while not vital to my survival, are vital to my life as I know it. Without things like my phone and computer I would not be able to communicate efficiently - or even make this blog post! Without art supplies I wouldn't be able to succeed as a student and develop a career. Does that make these things essential? Anyway, I tried to narrow it down to things that were actually necessary for me to live, but it was tough.
So obviously most of the things I use in a day are non-essential, but it's really not as simple as that, as I'm sure you all know! Still, there is a lot I could cut out if I had to.
Another way I broke things up was into Reusable vs. Non-reusable. I was pleased to see that most of the things I use are reusable. Of course, there's not a lot of things that are reusable forever, so I only applied that label to things that I thought would last me for more than 6 months or so. Interestingly a lot of the reusable items, like furniture, dishes, or clothing, were purchased second-hand or received as hand-me-downs. They're being re-reused! Whereas all the non-reusable things, of course, had to be purchased new. Most reusable items were also things that were shared with my roommate.
I felt that the consumption journal was an interesting way to explore how much we take from the world versus how much we are giving back. As much as it was tedious to record my daily activities, I found that I learned a lot more than I had expected to.
When I was recording my daily activities I started noticing things being used quite a lot that I never really paid any mind to. Doors, lights, pens and paper, my phone, and my computer were all handled quite excessively (though I suppose some of that is unavoidable!). One of the ways I broke down my data was essential and non-essential. This definition is actually quite difficult to make in today's society. Some things seem essential, but they are really just essential to our way of life, not to everyone's way of life. I tried to weed out the ones that were really just luxuries, and found that most of my consumption was non-essential.
I examined the amounts of time linked to my usage of everyday objects.
As we can see from the graph below:
Much of the time is devoted to comfort-related things. These included my bed, my chair, and lamps. It was hard to define someting such as a lamp as comfort-related versus being a necessity. While certainly not necessary for my survival, in order to do work at night to succeed in school and in life lamps are necessary.
This kind of brought up the notion of what is 'necessary' and what society requires as necessities. From a societal perspective, lamps would be an absolute necessity in order for people to work and go to school the way we do.
Another way I examined the data I collected was to classify the objects as being absolutely crucial to my survival and also the ones that were disposable. An interesting observation I made is that most of the disposable objects I used (plastic/paper bags) were in connection to whenever I bought food or did groceries. This was very interesting to me. The one thing, food, that was completely crucial to my survival (aside from clothes to keep me warm) was also the thing that created the most waste, due to the amount of bags involved.
This has made me think twice whenever I get food now. Vendors reach for the bags almost automatically now. If I really don't need a bag, I'll tell the vendor so.
This exercise made me realize that all the things I use in a day, from a simple pen to the subway station escalators, use up energy in one way or another and go through a long process of either manufacturing, transportation or some sort of alteration for me to be able to use them. I also realized that all the little things you use, even if they seem insignificant like 30 seconds of water running, eventually add up to a considerable amount of energy spent.
The things I used the most of were electricity, manufactured objects and food. That made me wonder what I would do with the manufactured objects once they no longer function or meet my needs, like my kettle or chair. I can give away clothes, but I think I’ll have to throw out the other stuff even though it seems wasteful and harmful to the environment. More of what I used was consumable (things I don’t recycle or reuse) than reusable, but at least it doesn’t create any further waste subsequent to its creation.
Overall this has made me think about how even our most mundane daily activities and purchases will somewhere down the line affect other people’s lives because every person makes a little difference. I think that like cells, we make up a living organ with a role to play in support of the whole body (the global economy I guess), expending energy and contributing energy to keep the engine going.
But, comparing what are recyclable and reusable, it came to my attention that a majority of resources are neither recyclable nor reusable. Shampoo and cooking foils, for instance, are designed for single-usages that, after used, pollute water and earth as well as air when incinerated. Obvious as it seems, majority of my consumptions lead in one way or another to serious pollutions despite the number of facilities to reduce the impact of pollutants released daily into nature. With such destructive consumptions of resources repeated daily and weekly, people cannot bother themselves with news headlines about unprecedented changes in global weather and ecosystems and the reduction of the ozone layer. 
(Fun!)
As I went on writing list of things I consumed in 24 hours, I realized that everything (except air) that I use everyday are made or prepared by someone else.
