I don’t know if you’ve investigated the price of Play Doh recently, but I recently discovered it available on clearance at Walmart for 10 cents a jar.
In contrast, a 7 pack of handcrafted, nontoxic play dough might run you north of $50. In other words, roughly 70 times more expensive than the factory version.
At first glance, this seems absurd. How can we justify spending so. much. more. for the ‘good’ stuff?
But what I think this demonstrates is the sheer number of negative externalities we ignore in our day to day lives.
Negative externality: A cost suffered by a third party as a result of the production or consumption of a good/ service. Think pollution from a DuPont factory giving local residents cancer, even if they never bought a Teflon pan.
These negative externalities aren’t typically accounted for in the monetary cost of an item. That’s because they are, quite simply, society’s problem.
In the case of Play-Doh (the Hasbro version), the negative externalities range from poor worker conditions to waste from more than 100 million plastic containers annually, and an ingredient list including carcinogens and endocrine disruptors ranging from petroleum additives to methyl paraben and phthalates that will live on in landfills or waterways long after your toddler has washed their hands (quite literally) of it. There’s no version of reality where a measly dime can create safer factory conditions and account for the social cost of cancer or plastic pollution.
In other words, we aren’t paying the true costs of our products.
And just for funsies— it turns out that this is what AI thinks about negative externalities. The coloration is a little dramatic (all that air pollution, I guess…) but the computer overlords aren’t wrong 😂.
A Quick Rant about Inflation
This also feels like the moment to point out— if your costs of living seem to be skyrocketing, that’s because they are. But the evidence increasingly suggests that the bulk of inflationary pressure is coming from a rise in corporate profits. As the Guardian noted, “The analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings for 100 US corporations found net profits up by a median of 49%, and in one case by as much as 111,000%” [between 2020 and 2022]. Again and again over the past few years, companies have been able to point to crisis— from Covid to supply chain disruptions to inflation— to justify additional price increases.
But the same inflationary pressures that are great for large corporations can be the kiss of death for small businesses. When your budget tightens— whether from external economic forces or from the decision to buckle down to meet personal financial goals— supporting small businesses and ESG initiatives is often the first thing to go. Because why buy the built for life or hand-crafted or certified organic when the mass-produced stuff is so, well, cheap?
Our Values are Talking
I’m not terribly interested in performative or conspicuous consumerism around sustainability. And I recognize, of course, that not everyone has the luxury of voting with your dollars. If you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, it’s hard to be discerning about your purchases.
But for most of us— members of the most over-”stuffed” generations in human history— I think we can do better.
I’m not terribly interested in performative or conspicuous consumerism around sustainability. But for most of us— members of the most over-”stuffed” generations in human history— I think we can do better.
I’ve written before about paying the true price of a product. In short, when we make purchases, we are purchasing not just with money and with hours of our lives, but ALSO with our values.
These values are talking when we fill our carts at fast-fashion retailers, announcing loud and clear that unsafe labor practices are fine because they enable me to buy a $3 shirt. They are talking when we drown our kids’ childhoods in an avalanche of plastic junk. And they are talking when we upgrade last year’s technology for the flashier model, ignoring the child labor and environmental devastation caused by our desire for a marginally better optical zoom.
Of course, chances are we aren’t actually saying we’re fine with predatory labor practices or plastic pollution in the ocean or toxic phthalates in children’s clothing. But our actions are speaking loud and clear.
Economists call these behaviors “revealed preferences”— meaning what consumers actually do, rather than what consumers say they do or care about. A recent survey found that 74% of consumers care about the environmental impact of their purchases— and, in fact, 66% of US consumers and 80% of young adults (ages 18-34) would be willing to pay more for ‘sustainable’ products.
But here’s the problem: 3/4 of consumers, despite what they say, aren’t engaging in sustainable consumerism, even the messy and imperfect kind.
How do I know this? Because if 3/4 of us were putting our money where our mouth is, plastic production wouldn’t be growing “more than twice as quickly as the global economy*.” Global consumers wouldn’t be buying 60% more clothing than they did just 15 years ago (amounting to around 50,000,000 tonnes of clothing annually… yep. Right number of zeroes). And our resource use wouldn’t be set to double by 2050.
To be clear, perfection is not the goal. You can care about the environment and still grab a take-out coffee or place the occasional Amazon order, and no one is going to revoke your ‘green’ card.
To be clear, perfection is not the goal. You can care about the environment and still grab a take-out coffee or place the occasional Amazon order, and no one is going to revoke your ‘green’ card. And ESG-related products and businesses have indeed experienced significant growth in the last few years— but there’s also an awful lot of us who are complacent with companies who make big sustainability claims with no plan to deliver.
Here you might be asking me— and rightfully so— how do you know what the ‘true cost’ of an item it? This is a surprisingly complicated question, so much so that there’s an entire foundation dedicated to trying to help consumers and businesses figure it out.
(Man, Jennifer, why do you have to make things so complicated? I just wanted add X + Y and multiply by Z then divide by Q and we have it!).
In general, though, the ‘true cost’ is going to calculate a few things:
1) Social factors, such as slave labor in the supply chain or unsafe working conditions and
2) Environmental factors, such as deforestation or air pollution.
Of course, the true cost also has to calculate any negative effects on the population as a whole— such as cancer from the neighbor inhaling factory smog, or the costs associated with a crappy product rotting in landfill for 5,000 years.
As a consumer, though, you don’t have to perfectly measure the ‘true cost’ of everything you buy (and you don’t have to purchase the most expensive thing on the market). But you can use benchmarks to help you get closer to paying the true price: B corps, fair trade certifications, and companies willing to take responsibility for the end-of-life for their products + packaging are great places to start.
And start small. Instead of changing your entire life in one fell swoop, start with your morning cup of joe or your next t-shirt purchase. Once you’ve made one small shift and your entire world hasn’t collapsed, try another.
Lifestyle Inflation
If you have the internet access to be reading this, chances are you are among the richest people in the world. (If you happen to be curious, check out the “How Rich Am I?” calculator on Giving What We Can).
In other words, some of the most privileged people in the world are continuing to fund a fundamentally exploitative economic system that disadvantages workers and harms the environment.
And yes, obviously, the ultra-wealthy like Jeff Bezos are responsible for far more waste and carbon emissions than you and I ever will be. But that doesn’t mean my shopping habits get a free pass.
So what’s the solution?
I think that the natural outcome of becoming a more conscious consumer is, almost by necessity, less shopping. If I commit to buying fair trade clothing or small-business wooden toys, I’m probably crafting an intentional capsule wardrobe and being really reflective about the things my children will enjoy.
If I commit to paying the ‘true cost’ of an item— the cost that offers workers a living wage, that minimizes deforestation and plastic pollution, that actively seeks to give back to the community— of course it’s going to be more expensive than the $2.99 version on Amazon.
If I commit to paying the ‘true cost’ of an item— the cost that offers workers a living wage, that minimizes deforestation and plastic pollution, that actively seeks to give back to the community— of course it’s going to be more expensive than the $2.99 version on Amazon. But please know, paying the true cost of your products won’t send you back to the Stone Age. It just means that you might buy 2 well-crafted pairs of jeans instead of 20, or check Facebook marketplace before buying a brand new travel crib.
As Thomas Homer-Dixon recently noted at Vox, “Between 1980 and 2022, the total value of world merchandise trade increased 12-fold to nearly $25 trillion (at current prices).” This means that radically re-imagining our relationship with cheap stuff might only shift our consumption levels to look more like the late 20th century (but maybe with a little less plastic, k. thanks). Circa Y2K, your family probably still had a TV (though maybe not one in every room), plenty of clothes (but maybe not weekly shopping hauls), and no shortage of toys to trip over (but maybe not the kind designed to get you into Harvard…).
I’m also not saying that everything in your home must be elaborately hand-made by a small artisan— your curated home and life can (and probably should!) have a mix of well-loved hand-me-downs and things intentionally produced for you to intentionally consume.
(Did you like that? Double intentionality! That’s really what we’re all about here 🙃).
So yes, making an effort to pay the true price of our products might mean we’re a little less trigger-happy when hitting up the local mall or browsing online. But for most of us, is that really so bad?
Making an effort to pay the true price of our products might mean we’re a little less trigger-happy when hitting up the local mall or browsing online. But for most of us, is that really so bad?
Oh— and that handcrafted Play-Dough? It just might be the splurge for this holiday season— that strange dude with a red suit does have stockings to fill, after all 🎅.
Etc.
From now through the end of December, I’ll be extending the ‘founding member’ benefit of a 30 minute Zoom call or e-mail consult (if you want it!) to everyone who decides to upgrade to a paid annual subscription ($60/year). We can chat about whatever you want— but here’s just a few ideas:
Troubleshoot your spending triggers
Make eco-friendly and low-waste swaps work for your lifestyle or small business
How to navigate gift-giving and boundaries this holiday season
(Already a paid subscriber? Not to worry— this offer applies to you as well. Just e-mail me to redeem!).
Also. I intended to press publish on this post last week, but the breaking news of the crisis in Israel and the Gaza Strip was heartbreaking, to say the least. In times where the Internet feels extra noisy, the last thing I want to do is overload you with even more content.
A few months ago, I wrote on Becoming Minimalist about being a force for good in the world— and now is one of those times that, as much as it’s natural to want to unplug from it all, there are plenty of an opportunity to provide aid to those in the midst of the worst days of their lives (not on the linked list, but World Central Kitchen is also providing support). & If giving isn’t in the cards for you right now, just know that the work we do to love each other in our own homes and communities can change the world. ❤️
Other Articles from the Archive
*Just a quick reminder that any Bookshop links are affiliate links. Thanks for supporting Sustain Initiative + your local bookstores!