Tom Ellis
Apr 12, 2024

I used to be a fervent advocate of consumer activism—that is, voting with our dollars. I still do this whenever I can, but it has become a marketing scam. To take only one example, bleaching paper towels and toilet paper to make them white requires dioxins, which are very toxic wastes. But the only place I can find light brown unbleached paper products is at my local boutique “natural foods” store—and it is prohibitively expensive compared with the bleached (and dioxin-polluting) kind. And as Bob Dylan once observed, “Most people don’t do what they believe in; they just do what’s most convenient, and then they repent.” This could well be the epitaph of our industrial consumer society! Convenience sells. Repentance is coming, big time!

Tom Ellis
Tom Ellis

Written by Tom Ellis

I am a retired English professor now living in Oregon, and a life-long environmental activist, Buddhist, and holistic philosopher.

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