and sales. In the process, we tell each other that this level of consumption is normal, natural, and good. We buy into a system of commercial capitalism, a story of nature converted to commodity, converted eventually to garbage. Each of our decisions, therefore, is a case study in ethics, a determination about the nature of “the good life.” As we peruse the stuff available to us, we’re making judgments about which goods are good for us and why. We don’t think we’re engaged in ethical reflection, but we are deciding what we value, and how we will embody our values in the material world. Our rooms and our belongings send messages about identity and community, but they also express our ethical sensibilities, whether we like it or not.24
The problem, it seems, is that we apply ethical norms almost exclusively in our face-to-face and intentional interactions. We don’t feel responsible for what we don’t see and don’t intend. In a system of invisible complexity, we don’t usually consider our inevitable complicity in this system of material goods. Consequently, we seldom think of our everyday purchases in terms of value—except, of course, when they’re cheap enough to be a “good value.” But style itself is a value, and the ability to keep ethics out of aesthetic judgments is also a value. The question for consumers—which is all of us—is how we can take responsibility for the systems that provide our belongings. When Chinese workers are poisoned in the process of recycling our computers, what is the moral implication for us? The answer might be as simple as paying attention to our things, but saying that it’s simple doesn’t make it easy.
Getting Over Stuff
Many students find the full story of their stuff to be depressing. Indeed, when we know about the implications of our consumption, shopping trips can start to feel like guilt trips. But why should we feel guilty for doing precisely what society expects us to do? Over the course of the twentieth century, American institutions—corporations, advertisers, retailers, mass media, and government agencies—worked extremely hard to shape a “morality of spending” that taught individuals how to work and spend for their own good, but also for the good of the economy, which now depends on consumer spending for two-thirds of its activity. In a consumer culture, consumption is what perfectly normal people do. And when normal people don’t shop, as in times of recession, the economy suffers.25
Another typical response to learning the full story of our material goods is anger. We’re mad about acting in ways that contradict our values. We feel trapped living in a system that expects us to be complacent while our consumption compromises the planet’s life-systems. We’re also angry that no one—not parents, not schools, not churches—has bothered to tell us how our habits harm our habitats. We’re furious because it’s so easy to be ignorant, and so hard—systematically hard—to be informed. Ultimately, we’re mad at ourselves for being tricked into habits we hate and love at the same time.26
Some students have responded by cleaning and greening their rooms. Such creative individuals are choosing to buck the trend of upscaling college dorm rooms by downscaling their lives and living spaces. Downscaling is a kind of right-sizing, bringing environmentalism out of the closet and into the dorm room by getting our possessions to measure up to our deepest values. These students are starting to think twice about buying or bringing excess furniture, electronic devices, and clothing to school. When they truly need something new, they look to conscientious companies like IKEA or to Energy Star appliances and electronics. They use the Web to access secondary markets like Craigslist and Freecycle, or visit secondhand stores, extending the useful life of the embodied energy in used couches, chairs, computers, and TVs. Embracing a kind of voluntary simplicity, they make themselves at home both in their rooms and in the biosphere. More importantly, in the process, they change the character of “cool,” teaching both friends and marketers a different way to think about, buy, and sell stuff. Fortyone percent of students pay attention to social messages in advertising, and two-thirds like green business practices and fair labor standards—so it’s easy to see how they can begin to change a commercial culture that makes it hard to be good.27
Some students simply make do with less. When they learn that the most efficient dorm refrigerator has one-tenth the space of a standard-size refrigerator but uses three-fourths of the electricity, they decide that keeping their beer or bottled water cold no longer seems that cool. They practice dematerializing, looking for ways to find fulfillment without the material mess that often accompanies consumer goods. This consumer resistance involves defiance of commercial and peer pressures to consume, defiance that can be hard to sustain without a support system of like-minded friends. At some schools, students accomplish this by going public with their concerns. While many student newspapers still sponsor contests to identify the coolest dorm rooms—following the lifestyle sections of mainstream newspapers and shows like MTV’s Cribs—a few student newspapers are sponsoring contests to identify the “greenest” rooms and apartments, further transforming the social construction of cool on campus. Because 64 percent of college students consider word of mouth important in their purchasing decisions, creating communities of creative consumption makes a world of difference—and a difference for the world.
Many such students embrace the philosophy that less can be more fun. Owning less stuff often gives us more time because we don’t have to work so much to pay for so much. Instead of getting caught up in the all-American cycle of work and spend—and the time pressures that go with it—making do with less allows time to make other choices. We have time for an evening of slow cooking and camaraderie, a saunter across campus or along the river, or a romantic evening with a special someone. We have time for those late-night conversations that mean so much and for the things (which mostly aren’t material things) that offer real human satisfaction.28
Some colleges are even trying to encourage more stewardship in their residence halls through the construction of “green dorms.” Warren Wilson College, Northland College, Pitzer College, and Emory University, among others, have built residence halls that serve human needs without compromising the environment as much as most of our buildings do. Others use their residence halls as 24/7 classrooms, posting building performance online so that residents understand the real costs of residence life. At Oberlin College, for example, students can watch energy use in campus buildings in real time. At Central College in Iowa, a new green dorm monitors energy use and allows students in different suites to compete against one another for energy efficiency. Such projects are essential because they build sustainability right into the structure of everyday life and even make it fun.29
College students are overstuffed, but they are learning how to get over it by changing their minds and changing the system. Advancing the ecological revolution of the twenty-first century on campus, they’re assessing the real satisfactions that come with materialism, conserving the materials they do own, reducing unnecessary purchases, enjoying the extensive pleasures of things that are ecologically designed, and changing commercial systems so that they can routinely put their money where their values are.
Habits and Habitats
Eventually, however, students will need to change their habits in the public sphere, off campus, where most of American life occurs. They’ll need to join a long tradition of consumer advocates and environmental activists to regulate our culture’s relationships with goods so that they’re better for people and the planet. From the National Consumers League to the Consumers Union, from Florence Kelley to Ralph Nader, from Henry Thoreau to Wendell Berry, conscientious Americans have reminded us that one of our consumer options is opting out of consumer conformity, and choosing the simpler satisfactions of the unstuffed life. Legislators from the Puritans to the present day have tried to reform capitalism so that it meets all our needs,
