Advertising is also form of pollution, visual pollution. Advertising makes cities both ugly and colourful

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VISUAL POLLUTION

Pollution

Sao Paulo, the only city without outdoor advertisements.

It should be banned

By Joost van Geffen

We should do something about pollution, but not only the pollution of the air and water. Advertising is also form of pollution, visual pollution. Advertising makes cities both ugly and colourful, but imagine a clean and serene city, where no outdoor advertising is allowed. This sounds like a utopia, but it would be possible now. Furthermore the biggest city in South America has already tried it. After the mayor had enough of the visual pollution all the billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising were removed almost overnight. Visualize how pure every city would look without all the advertisements disturbing their skyline. But instead advertisements are everywhere you look, free bags with brand names on them, exclusive clothes which turn you into a walking advertisement and TV commercials  every 15 minutes. But there is a difference, you choose to walk with these bags or watch TV when commercials are on. However when driving through a city you cannot choose not to look at advertisements, they are everywhere. So outdoor advertisements should be banned in all cities, this would make the city look fresh and has many other advantages.

Furthermore advertisements nowadays conjure impressions far from the truth. Through this advertisers can exploit people. Their advertisements try to tempt people to buy the goods that is either harmful like alcohol or tobacco or products they cannot afford. People buy these goods only because the image of the product created by the advertisement is tempting them to buy it. Those advertisements encourage people to become more materialistic through watching advertisements which appeal to their emotions. That is exactly what we do not want, advertisements that only appeal to people’s emotion instead of informing the people about the product.  So it would also improve our society if only informative advertisements would be used.

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The only effect advertising has is making people feel unhappy, through making them covet everything redundant through images of models skinnier than any American in the Mac Donald’s, flash new cars and cheap food. They make us dissatisfied and want every new next version and limited edition. Nowadays advertisements are designed to make us feel insecure, while they should inform us about how good the product is. If advertisements would only be informative people would be able to distinguish what they want and need instead of wanting to be like advertisements describe.

By banning outdoor advertising big companies would not ...

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