A reality-checked roadmap towards sustainable consumerism.
In the World Economic Forum 2022, the top minds of the world indicated that sustainability continues to be a major priority, and climate change continues to show no signs of slowing down. While in such forums, several agreements are signed and nations agree that more needs to be done, little to no progress has been seen in the meaningful integration of sustainability into business processes.
This should not come as a surprise that sustainable practices are not becoming common around the world. Manufacturers have little to no incentive to opt for an expensive and regulated process when the traditional wasteful process is still generating revenues. The burden must fall on the consumer to dictate how much value society places on sustainability, and manufacturers should adapt accordingly.
Protests are Unsustainable
Greenpeace, an environmental organisation, successfully appealed to consumer’s sentiment to combat deforestation in 2010. Greenpeace protested Ikea’s negligence in selling furniture made from the wood of trees felled using clear-cut deforestation methods. Their protests made consumers aware that certain product lines were unsustainable, and consumers demanded Ikea label those products accordingly. When Ikea complied, more consumers were made aware and clear-cut products were discontinued altogether.
Awareness was key in stopping Ikea’s unsustainable practice. However, the irony is that protesting – what Greenpeace had to resort to – is far from being a sustainable approach to making consumers aware that big manufacturers need to be held accountable for damaging ecosystems. Protests are stressful, disruptive, and consume vast amounts of human resources and energy. The ‘correct’ way to go about raising awareness on sustainability should be through dialogue that educates, informs and appeals directly to consumers; but not to those unwilling to adapt. As controversial as it might sound, any effort towards curbing the overconsumption of ‘spoiled’ consumers is a frustrating and unsustainable endeavour.
Generic awareness campaigns that talk about environmental and social consequences are not that effective in appealing to an older audience. It is more important to understand the key attitudinal or normative drivers that need to be targeted in order to change consumption behaviour.
Educate the Right People
It is impractical to expect that consumers will adopt sustainable consumption habits en masse. Realistically, there will be a delayed trickle-down effect, where the first wave of consumers will be direct audiences of the discourse and later turn to advocates of sustainable consumption themselves. The aim should be to educate, empower, and engage consumers to make purchase decisions that advance industry innovation toward carbon neutrality.
Generic awareness campaigns that talk about environmental and social consequences are not that effective in appealing to an older audience. It is more important to understand the key attitudinal or normative drivers that need to be targeted in order to change consumption behaviour. Consumers believe in certain pieces of information that are difficult to unlearn, making them susceptible to ‘misinformation.’ For instance, pre-millennial generations might aspire to become sustainable consumers, but might fall victim to false marketing gimmicks such as greenwashed products that appeal to a sustainable ‘ethos’ but divert ‘logos’.
It is therefore unsustainable, some might say wishful thinking, to expect consumers of older generations to drastically change consumption patterns, conduct thorough research, or even know what questions to ask to determine whether their consumption patterns are sustainable. Thus, in order to promote healthy and sustainable consumerism, education efforts need to be directed towards children, the future consumers, through educational institutions.
However, curricula for the mere sake of informing is futile. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, children should be shown how to consume responsibly, account for their consumption, and be equipped with the tools to monitor sustainability. These future consumers should not have to consume with trepidation but rather with confidence that their consumer behaviour has been instilled in them through a responsible and systematic education system that is de facto sustainable.
Ethical Innovation Carried Forward
Behaviour change is as much an innovation as technology advancement. Considering every objective study on sustainability concludes that most informed consumers aspire to live more sustainability but face barriers such as cost, availability and accessibility that are beyond their control, leaving sustainability up to consumer behaviour alone sets us up to fail to meet carbon targets. As it currently stands, if the average consumer were to switch to the more sustainable alternative to their basic commodities, they would be ‘punished’ with a heftier price tag as those alternatives seldom deliver the same value as mass-produced goods. It is unlikely that corporations would turn over a new leaf and forgo profits unless a social or technological innovation flips things around.
Given the recent bouts of breakthroughs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields which have had tremendous cross-industry applications and contributed to unprecedented advancements in computational capabilities, future generations have the most powerful tools for innovation the world has ever seen. The challenge becomes utilising innovation ethically for sustainability.
Innovation should remove the separation between government, industry and consumers that has created a hostile feedback loop of blame with each pointing back to the others as the drivers of climate problems. The future should be directed towards better design and material innovation supported by policies that push manufacturers away from strategies like planned obsolescence. Most importantly, the future needs consumers to understand the full cycle and costs of their consumption from natural resource extraction to waste.
Innovation should remove the separation between government, industry and consumers that has created a hostile feedback loop of blame with each pointing back to the others as the drivers of climate problems.
Patience and Tolerance
On paper, sustainable solutions are a no-brainer – waste not, want not. But the statement is hypocritical as it expects everyone to adopt this mantra regardless of equity. In order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 requires a significant increase in spending on physical assets, which is counterintuitive to sustainable ideologies. Global expenditure has to increase to USD 9.2 trillion in annual average spending which is USD 3.5 trillion more than what is spent today.
Developing countries would have to spend 1.5 times more than advanced economies to support economic development and build low-carbon infrastructure. To facilitate the transformation, consumption in developing countries need to remain high in order to support steady GDP growth rates. Consumption and spending would have to rise for the next 10 to 15 years before the world starts advancing towards a net-zero economy. This takes developed nations’ spending into account so realistically, developing nations would need longer to adapt to sustainable goals.
World leaders must trust that less fortunate nations will uphold their promise of gradually transforming into sustainable economies, albeit later than expected. It should not be forgotten that developing countries account for less than 10% of global emissions, and are far more vulnerable to climate change – a consequence of the rapid industrialisation of the developed world. Patience and tolerance are therefore key to achieving the collective goal of helping future generations experience an enriched life of responsible and sustainable consumption.
