Ecole, May 2002 Giorgio Nebbia
nebbia@quipo.it
Each persona è immersa in un mondo di merci: basta entrare in un negozio di alimentari per trovare innumerevoli tipi di conserve, di grassi, di dolciumi, di bottiglie d'acqua; basta entrare in una cartoleria per essere circondati da penne, carta, giocattoli; basta camminare per la strada per essere attratti da scarpe e pantaloni, da telefoni mobili--- quelli chiamati affettuosamente "telefonini" --- da televisori, giornali e dischi di videogiochi --- che fanno bella mostra di se nelle vetrine dei negozi o delle edicole, o sui teli degli ambulanti, distesi sulla strada.
Tutte le merci si presentano e ci parlano: "Io sono la marmellata"; "Io sono fatto di tela jeans"; "Io sono fatto di cioccolata", eccetera. As if these names tell us the nature, origin and meaning of what is offered, but do not say nothing. In a footnote on page of the first chapter of Capital, Karl Marx said that "in bourgeois society dominates the legal fiction that every man, as a buyer of goods, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the goods."
All information provided to customers are included in the price, appearance, ie, in the colors, packaging, shape, and messages sent to buyers and sellers through advertising. There was once a product category, a discipline taught in business schools and universities, which had as its purpose the description delle merci, come sono fatte, che cosa contengono, da dove vengono, dove vanno.
Ciascun oggetto, dai prodotti alimentari, a quelli tessili, ai metalli presenti negli elettrodomestici o nelle automobili, al vetro delle lampade, al rame dei fili elettrici, ha una sua storia naturale, è stato ottenuto da risorse naturali --- vegetali, animali, minerali, pietre, fonti energetiche --- che sono state trasformate, mediante lavoro umano e mediante "storia": la gomma dei copertoni oggi è così come la conosciamo perché innumerevoli persone hanno scoperto l'esistenza delle piante della gomma, ne hanno analizzato il lattice, hanno modificato le caratteristiche del caucciù, l'hanno copiato fabbricandone per sintesi a surrogate, and so on. The cash price says nothing of this natural history, human and political.
The rubber plant in Thailand, or oil from which it is the raw material for synthetic rubber, the work of Indonesian peasants or the workers of the petrochemical plants or Gulf of Gela, are not equal, nor are risks or equal civil rights of those workers.
critical consumers therefore means buying goods knowing and examining them critically, in fact, the information is "inside" each object. Something is already being done, when some organizations suggest a boycott of goods, such as certain textiles, shoes and carpets, which are accessible us at such a low price because they are obtained using a very low price of child labor, because they are obtained by destroying forests and polluting the air and water, or to boycott products sold by agricultural corporations that fund fascist governments in the South.
Many goods have a "violent content" very large, and when we buy, all happy because they are cheap, we also participate, indirectly and unwittingly, to such violence. I gathered some idea of \u200b\u200bthis kind in the handbook "The goods and values", published by Jacabook Milan and I would modestly suggest some ways in which the school could contribute to spreading awareness of its "Critical consumption".
The first question to be asked before a question is: "what's inside?". Take the paper from a newspaper or a book (almost) all readers know that in the paper is cellulose, shredded and compressed in the form of thin sheet capable of absorbing the ink well pen or the press. But the cellulose of a newspaper has come a long way: a few months ago was contained in the timber woods, Canadian or Swedish, Brazilian and Indonesian, sometimes cultivated and regenerated with care, sometimes savage cuts leaving behind land exposed to erosion.
Who were the owners of the woods? Who were the workers who cut them? the professor of geography molte occasioni per illustrare la distribuzione nel mondo di questa, come di altre materie prime (piante alimentari, bestiame, minerali metallici, carbone, petrolio), mettendo in evidenza le condizioni economiche e sociali in cui tali materie prime sono estratte.
Ma prima di diventare carta la cellulosa ha fatto una lunga strada: i tronchi sono stati trasportati lungo fiumi e strade e ferrovie, sono stati frantumati dopo separazione della corteccia, poi i "chips" sono stati trattati chimicamente per separare la cellulosa dalle sostanze brunastre indesiderabili che si chiamano lignine. Il docente di discipline scientifiche o tecniche ai vari livelli ha, se vuole, un ruolo centrale nella descrizione di questa trasformazione. La cellulosa purificata crude is processed into pulp and its chemical operations involving air and water pollution.
Teachers of economics can help students to review the statistics (some are also found in the popular "Calendario Atlante De Agostini"), and can explain that Italy, for example, in 2008 consumed about 11 million tonnes paper and paperboard, partly imported and partly manufactured from imported pulp.
The history teacher can, if you will, to "tell" the extraordinary (and exciting) story of the seemingly trivial matter when it is in the notebooks, books, newspapers, packaging, a story paper that dates back thousands of years ago, and is held from China via the Arabs, to medieval Europe, starting from Amalfi. Although up to 150 years ago, the cellulose paper was from rags are recovered from waste by special craftsmen who were "ecology", long before we discover ourselves. By the way the whole history of the goods, offering the opportunity to remember the debt of gratitude that Europe, now so full of himself, should the Far East, the Muslim world, the native peoples of Latin America.
I said before that Italy consumes ten million tonnes of paper and board, but I said nonsense. We do not consume all the goods: the newspaper after a few hours becomes waste paper, packaging is thrown away after a few days after their use, just books in a library can last a few years, the paper used, those 11 million tonnes before mentioned, ends up (with all its "contents" of cellulose, energy, human labor) to about half in landfills or incinerators, one half is collected properly and that the food industry that turns used paper into new paper and board, while avoiding the failures of the ecological destruction of forests .
Beyond the price, a critical consumption should be geared to the purchase of recycled paper and cartons, how do you recognize? sometimes it is written on paper and books newspapers, there is sometimes a symbol used on cartons and packaging, but how many of us are able, or are trying to recognize the most "value" (in terms of work, less water, energy, materials scarce natural raw) of recycled goods?
A turn toward the critical consumption needs, in my opinion, a commitment from the school, at all levels, for the description of goods with which the pupils come into contact, that description is possible to recognize the "content" of subjects, energy, water, labor, each of them. At this point the critical consumption may prefer the goods that require less energy, less water, less non-renewable materials, which generate less waste gases, liquids and solids, which did not require labor exploited at low or at an early age, which last longer, requiring less maintenance --- throughout the life cycle of each product.
I realize that it is not easy task, especially since no magazines and books that deal in this way, the natural history and social goods, there is no dictionary or an encyclopedia of goods, missing their culture merchandise, with the 'aggravating infiltrates advertising in newspapers and the media and does get messages that are often distorted, often through the mouths of people seemingly authoritative, but they know nothing of marketable goods.
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