The case for 'Material literacy'

We know surprisingly little about where our stuff comes from and and even less about where it goes after we are done using it. And that's making climate change worse.

Did you know that plastic bottles and polyester pants are essentially made of the same material? Or that if you made a dye from onion peels, it would not be pink but yellow? Or that several ingredients in cosmetics come from fossil fuels (the same oil from which we get petrol)? Or that natural Indigo dye bleeds but a chemically manufactured one does not? 

I didn’t -- until I attended a ‘Material Literacy’ workshop a couple of weeks back. And that got me thinking about how little we know about the things we use every day. 

How I felt after the material literacy workshop

It’s not difficult to see how we got here. 

How did we get here?

For one, the things we use have gotten more complicated. A conventional car uses fifty different metals. A smartphone may contain at least 80 percent of the stable elements on the periodic table. It was much easier to know what something was made up of when it contained only three different types of material. 

Along with this, manufacturing has moved farther and farther away from us. Up until even two generations ago, people were weaving and knitting their clothes at home. We then moved to buying the cloth and stitching at home, then to getting clothes stitched by a tailor, to buying readymade clothes from brick and mortar shops where we could touch and feel a shirt before buying it, to now ordering our clothes online. I wouldn’t be surprised if a child born in the 2000s has never been to a tailor or seen a sewing machine. 

To add to this, supply chains have got increasingly complex. An item may be mined in one place, processed in a second, used to manufacture a product in a third place and  finally shipped for use to a fourth. As the making of products has moved away from our immediate vicinity, our knowledge of where they come from and how they are made has correspondingly reduced. 

A third factor is the advent of the knowledge economy. A couple of generations ago, the majority of people worked physical jobs in fields and factories, and understood much better how things are made than the knowledge workers of today, who spend most of our time in front of a screen. 

All of this is made worse by the lobby of manufacturers who don’t want us to know. Ignorance is a blissful consumer who will buy more. You can see this manifesting in unclear labels. I saw a label at a fast fashion brand recently which read ‘100% viscose partly made from Circulose pulp’. How is this supposed to mean anything to a lay person?

We know surprisingly little about where the stuff we use comes from and we know even less about where it goes after we are done using it. We throw it in the dustbin and don’t give it another thought. Everything outside of our usage of the item is a black box. 

Why is this a problem?

This creates two distinct but related problems.

For one, we are consuming more than ever, without understanding the real cost that goes into making the stuff we buy. Every item that is made needs material, resources and energy. Unfortunately, the real cost of these doesn’t always reflect in the financial cost of the item, and that is at least partly to blame for the culture of overconsumption. We buy what we can and not what we need. 

An average American buys 53 pieces of clothing every year. That’s almost 1 piece of clothing a week. The resources we are using to make all of this are not unlimited, and the rate at which we are consuming them is unsustainable. Every year, environmentalists mark ‘Earth overshoot day’ -- the day when humanity's demand for natural resources exceeds the Earth's ability to regenerate them in a given year. This year it fell on August 1 - so with more than one third of the year still to come. In other words, the amount of resources we consume every year would need another one third of the Earth for it to be sustainable. 

The second problem is that we are also generating a massive amount of waste. We are buying more and more and also throwing away more and more to free up our minds and cupboards to buy more stuff. The stuff we throw away doesn’t disappear into thin air. Very little of it is recycled. The majority gets incinerated, and some of it stays in the environment for hundreds of years before it decomposes. Waste contributes to ~5% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally, and up to 20% of methane, which is 28 times more potent than CO2. 

Apart from the environmental issues, there is a direct impact on human health. Plastics are everywhere, in many more products than we imagine, and that has resulted in a microplastics invasion. Did you know that the ‘compostable’ paper cup in which you get your coffee has a plastic lining? Or that the granules you find in several cosmetic products are actually plastic? This has resulted in microplastics being found in everything from our food to salt and sugar to the clouds about Mt Fuji to the human placenta. Microplastics can be deadly, with impacts ranging from damage to cardiovascular health to increased risk of cancer. 

So.. what now?

What we need is mindful consumption; we need to buy what we need and know what we are buying. We also need to bring back the habits of reuse, repair, and recycle. I believe a good starting point for that would be to understand where our stuff comes from -- what Shubhi Sachan, who founded the ‘Material Library of India’, calls ‘Material literacy’.

I asked Shubhi, who conducted the workshop that got me thinking about all of this in the first place, what material literacy could look like and why it is important. “Material literacy is about solving the problem of materials,” Shubhi told me. “It’s about reconnection, reminding people where their stuff comes from and where it goes. That’s important to address the problem at it’s root. Recycling is a rescue operation and can’t be a way of life. We need to change how we manufacture and how much we consume and for that, material literacy is key”

Shubhi conducting the Material literacy workshop

What is ‘Material Literacy’?

We need to think of material literacy the same way we think of financial literacy or, more recently, food literacy. Financial literacy is having enough knowledge about financial products to be able to make informed decisions about our money. Food literacy, which is on the rise over the last few years with influencers like The Foodpharmer, The Liver Doctor, and Krish Ashok (Masala Lab) coming in, is about increased awareness of the ingredients in the food we eat in order to make healthy choices regarding our food. 

Material literacy should be knowing enough about what goes into the making of a product, so that we can make informed decisions about what and how much to buy. I’d like to see material literacy become a phrase we internalise, and maybe a movement for material labels similar to ‘Label padhega India’ that gets people thinking about food labels. 

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The workshop was eye-opening. It made me think; it makes me pause before I buy. I read labels on the clothes I own more carefully now, and continue to be amazed at what I find. Just today I discovered that a T-shirt I have worn for years and was confident is 100% cotton actually has 8% polyester. I ask for my coffee to be given in glassware and not in the disposable cups many cafes use as default even if one is having it at table. On a flight this week, my first thought when I saw the crew collecting waste as we were preparing to land was. ‘Oh God, they are not segregating!’

Me agonizing about whether to replace my three-year-old phone or not is not going to solve problems that are systemic, and need structural solutions. We do need to change how our stuff is made and that will have to be anchored by corporations. However, I also believe in individual action; I believe that if we empower people with the right information, they will make better choices. Becoming materially literate is a first step towards encouraging a more mindful lifestyle. 

To summarise, our understanding of the materials that make up the stuff around us is rather inadequate. We don’t know where stuff comes from or where it goes. This ‘illiteracy’ is at least partly to blame for the culture of overconsumption and linked to it, excess waste, both of which are major drivers of GHG emissions. We need to move towards mindful consumption and a great starting point for that is for us - both individuals and organisations - to become more ‘material literate’.

A painting I made during the workshop from natural dyes. I learnt exactly how every color in that painting was made.