The ad industry is ruining the world.  It began innocent enough - serving as a means to inform people of new products, etc.  Catalogs - such as the famous Sear’s catalog - were packed end-to-end with stuff.  Everything from washing and sewing machines and tractors and every imaginable small tool, seeds, clothing, etc., etc.  Then came radio ads, newspaper ads, magazine ads, as well as every sort of mailed piece the mind could imagine. 

Then something happened: markets got "mature" when suddenly everybody had all the necessities.  The ad industry had to either morph into something else, take on a totally new role, or shrink into oblivion.

Enter the new ad techniques for getting people to want things they don’t need.  Enter planned obsolescence.  Cars that barely made it to 60,000 miles (which philosophy began the end of the American auto industry).  Clothing that lasted for a few washings and then come apart.  The idea was to accelerate the replacement time frame and thus accelerate the consumption cycle.  Time to go to the mall and get more new stuff to replace the old stuff that didn't last very long.  And so was born “the consumer society,” and “the consumer economy,” as they exist today.  Either people consume stuff they don’t need, extra stuff, or the economy tanks. 

Soon other nations, notably the Japanese, stepped into the vacuum of "un-quality" and began offering quality in the form of dependability and durability.  And as they say: "the rest is history."  Simply put, the ad industry created dozens of new social conventions based on stuff people don't really need, but can be easily influenced to want: fashion, entertainment, cosmetics, transportation, travel, etc.

The completely irrational life style that has emerged via irrational advertising (television and cable television can only survive via this form of advertising), requires the use of vast sums of Earth's un-renewable resources.  It can’t be sustained and the ups and downs of the global economy over the last 30 years is all the proof anyone should need.  Now China is growing its new "capitalist" economy by pouring mostly cheaply made products into America and other countries via streaming boatloads full of containers. 

Meanwhile, the American economy, the one based on endless consumption, has reached its limit.  Many economic scholars write that America peaked in 1979.  That America is now and has been in a downward spiral since that time is manifest by the complete uncertainty of its stock markets, the unrelenting global unrest America's fading economy produces, the flood of jobs leaving for other soils, and the massive debt both Americans as individuals and the U.S. Government now support.  In short, the finite resources of the Earth are in rapid decline and thus can no longer sustain the faux lifestyles of the West and the rising East with their continuous, unrelenting, consumption.

A Tired Earth

Many scientists have written that the Earth is tired.  That many parts of the Earth need to be left alone for a few “decades” (in many areas they recommend centuries) in order to recover.  That deserts are increasing at an unprecedented rate, while ordinary forests and rain forests have been harvested to a tipping point.  With all the bad news floating around out there, the average person simply ignores it and blunders on.  Still, there is a strange foreboding in the air.  Different.  A sense that things are really out of control, even as the politicians in the current election cycle make claims to be able to make things better.

I’ve written much about the state of wilderness, back country, and parks.  Cutbacks in personnel in ALL the government agencies that are charged with protecting these few remaining wild places have produced an impossible situation.  A single ranger responsible for ten thousand square miles can’t police his or her territory enough to make a difference.  And so people continue to use the wild places as a dumping ground for everything they can no longer store in their houses, apartments, garages, and rental storage spaces.  

Rational Advertising

Billions of dollars each year are spent to get you and I to want more and more stuff.  When we see an ad that has a rational purpose, we recognize the difference immediately.  There’s a sense of honesty and helpfulness about a public service announcement, for example.  Yet even the so-called conservationist journals and much of their advertising seems a bit strange.  Often, there just as one-sided as the people who want us to buy things we don’t need.

What is there to do?  Here at Ultralight Wilderness Toilet we've taken on a single problem and offer up a simple, yet practical, solution.  The problem is people pooping on the ground and leaving it there.  Our solution is a personal lightweight toilet kit that makes it easy to deal with one's own poop and toilet paper while using the wild places and parks.  Our Packit Toilet kit makes that not only easy but affordable. 

We’ve tried and will continue to try to get people to see that it’s in their own self-interest to take responsibility for their own body wastes when using these remaining sanctuaries from the effects of civilization.  If not, there won’t be any place to go that isn’t ruined by man's incessant and uncontrollable negligence.  Random polluting, damaging soil with APVs, and leaving every sort of garbage on the ground for the next guy to deal with, is only correctable through a rational ad campaign that starts the process of creating a new social convention that is opposed to such behavior.

Rational advertising is the only way we can get numbers of people to get the sense of what’s actually going on in these places that everyone enjoys.  We have to show people images of the results of people’s negative attitude against these truly sacred places.