RIT 2009 Symposium Workshop Summary: Moving from Eco-Marketing to Sustainable Consumption
May 20, 2009 by Brian Butler | Filed under: Moving from Eco-Marketing to Sustainable Consumption [4]
Moving from eco-marketing to sustainable consumption discussed several factors that are currently impeding the jump to sustainable consumption. It was generally agreed that people find consumption to be a fundamental right of the individual. It was even discussed that many people find consumption to be a fun activity. Low cost / affordability is a driver towards consumption along with marketing practices.
Consumption to meet an individual’s primary needs to health and safety is necessary. Beyond the primary need consumption is based on satisfying desires or wants. Surprisingly this over consumption to satisfy wants does not correlate to overall happiness. Data was presented that revealed increasing financial wealth has an asymptotic relationship with happiness. This suggests that if companies could move towards providing services versus materialistic products we could improve overall happiness. The impact on employment was discussed and remained an unknown. Companies will need to be given alternatives to help with this migration.
One of the most critical areas to address to enable sustainable consumption is the education of the youth. It is important to offer lifestyle choices to individuals and perhaps a rating/labeling system that allowed the consumer to understand the product’s environmental impact would be a critical element for choice. Perhaps a green tax would work? Alternatively, we could change the paradigm of status symbols to view sustainability as the envious lifestyle to be copied by others rather than materialistic consumption. For example, why would you want to have a manicured lawn requiring endless attention when you could have a thriving ecosystem similar to a forest in your yard?
It was unclear at the end of the workshop as to what role if any the environmental manager would play in changing individual consumption behaviors. Do they really have enough influence/impact on decision making? Further exploration will be required to see if a toolkit can be developed to empower the environmental manager in this area