Don't be an Egg

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, “Be a tidy Kiwi” was the catch cry used to galvanise and reform despicable social trashing behaviours. “Do the right thing” became popular saying also. Littering or trashing the environment has grown along with our consumer focused society. These campaigns died off during the 90s and 2000s, however, there seems to be another uprising and call to action to tackle this filthy stuff. Founded by the Litter Council in 1969, the Keep New Zealand Beautiful campaign is back with Mama Nature to engage the public in their crusade to clean things up. It seems we’ve become increasingly untidy and there’s statistics to prove it. But I won’t bore you with these, instead, here’s a couple of images to really get you fuming.

                         Rubbish on the beach. Source: Tony Kokshoorn, (2018).

                          More rubbish on another beach somewhere. Source: RNZ, (2018).

You all know that we need to clean up many things in NZ, roadsides and drain-ways adjacent to roads would be a good start. If there was as much effort put into advertising the consumption of products put into what to do with the leftovers, there’d be alot less trash scattered about. But that’s just not how it works you say?

Well, try looking at it from this perspective then. Our society has no collective focus except for what we're told to focus on. The inventor of public relations (Edward Bernays) employed techniques of social engineering to influence the masses. According to Waking Times, “Bernays transformed a mostly rural agrarian based society into a homogenised culture of consumers and devout statists”. Bernays believed that the public needed to be directed in their actions due to their irrational responses and saw it as his duty to manipulate public ideals for the benefit of big businesses. Many techniques developed by Bernays have evolved into what we now know as modern marketing and public relations.

Modern news media methodology combined with current economic ideology (neoliberalism) feeds into the complex socio-cultural mix. With economic growth seen as the ‘end goal’ and social / environmental well-being thought of as an externality, it’s no wonder mindless consumerism behaviours prevail. And littering is just one of these behaviours.

So, if we can be conditioned to be 'good consumers', we can also be conditioned to behave in ways that align with desirable social and environmental outcomes. For example, reducing litter in public places and cleaning up the mess behind those who’re less responsible. There needs to be a new catch cry for the new generation of super consumers, one that wakes them from their zombie like daze. Something hard hitting and trendy for us to align with. Something that brings us to our senses and causes people to think for a change. Something like, 'don't be an egg, put your rubbish in the appropriate receptacle aoww'. If 'ghost chips' can attract the attention of mainstream Aotearoa, then so could 'don't be an egg'.