Band 8+: In the advertising, businesses nowadays usually emphasise that their products are new in some way. Why is this? Do you think it is a positive or negative development?

We are currently living in a world of advertisements. They are on banners, on the streets, on our TV screen and even on our mobile devices. They tend to put emphasis on a new line of products with little to no differences in term of functionality when compared to the old ones. I concur with the notion that this type of advertising is a negative development because it feeds on toxic consumerism and harms the environment.

First and foremost, consumerism is a vicious cycle of buying things you don’t really need and not using them to their potential; In other words, we throw things away while they’re still useful, with similar products as replacement. As a matter of fact, the clear victor of this are the businesses that make huge profit; meanwhile, consumers like us will only waste time and money on needless materialism. On the contrary, those hard-earned cash could be spent on more meaningful pursuits such as donation to Non-profit organizations or charities. Therefore, this new form of advertisement will only encourage the general public to engages in mindless materialistic obsession.

Furthermore, those type of advertising will diminish the overall health of our environment. Consumers will be encouraged to throw away their old products in pursuit of newer ones, thus producing more wastes than ever. For instance, those wastes will go to landfills where they are burned or thrown away into the ocean. While the former will produce more greenhouse gas and pollute our air, the latter will further pollute our ocean and the marine life. Hence, greedy businesses will prioritize their own profits over the environment.

To conclude, while advertising plays a pivotal role in driving economic growth, there are times when it favors business profit over the environment. It can brainwash consumers to buy useless things, throw away useful things, neglect meaningful pursuit for mindless materialism and pollute the environment. As consumers of the 21st century, we have the responsibility of regulating our own material needs and mitigating environmental damages.