Source: Sustainable Consumption: Facts and Trends
By: World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Synopsis: It is the conclusion of the WBCSD that current patterns of consumption are not sustainable. In order to move toward sustainable consumption, they look at several dimensions of consumption including: global drivers of consumption, consumption patterns and impacts, the role of the consumer, the role of business, challenges and options for change.
Reflection:
First, this is an important piece of literature for somebody with my professional goals. I found something on every page that I knew could be used to make a business more sustainable. Because I can’t touch on everything, I’m going to touch on the items I thought were most important.
With respect to drivers of consumption, I thought an important point was that, as societies become more affluent, the proportion of income that goes toward food and housing tends to stay the same, while spending on transportation and telecommunications tend to rise the most. This is probably over-interpreting the data, but it seems as affluence rises, we lose sight of necessities. I commonly hear this in reference to organic food prices. A gallon of organic milk can cost more than twice what a standard gallon costs, and people write it off as too expensive. In reality, food had never been so inexpensive. As we’ve gotten richer, and food is increasingly being taken for granted, we’ve forgotten that high quality food is a necessity and probably should cost more than our cell phone plan.
Falling into the Engagement Via Guilt category, I nonetheless found the statistic that it would take five Earths to sustain the world’s population at U.S. levels of consumption to be interesting, considering that this is the direction China and India are heading.
In the section on Consumption Patterns and Impacts, there were several good points, the first being reference to services provided by our ecosystems. Because those ecosystems have always been there, we’ve taken them, and their function, for granted. Somewhere out there is a person who would argue that we can perform those services with technology, but at what cost, and how effectively? Recognizing that the services provided by natural systems have value that can be quantified monetarily is the first step in framing the issue in terms we pay attention to.
Next, I appreciated that they recognize the power of market forces. Like it or not, capitalism is what we’re dealing with, and people are willing to consider sustainable products, if not demanding them outright. Where there is an opportunity to make money, a business will supply that demand.
Possibly the most exciting section concerned innovation. Several things are clear: controlling population is a daunting task, so population is going to continue to grow (for now). At the same time, the world as a whole is becoming more affluent, and that means greater overall consumption. Resources are finite, so what do we do? We need to innovate to de-couple production from resource consumption. Mmmmm…innovation. We like innovation. We’re good at innovation. We put men on the moon and made robots that fit in our blood vessels for crying out loud! I’m picturing something like the scene in Apollo 13, when Houston finds out the CO2 scrubbers are busted. They dump out a box of parts and a mandate: make it work. Except in my vision, it’s not Houston, but Ford or Nike, and it’s not a box of parts, but a dumptruck full of “garbage.” Sure! We can me a car out of old computers and bicycle innertubes! You need shoes? Well, whattya got? Oh, those tubes from the center of the toilet paper roll and plastic shopping bags! We’ll have a pair for you next week! This is a challenge to which we can rise.
Finally, they take a look at the role of the consumer and the role of business. Perhaps most importantly is what I’m going to call the “Talk the Talk Phenomenon.” Many surveys show there is a disconnect between what people say about their sustainable habits and what they do, which is no surprise. Talk is cheap, and I would be amazed if that disconnect didn’t exist, but talk is not what’s going to lead to sustainability. We need to identify what’s keeping people from walking the walk, and they’ve begun that in this document. What is clear is that people will purchase sustainable products only if all other variables are equal, which presents further opportunities for innovation. And of course, all this will be pretty close to moot without education. As a society, we’ve been spoiled, and it’s time we got used to the idea that it can’t last. Being spoiled, we’ve had the luxury of blind consumption. Well, it’s time we started paying attention to what we’re buying, and education and marketing are part of that process.
From the perspective of the business, our greatest tool will be the life cycle analysis of the product. Now, I don’t know exactly what that means, other than it’s an attempt to account for ALL of the costs that go into a product and what happens to it after it’s used.
The last thing I’m going to do before calling it a night is introduce the first of many Big Questions. Like those mentioned in the introduction, these are questions that don’t have answers but get at the heart of the matter. Most of the time, the answer isn’t what’s important; the asking is, and I'm going to try to ask one in every post. Without further ado:
At what point would we rather knowingly face the demise of our culture rather than further sacrifice our conveniences?
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