Green Consumerism: Challenging Non-Sustainability or Fashion Trend?

Green consumerism is collectively promoted by non-government organisations and governments urging individuals to purchase goods and services that have less harmful environmental impact associated with their production, distribution and disposal. Therefore consumer decisions such as buying eco-friendly products, domestic energy use, waste behaviour, transport choice/use and engagement in local produce and fair trade encourages sustainable behaviour. It is hoped that taking-up a new behaviour through green consumerism will cause people to adopt other pro-environmental behaviours. Green consumerism at the institutional level can also establish new values into consumer purchasing patterns. Other values manifest through voluntary global standards guiding manufacturing, sourcing, employment and environmental accountability. But has the ‘green’ approach paved any significant inroads into consumption and production patterns?

Data from the 2012 Greendex Survey found that environmentally friendly behaviour among consumers has increased from 2010 in only five of 17 countries surveyed. Top-scoring countries included developing countries India, China and Brazil while results showed sustainable consumer behaviour decreased in nine of the surveyed countries consisting of the industrialised countries with American consumers ranking the least sustainable followed by Canadian, Japanese and French consumers. According to the Greendex Survey the results mean that while overall progress remains positive, momentum of green consumerism has been shed over the last two years. The issue is that the figures appear to reflect attitudes rather than buying patterns as feelings of 'guilt' played a role in the purchasing power of green consumers from higher ranking Greendex scores though the same consumers feel less empowered.

Green consumerism can be used to catalyst new behaviour patterns but this can have negative side effects such as when one behaviour (recycling) deters another (waste prevention) as well as suffer from motivational limitations. Also the attitude/values and behaviour/action gap found by Young et al. (2010) reports that 30% of consumers struggle to translate their environmental concerns into purchases and this is why the share for ethical foods remains at only 5% of the green market. Economic variables such as recession, the higher costs associated with green purchases and social impacts such as unemployment rates contribute to this fluctuating market. Therefore decisions to buy 'green' goods and services are dependent on the power of the consumer under specific market conditions as well as their knowledge of the market.

As attitudes towards the environment and ethically-sourced products have changed, so too has the market for such products they purchase. Environmental marketing has seen changes in companies wanting to differentiate themselves which has driven them to seek more creative ways to innovate and focus on corporate responsibility beyond eco-labelling or reduced packaging. On the other hand it can also be stated that green consumerism shifts some of the responsibility from institutions that perpetuate and reinforce environmental degradation to the consumer. It then becomes a matter of social conscience, and thus a commodity which underpins the importance of marketing self-identity with goods defeating the purpose of being ‘green’. Furthermore, green consumerism could be considered as another form of status by replacing one behaviour with another only to provide new opportunities for surplus capital. This means that education of the consumer is the greatest asset for making purchasing decisions and government incentives can help consumers concentrate their limited efforts. Importantly, 'being green' needs more time space that is not available in people's increasingly busy lifestyles (Young et al.2010).

References:

1. 2012 Greendex Report @ http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/greendex/

2. Young, W., Hwang, K., McDonald, S. and Oates, C. J. (2010), Sustainable consumption: green consumer behaviour when purchasing products. Sust. Dev., 18:20–31. doi:10.1002/sd.394