by Louise Christensen

Created on: November 09, 2009   Last Updated: November 10, 2009

Until the credit card companies made it easier to access their largess, most people bought only what they could afford. It has taken about thirty years to build up the pressure of all that easy credit and when it finally blew up in late 2008 - the spending of the average American went way way down. One has to wonder how many of these people were aware of the impact this had on the environment. How many of them would believe it was a good thing?

It is really hard to break spending habits and it usually doesn't occur until something - like the crash on Wall Street - happens that people stop spending their money so freely. This makes everyone nervous and lots of business' end up closing their doors and people get all panicky and think the world is coming to an end.

Actually what it does is gives the environment a breather. Most people are not able to understand the link between what they use - and more importantly, what they waste - and how it impacts the environment.

People are not stupid but some of them are really ignorant. They live their lives the best they can and don't recognize that the spoiled food in the refrigerator or the cardboard and glass in the garbage can - all of it - has an impact on the environment. These are busy folks that have full lives, full schedules and simply don't have time to worry about food going bad in the frig or sorting every single piece of trash that they put their hands on - get real!

Then of course if we were to look at the furniture in storage, the computers that are replaced every few years - or for that matter the cars - the clothes that are worn maybe once or twice a year, the toys that felt the hands of children on Christmas and maybe for a few days after; the list only gets longer. Put it all together...Impact!

We now have massive landfills all around the country - many of them even built over with tract housing - that are festering humps of wasted energy; many of them just years away from becoming sink holes. We have people in other parts of the world busy cutting down the trees that make the oxygen that we need to breathe everyday to survive,

Just because we have trees in our back yard will not make up for the loss of vast forests and jungles that are needed to oxygenate the planet atmosphere. We have mass storage of food stuffs that sit unused and degrading with each passing month - all the while producing more and more food - too much of it ending up in mass storage. Impact!

How does this impact the environment?

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