Consumer interests

Plants make the oxygen we breathe, they provide the food we eat. We live in plant world. Everything comes from plants. Yet, most of us can identify more logos than plants. That we know the names to more brands than plants is symbolic of our disconnection from living systems that create and sustain life.

Mcdonalds, Burger King, Dominoes, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Denny’s, KFC, Kraft, you get the idea, don't serve food. They serve garbage that makes you sick. The film supersize me, brings up the question of why is it legal for a company that sells food that is unhealthy to eat? This question has never been answered.

All mammals after weaning from their mothers only need water to survive. What this means is that Coca Cola makes a product that is not needed by humans. In the process of selling you what is unneeded and unhealthy, they produce 657 billion single use plastic containers a year that litter the planet and kill land and marine life in the process. Coca Cola knows how many bottles they distribute. The beer companies are aware of the amount of cans and bottles that they make. Pepsi knows how many plastic containers they sell. Companies are responsible for plastic pollution that is everywhere. It’s time they be held accountable.

Then there are the car companies. Most people are unaware that 90 Million cars are manufactured every year and that 1 million humans are killed in car crashes every year. While there isn’t a precise count for animals, if you include insects the amount of animals killed every year by vehicles is in the billions.

Then there is the environmental toll starting with resource extractment, refinement, combustion, road building, storage all of it. We opened our cities to cars and they started to transform our built environment.

One of the few bright spots of COVID is that parking lots have been transformed into outdoor dining areas and street parking spots have been replaced with spaces for eating and drinking. While it shouldn’t have had to take a pandemic to make this happen it’s a long overdue and positive change.

Our economic system doesn’t profit if human needs are met. It profits by selling humans stuff. Mostly stuff humans don’t need. Mostly stuff that harms the planet.

This is why another principle of Human Helping Humans is understanding that societal problems cannot be solved by causing environmental damage while attempting to solve them.