from the less-stuff-means-smaller-houses dept.
IKEA made headlines when it openly mused about Western economies "reaching peak stuff", but they are by no means the only folks who think that our seemingly insatiable appetite for more and more stuff might finally be leveling out.
New figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that the amount of raw materials consumed by the UK economy fell from 15 tonne per person in 2001 to just over 10 tonnes in 2013.
That's a pretty astounding drop.
True, there was this tiny thing called The Great Recession between then and now. But still, such a huge decrease in everything from steel to plastics to fuel and biomass suggests that something bigger (or maybe smaller?) is going on. Over at The Guardian, Patrick Collinson takes a deeper dive into the numbers, noting among other things that the digitization of industries such as music, movies and more has led to a large decrease in raw materials within those industries. And also that industry has gotten better about using less material for each product created.
Have you reached peak stuff?
Related Stories
On 10 February, the Baltic Dry Index fell to the lowest level since its inception in 1985. The index reflects the cost of transporting solid, bulk (non-containerised) materials—such as ores, coal, or grain—by sea. It is considered a leading economic indicator. The decline is attributed to decreased demand for raw materials.
It reached its peak of 11,793 on 20 May 2008. The 10 February low was 290.
- New York Post
- Scrap Register
- TheStreet
- Orange County Register
- Reuters
- Seeking Alpha
- Business Insider UK
Related: UK Uses 33% Less Stuff Than in 2001
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday March 01 2016, @06:29PM
With two storage units and a basement room full of boxes, I'd say so. It's easy to go "Hey that's cool" but not easy to say "Maybe I don't need all those P3 systems anymore." Gods help me.
There's a correlation with ADD and hording, and trying to fix the former without the latter simply fails to compile. Or decompile.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @07:32PM
I have to agree with you. I recently began to do extensive spring cleanings, where if I find myself to not have used something in a year, with few exceptions, I will just throw it out. Last two times I did this I threw out almost half of my things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @08:56PM
A rule like that can work but I'd always factor in how much the item would cost to buy it again if it turns out you do need it in future. The size of the things are an important consideration too. So sure, that huge bulky piece of furniture that only cost $25 that you've not used in 3 years, makes perfect sense to go. A $100 tool that you might still use every 5 years or so, not so much.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 01 2016, @09:14PM
these are precious to me. But it is unlikely that I'll ever have a home with a workshop again. My mother pays for the storage. What will happen when she's gone?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:39PM
What will happen when she's gone?
Perhaps you should modify your life plan so that you can afford to pay for the storage by the time your mother dies? Seriously how much is a self storage place. If you don't get out of that comfort zone boy have I got a surprise for you in a few years...
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 01 2016, @11:11PM
I get consulting inquiries from time to time. Just today I had a phone interview for what looks like a pretty good contract.
If I get work at all, I'd make good money, but often it seems like the prospect of working is hopeless.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @11:59PM
you should put a portfolio on your website
and also hire somebody to make the website pretty (no web3.0 crap, just better graphic design)... obviously you do embedded work not web bs, but it helps
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday March 02 2016, @12:10AM
I used to have my resume on my old site, but it lead so many to regard me as a potential employee and not a consultant.
I'll add a "Selected Projects" list.
I had the idea that the plain website would emphasize that I was an expert programmer but many tells me that it is off-putting. I can do somewhat better design on my own.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 02 2016, @12:37PM
Here's are some jobs that might be worth doing.
https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs/listing [fsf.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday March 02 2016, @03:47PM
just silencing warnings to start with, but when I get to know the codebase I'll fix actual bugs.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 02 2016, @12:23AM
I challenge you to do something that provokes paramilitarized police to beat your head in--out of all proportion to anything you have done and such that your brain now works very differently than before.
Now, try to find employment.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday March 01 2016, @06:32PM
I guess what I'm saying is either the internet is part of my stuff, or it's the reason I have less of it.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Tuesday March 01 2016, @09:51PM
I also reached 'Peak Stuff' in January, but my house burning to the ground reset my 'score'. I know it was peak, due to the fact I can hardly afford to replace immediate necessities, much less anything frivolous, and lost everything but the clothes I was wearing.
I do not recommend this method for reducing your stuff. ;-)
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:14PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 02 2016, @10:42AM
That really sucks. I hope no one was injured.
Purging your stuff can be a lot of trouble, but not having the chance to do it selectively? Painful and disorienting.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @06:37PM
consumer v industrial usage. Have not dug into it but I bet they took the total they consumed and divided it by the number of people. This statement makes me think that "suggest that the amount of raw materials consumed by the UK economy". I would look to exports probably being down by a similar amount. That sounds like a 'we moved the jobs somewhere cheaper' statement to me.
Also 2 decent sized recessions and nothing to really create jobs will put a dent in the amount of stuff people buy.
To suggest this is 'peek stuff' is asinine.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 01 2016, @06:57PM
The UK exports obnoxious judges, and images of foreign people, owned by foreign people, kicking balls around a pitch. That's more money and less raw materials than 12 boxes of parts to fix your Lotus.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 01 2016, @08:47PM
So you're saying that Lucas [jalopnik.com] part quality has improved?
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 01 2016, @08:24PM
There is no insinuation that anyone wants to examine your lingerie.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday March 01 2016, @09:20PM
I think the UK-ONS takes into account Consumer VS Industrial, by simply getting to per-capita tonnage.
They mention, at least in passing, the depression, of 2009-ish, they mention the drop in UK mining and extraction, and imports, etc.
Recycling:
But they don't go very deep into recycling. Scrap steel has been HUGE world wide for some years now, and I imagine its huge in the UK as well. (I don't know when car crushers became a thing, but in the US they will set up near a wreaking yard, and the whole thing will be gone in three months). There are entire steel companies making a living buying up scrap steel, and making new pipe, I-beams etc. They've never refined a truck load of ore in their entire history.
Post Consumer recycling has been producing more material than industry can use for the last 15 years at least.
Quality:
Cars (or a larger percentage of them) reached a long-life status somewhere in that period, where 200k Miles is becoming the new norm. Computers reached a point of long life (and good repair-ability) within that period. That also was true of a some of other household appliances.
Renewable Energy:
Every ton of coal offset by Wind/Solar/Nuclear/Efficiency disappears due to their measuring method. In fact its not clear if they take into account Coal replaced by Gas. The same work gets done, but raw materials decreases.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:23PM
Fine when you look at industrial goods, what about food?
The Guardian FA:
Now, regarding:
Mmmm... not necessary a cause in some areas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 01 2016, @07:22PM
I feel like there has been a return to buying quality goods over cheaper ones. I want to see consumption market value charted right next to tonnage.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:27PM
You equate quality to longer life?
(mmm... I like quality bacon, it makes quality poop... in about the same time).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 01 2016, @11:03PM
Yeah, you'll live longer if you stop eating the bad bacon : P
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nuke on Tuesday March 01 2016, @07:42PM
The physical weight of goods imported into the UK has actually risen over the past 13 years, while the amount exported has fallen. ....
“This suggests that we are becoming more reliant on the production of materials in other countries,”
In other words, the UK is making less but importing more manufactured goods; not consuming less. Also, the Pope is a Catholic.
I find it hard to believe that this has anything to do with people downloading stuff instead of buying DVDs. The beer in my weekly shopping would outweigh all the DVDs I watch (or would download) in a year, and I don't even drink much.
The article is at best misleading and at worst meaningless.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday March 01 2016, @08:13PM
I concur - beer looks and sounds much better than most DVDs these days.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:12PM
The manufactured locally vs. imported issue is an interesting one though since items usually consume more mass in raw materials than the end product weighs, and in some cases it's a *lot* more. If we now import a good that weighs 100kg but took 1000kg of raw materials to manufacture locally (which is not at all unrealistic if you include water, solvents, and other materials used in manufacturing), then that doesn't truly represent a 900kg saving does it? That 900kg is still ultimately being "consumed" by the UK end user, even though it's being "spent" overseas.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @11:34PM
What I'd like to see is figures on the growing and harvesting of food outside the commercial sphere.
.
(Meta)
...and when people making submissions include links to sites that have script-driven content, [ons.gov.uk] it would be a Good Thing(tm) to mention that fact.
N.B. Feeding the page's URL into archive.is [archive.is] often end-runs these irritations.
Including the resulting URL [archive.is] in your submission is another Good Thing(tm).
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-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Squidious on Tuesday March 01 2016, @07:51PM
Smartphones have taken the place of a lot of the books, calculators, cameras, radios, stereos, walkmen, TVs, desktop computers, vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, and console gaming systems that we used to buy individually for their specific functions. My teenagers are going to haul a LOT less crap to college than I did back in the late 80s.
The terrorists have won, game, set, match. They've scared the people into electing authoritarian regimes.
(Score: 3, Funny) by SanityCheck on Tuesday March 01 2016, @09:13PM
No more Vinyl record collection unless they are pretentious :)
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 01 2016, @08:00PM
CDs are made of plastic. Plastic is made out of oil. Digital music means we need an increment less oil. We're already seeing an oil glut.
There are other commodoties that see increased demands, like rare earths for smartphone screens, however I would expect there to be economic dislocations.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Wednesday March 02 2016, @04:23AM
CDs are made of plastic. Plastic is made out of oil. Digital music means we need an increment less oil. We're already seeing an oil glut.
That simple reasoning is obviously flawed. World oil consumption is near all time high. And it's increasing.
http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Change-in-Oil-Consumption-MMBPD.png?00cfb7 [energytrendsinsider.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rleigh on Tuesday March 01 2016, @09:08PM
I seriously doubt that the reduced consumption of physical media has much contribution to the stats. I don't really think I can measure my annual media consumption in kilos, let alone metric tons. Even accounting for manufacturing waste, transport etc., it's still got to be drop in the ocean at the national level. No, this has got to be in manufacturing, and I doubt the per capita stats of polycarbonate and PVC for CD/DVD/BD and record production is that big a contribution.
(On the other hand, my per capita consuption of ABS plastic, in the form of LEGO blocks, has recently increased by several kilos after I discovered modular buildings and the Ghostbusters firehouse! That's imported from Denmark and the Czech republic though.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @09:55PM
Characteristics of Neoliberalism:
Tax breaks for the rich and powerful
Privatization of public services
Cuts to the social safety net
Attacks on labor unions
Passage of so-called "free trade" agreements allowing unfettered capital investment flows (aka exporting jobs)
Minimal regulation of financial institutions and corporations
Endless marketization of society
Terms identified with Neoliberalism:
Radical deregulation
Globalization
Market fundamentalism
Laissez faire capitalism
Supply-side economics
Thatcherism
Reaganism
Clintonism
.
Robert Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. His latest book is "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few".
This week, Reich wrote
In addition, this week, Reich endorsed Bernie Sanders for President.
.
N.B. 23 percent USA unemployment[1] [shadowstats.com] is NOT a "recession".
(Looking at the stock market^W^W speculators' market and seeing how billionaires are doing is NOT a useful measure of an economy--hasn't been for many years.)
Note also that that 23 percent doesn't include another 25 percent who are working for poverty wages and have no discretionary spending.
Most USAians are 1 small negative event away from total financial disaster. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org]
[1] Not only does the govt's official count not get the numbers correct, they don't even get the trend right.
Thanks for the "improvement" in the counting method, Bill Clinton.
.
Regarding a shift away from petroleum-based media substrates and to bit-based media touches on the economy of the present and future: more BitTorrent, DarkNet, et al and fewer middlemen who produce nothing but who expect to be paid anyway.
Getting rid of the parasites is a Good Thing(tm).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:23PM
When similar observations are made about China, the usual conclusion is that Chinese fake their GDP statistics. I wonder where the lie is. Is the West fakes statistics or is the western propaganda confused about China? Can't be honest because it's likely that "less stuff" applies more to China - it is just started the switch to service economy after all.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:31PM
FTFY
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Tuesday March 01 2016, @11:14PM
I just sold my house. I purchased the house from parents when they retired 15 years ago, and I had grown up there, moved away and then back when they retired, so needless to say it had a LOT of stuff in it. I contacted an E-recycler to handle the 'old' electronics, and I do mean old. I found several floppy disk sets of Windows 3.0/3.1/for workgroups, and OS2, numerous slackware distro's, a bunch of 10 MB hard drives, the front panel from a DEC pink and dark purple 11/70, dozens of old network cards, Compaq LTE laptops running 386 DX proc's, an IBM orange screen luggable, and my old TRS-80 color computer, a 1st gen AT&T DSL modem, 2 Betamax players, a laserdisc player, more modems than I could count When all was said and done the E-recycler carted away 3 pickup trucks full of old electronics, he was quite happy with the haul.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 02 2016, @02:32AM
Old electronics?
My parent's house (which I'm going to inherit, Mom is in her mid-80s) has some tube (valve-UK) mono and stereo equipment.
Also tons of paper in filing cabinets that are the history of the small family engineering company, going back to the 1950s. Anyone know about medium volume scanning (including bound reports that need a page turner) and also software for indexing thousands of random documents? What I'm currently calling "consumer scanning" -- turn into individual scans, perhaps pdfs that have been OCR'd, is not up to the job. Have been in touch with one company that scans warehouses of government records and indexes them -- they are much too big and expensive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 03 2016, @12:06AM
It's simple cut the spines and binders out and then use an office quality scanner with a doc feeder. You can probably borrow one
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08 2016, @06:00AM
Most of that stuff could've been sold or donated. Quite a few people would have liked any of that vintage gear.
I've got a bunch of old hardware myself, and short of flood/fire/act of god, it will get turned over to someone deserving in the event of my passing or downsizing.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Tuesday March 08 2016, @06:56PM
I donated a good deal of stuff in the 1st go around, but I lacked time or energy to wait for some meatball that wanted floppies or far, far outdated hardware. As it was we just barely got the place cleaned up, and moved out in time for closing. Had the e-recycler not shown up on the exact day he was scheduled it would have all gone into the dumpster.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 02 2016, @02:12AM
*ducks*
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 02 2016, @10:51AM
They still have Scotland. They voted to remain under the English thumb. When the king kicked out the Scots who became the Scots-Irish, it seems he did solve his Scotland problem, though his Scottish problem boomeranged when those Scots-Irish moved on to America and successfully rebelled.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday March 03 2016, @01:03PM
You've lost me .... What king?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 03 2016, @03:54PM
James VI. He relocated troublesome Scots [wikipedia.org] from the lowlands to Northern Ireland to both get rid of them and to mess with the Irish. Those Scots were the product of constant warfare between England and Scotland and were impossible to control. Later, those Scotch-Irish/Scots-Irish lit out for the American colonies and in time came to comprise the core of Washington's army. From that same Wikipedia article: "One Hessian officer said, 'Call this war by whatever name you may, only call it not an American rebellion; it is nothing more or less than a Scotch Irish Presbyterian rebellion.'"
I'm descended from those people and can attest that the rebelliousness is genetic. Every person in the family has it, especially the girls.
Washington DC delenda est.