Expand your knowledge on the things that you buy!!

This lead me to think on the issue that Coleman was addressing in his interview. Ecological Intelligence. He was talking about having knowledge on the things that you buy. Questions in my mind started to come to me. Where do these things come from? Who made them? Are they safe? How much are they? Where did they originate from and how were they made? Then Professor Hirsch came up with coolguide.com which I greatly appreciate him for because now I can at least look up the company name or product and see the impacts and score overall that it has on myself and the environment.
Other issues are people tend to buy things that they do not need. This is the reason why we have an overproduction on bull crap things..miscellaneous crap. We are using more plastic, metal, and human consumption is increasing. It's all about big business and making money. Living that luxurious, american dream one day at a time. It's nice to have things that maybe your parents never had, but in real life, do we REALLY need that million dollar home or nintendo wii?
The things that we buy...we tend not to feel guilty for because I think it's innate for us Americans to feel that way. The marketing business and manufacturing companies have taught us all well. BUY BUY BUY BUY....SPEND SPEND SPEND. for the consumer like us.
I started to think the sneakers that I am wearing are probably coming from a ten year old in china that is no longer in school..who works gruesome hours and hardly makes enough money to eat and so on. People where is the love?

I believe that if we stop buying things that we don't need then possibly companies will stop making them. Then we can downsize in products and save this so called world we call EARTH.