By April Ehrlich
Daily Titan Features Editor
Published: March 12, 2010

As if parents, professors and religion didn’t provide enough guilt in our stress-ridden student lives, we’ve even got commercials telling us about the “right” way to live. Although this is nothing new – playing off consumers’ guilt is the oldest trick in the book when it comes to advertising.

Are you eating healthy? Buy our new Yoplait Essence yogurt shot! Four ounces of liquid and you won’t need to eat for another eight hours!

Are you exercising? Buy our new Skecher’s Shape Ups: you’ll get those muscles working as you walk to your car!

Are you saving the planet? Buy our new organic toilet paper, made from 10 percent all-natural materials!

Good causes are being masked by consumerist gimmicks, and saving the environment is simply another one of them. Ironically, we are being tricked into buying things we don’t need, which goes against the very cause of saving the environment.

For example, every major grocery store is crowded with racks full of assorted reusable bags. Buy these bags, and you are saving earth!

But how?

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t once seen a customer equipped with reusable bags.

I hate to toot my own horn, I actually use these bags at Trader Joe’s, but only because I want to increase my chances of winning their raffle.

The point is, if you get in line at Albertson’s and whip out a handful of Ralph’s reusable bags, you’re only embarrassing yourself. You’d likely feel a sudden the urge to explain something: “I, uh, forgot all the bags with your giant-ass logo splashed across the front, I’m sorry! I’ll bring them next time, I promise! In fact, throw some in my cart, I’ll just buy some more.”

And that’s when you drive home and stuff your new Albertson’s bags under your sink and never use them again.

It’s obvious that advertisers are seeing a trend in society: Most of us are suffering from slight eco-guilt.

Maybe we really are afraid the earth is going to melt under global warming, or maybe we don’t want our children to die from asthma attacks due to air pollution – for whatever reason, enough people are wanting to consume less, and advertisers are utilizing this to make them consume more.

Although the green movement is arguably trendy, it keeps reemerging in society for a reason. We realize that we consume more than we need, that we buy and make food that nobody will ever eat, then we create boxes and papers and trinkets that are essentially useless and will be thrown away within a matter of weeks.

On top of that, we get berated by reminders of unimaginable people in third-world countries that can’t get a drop of fresh water, let alone a dozen “reusable” bags that, oddly enough, never get used.

There’s nothing wrong with consumers here, since we have our hearts in the right place – we want to be healthy and we want to be good people.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t know how, and being brainwashed by an advertiser’s ploy simply seems to be the easiest way.

If only those victims of false advertising could wake up and realize that buying more is not the answer – it’s about buying only what you need and using it.