3/26/10: Symposium #6, Architecture & Design as a Vehicle for Creating a Welfare State

Discuss your own personal consumption and how it is affected by your dwelling and social identity.

Like everyone else, my consumption is, unfortunately, tied to emotions. I find myself buying things after a bad day, even if I don't need them. I get angry when products have ridiculous amounts of packaging. I feel guilty when I throw things away in the absence of recycling containers. I feel happy after taking a long, hot shower. But I do recognize that these emotions have been socially constructed, shaped by the where and how I live.

Since coming to Denmark, I have noticed some differences between consumption here and the US. For instance, because electricity and water prices are so high, people are constantly aware of how much is being used. My host family is continuously turning off lights and they take the most rapid showers I could imagine. Also, they go food shopping almost everyday, buying fresh groceries for every dinner, as opposed to Americans who usually shop once a week. Both of these habits seem to reflect a greater awareness of the environment and consumption that the Danes have but Americans often lack.

Nespresso Machine
http://www.singleservecoffee.com/pictures/nespresso-citiz-machine.jpg

Living with a host family means that I don't really have to buy many things for myself. Where this seems to come the most in handy is in regard to coffee. At home, I go back and forth between buying coffee out and using a french press. I buy coffee for a variety of reasons, most, if not all of them influence by emotions and my social identity - I enjoy sitting in a cafe, or if I take it out, I enjoy holding the paper cup that tells people where I bought coffee, and I just appreciate the convenience. If I use my press, it is because it is inexpensive, but also because I enjoy a leisurely with a cup of coffee at home. Here in Denmark, I simply cannot afford buying coffee out - the price of a cup (usually about half the size of an American cup) is at least double the price. Instead, I have coffee at my host family's home. They have an ingenious machine, called the Nespresso Citiz which makes fantastic espresso and then they have a milk steamer/frother also from Nespresso. This machine uses espresso cartridges - I don't know what else to call them, which are essentially small metal cylinders filled with espresso. For each cup of coffee, one cartridge is used, meaning that every cup of coffee produces a waste product of one metal cartridge.

Nespresso Cartridges - One used for each cup of coffee http://www.singleserveespresso.com/pictures/NespressoCapsules.jpg

Now, I love this machine, but every time I load a cartridge for my morning coffee, I can't help but feel that I am being wasteful. This waste is especially evident when you compare it so a french press. Being in Denmark, of course the Bodum press comes to mind. This little machine makes great coffee and could last for decades. It also costs about 1/10 of the price of the espresso machine, and buying ground coffee for the press is considerably cheaper than buying the espresso canisters. Which leads me to the point that while one's money is not necessarily connected to the amount they consume or waste, it nevertheless allows them to consume and waste more.

Bodum French Press
http://blog.brotherhoodofthebean.com/images/french_press.jpg

And one more thing about this nifty espresso machine. Although it produces large amounts of waste, if you visit their website, they have an entire section on "Ecolaboration," in which they discuss their efforts to produce sustainable coffee, create greener machines, and recycle the canisters. Although I can't quite fault them for trying to be environmentally friendly, I can't help but think of this as a classic example of collective misrecognition. Instead of seeing that their product is actually wasteful, they try to demonstrate how it is good for the environment through backward logic. Even a quick perusal of the "Ecolaboration" section reveals that many countries do not have a recycle location and the machines, by running on electricity, are much less green than other coffee makers such as a french press. These moments of backward environmental logic can seem so attractive, especially when they attempt to tell us that our wasteful decisions are actually good for the planet. It seems that the next challenge is averting these collective misrecognitions and finding what it really means to be environmentally friendly.