"Buy Now, Pay Later: How Our Consumption is Killing the Planet"
- melora johnson
- Jul 7
- 5 min read
We’re chasing shiny objects while the earth—and millions of people—pay the price. Here’s how to stop the cycle.
13 Million iPhones are discarded daily.
That’s not a typo nor did you read it wrong. Multiple credible sources back up the numbers. It’s just one of the many shocking, almost incomprehensible facts laid out in the Netflix documentary Buy Now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVfZw_eqJW8
Quick aside: while the content of the film is essential viewing, the format, narrated by a gratingly perky chatbot, seriously undercuts the urgency of the message. And that message is this: unless we radically change the way we consume, we will destroy the planet and ourselves along with it.
Did you ever think about what happens to the I phone you replace every year or two for Apple’s latest and greatest? Not to mention all the packaging that goes along with it? Probably not. Apple spends about $1 BILLION dollars annually to keep consumers so focused on the “shiny object” that nothing else matters. They they are not “donated” and they are not carefully deconstructed and used to remake the newest model. No. They are shipped to some of the poorest communities in the world where they are smashed and broken apart, exposing the vulnerable workers and the environment to mercury lead and arsenic, all of which have been proven to cause cancer, fertility problems and birth defects. Its true. Look it up on your brand new iPhone!
How Corporations Keep Us Buying More
It’s not just a tactic but rather the the rulebook corporations play by. Their job is to keep you so utterly mesmerized by what they’re selling that:a) you’re ready to ditch your perfectly good [fill in the blank], andb) you’re too dazzled by the latest and greatest to stop and consider what happens to the thing you just discarded.
When 13 million phones are thrown away every single day, it’s clear this strategy is working exactly as intended.
I know. The camera is better by a lot! (Is it? And what do we do with all these photos anyways?) The features are waaaaay cooler, and those new colors??? How could you not? Everyone else is doing it. Now picture a dog chasing a squirrel across a busy street. As it lunges for that irresistible prize, there’s a real chance it gets hit by a car. But if it doesn’t? It might just sink its teeth into that trophy. And then what? Satisfaction the end? Hardly. There’s always another squirrel.
That’s us. That’s the world. We’re sprinting after the next shiny thing at breakneck speed, consuming, discarding, and repeating. We’re risking everything: the planet, the exploited human beings forced to produce our stuff and our very own long term survival. For now though, we can continue to ship off the growing mountains of waste where we don’t have to look at or think about it.
Consumption is Destroying our Beautiful Planet
Take Ghana for example. A country with incredibly beautiful landscape and beaches. Yet every week they receive 15 million items of discarded clothing. Wait what? And they are only one of many poorer countries to which the world ships the millions of tons of discarded textiles annually. So check your iPhone or new computer for images of the beaches in Ghana which are no longer beaches but rather miles and miles of discarded clothing all the way down to the sea.
Yes, this isn’t fun to read. It’s way less fun to think about than the new iPhone Apple just dropped or the thousand new designs Shein launched last week for under twenty bucks. It’s not really our problem, right? Someone else will handle it. We live in lovely homes, in lovely neighborhoods, and vacation in lovely places. So it doesn’t affect us.
Except I promise you that it will. If we continue to produce and consume at current rates it is inevitable.
There is no denying that there will come a time when our lovely homes sit at the edge of or right on top of one of the world’s massive toxic landfills. Not because of bad luck. But because we are quite literally running out of places to dump the endless crap we keep consuming and tossing. Its simple math.
Corporations should be responsible for what happens to their products at end of life.
Here’s what I believe: the corporations producing billions of tons of plastic, textiles, and toxic e-waste should not be allowed to do so unless they’re held responsible for what happens when those items reach the end of their lives. If they make it, they should manage its afterlife. Period.
It’s not fair or helpful to place the blame solely on consumers. These products are created, they’re cheap, they’re aggressively marketed, and we’re bombarded daily with pressure to buy without thinking twice. But there is hope and this can change. In some places, it already has.
Countries with effective EPR laws
Countries like France and Germany have implemented Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws that make companies responsible for collecting and recycling the waste they create, whether it's clothing, electronics, or packaging. These policies are forcing companies to rethink how much they produce, how long their products last, and how easy they are to repair or recycle.
Imagine if this were the norm everywhere. If companies couldn’t flood the market with disposable junk unless they had a real, sustainable plan for where it ends up. The amount of waste would shrink, the burden on consumers would ease, and we’d begin shifting from endless consumption to thoughtful design and shared responsibility.
We, as citizens, need to support Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws. That means contacting our representatives in the House and Senate—because they have the power to introduce and pass legislation that holds corporations accountable for the waste they create.
They can—and should—require companies like Amazon to take responsibility for the billions of pounds of crap they sell and the packaging they generate each year. Right now, taxpayers and consumers are the ones footing the bill.
Maybe if companies were forced to clean up after themselves, Jeff Bezos would have had to shave a few million dollars off his wedding budget to help pay for it. The truth is, change is coming because it has to. There is no viable long-term solution for the sheer volume of stuff being produced, consumed, and tossed. It has to slow way down.
And we need to slow down too. Not just in our shopping habits, but in how we seek pleasure, meaning, and identity. We have to find better ways to feel good about ourselves than endlessly hitting “Buy Now.”
This is crazy!! Never heard of EPR laws but I love it - brilliant solution!