Sustainable Consumption? Voting with Dollars Will Not Lead to Sustainable Development

Consumer citizenship[1] encourages us to use our pocketbooks to shape our politics.  Buying free-trade coffee promotes fair labor practices.  Drinking organic milk protects farms and waterways.  Purchasing certified wood and fish sustains forests and fisheries.[2]  Or so we hope.

Can markets replace politics?  This is not a moot question.  Governments are failing to implement the public’s will while markets are creating a huge global middle class capable of consuming several Earths.

Advocates of consumer-citizenship argue that governments are increasingly unable to guide society along a trajectory of sustainable development: voter turnout is abysmal, cumbersome bureaucracies thwart civic engagement, political apathy is high and trust in government low. The market, its advocates argue, is accountable, efficient, and responsive. Consumer choice, in contrast, promotes freedom and limits the hierarchical, paternalistic, oppressive tendencies of the welfare state.  Markets are “naturally” democratic. Governments, we must remember, have a tendency to be exclusionary: citizenship participation has been and in some places remains limited by matters of race, wealth, religion, and gender. Moreover, consumerism in and of itself is not bad.  Status seeking is a part of the human condition.  There is no reason that consumer choices of green products and slow foods cannot transform norms as effectively as did SUVs and master bedroom suites. Consumer decisions are driven by norms that change over time[3].  Importantly, markets cross national boundaries, thus shaping international culture in ways laws cannot.  Boycotts of slave-grown sugar two hundred years ago accelerated political change.  Brand-conscious multinationals such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart have long supply chains that everything from labor practices to animal stewardship.  Riots over high food prices led to the Arab-Spring.  Concerns of the 99% in OWS are as much or more about economic opportunity as citizenship.

But, as critics of consumer citizenship will point out, consumerism promotes superficial engagements, faddish preferences, insatiable shopaholics, and selfish and intolerant people. Basic needs of food and shelter have long been satisfied so consumption is now driven by selfish pleasures and individual advancement. Consumerism divides us, forcing us to define ourselves through material possessions, inspiring wasteful excess and conspicuous consumption to compete with the Joneses or enjoy every more ephemeral bursts of novelty.[4]  It focuses not on what we share nor on our responsibilities to one another, but rather on how we differ.   Sustainable development requires real politics, hard work, time, investment, compromise, and perhaps suffering and sacrifice. Consumerism, in contrast, is easy and voluntary: consumers won’t deal if they don’t get their way or if the transaction is not convenient.  Moreover, the materialistic yearnings for physical gratification makes people “lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all” (De Tocqueville).  Finally, the market ignores equity: products are purchased by those who can afford them, not distributed to those who need them.  Any sustainable development trajectory must redress inequities and injustices or it will not be sustainable for long.

If consumer-citizenship cannot steer a course towards sustainable development, perhaps there is a third way, led by business rather than led by citizens or consumers.

The business community increasingly accepts that 9 billion people living well and within planetary limits cannot be achieved with more efficiency and more technological innovations; they accept that sustainable development will require transformations of lifestyles and consumption patterns. [5]   Their suggested strategy is for businesses to move society along this sustainable trajectory by changing both the supply and demand side of markets; that requires innovating more sustainable products and changing consumer choices.  Both tasks are daunting and will require care, collaboration and prudence.

Fortunately businesses already have the skill sets to succeed at both tasks.  Research and development can design products and services that increasingly decouple consumer consumption from material consumption.  For example, the cradle-to-cradle product design system eliminates waste by redirecting product disposal back into production of new products.  Likewise, businesses are accomplished at influencing consumer choice. They do this overtly through marketing, labeling, and branding products to shape consumer preferences and to help consumers make better choices. Businesses also shape consumer choice covertly by choice editing.  Suppliers, manufacturers and retailers replace unsustainable ingredients and processes that go into their products with more sustainable ingredients and processes.  They also, and probably more importantly for its impacts on sustainability, change the menu of choices so that consumers select only among choices that can be sustainably supplied.

For this strategy of business-led sustainable development to work, businesses need a level playing field.  All countries must have similar social, economic, environmental regulations promoting sustainability.  If they do, businesses will find ways to sustainably produce and sell the things we want within that regulatory framework.  Otherwise, some actors will relocate to less-regulated (i.e., cheaper to operate) locations and outcompete businesses trying to do the right thing.  An un-level playing field forces players to play only one game: a race to the bottom.

For any of these solutions to work—consumer citizenship or business-led sustainable development—the market alone is not up to the task.  Neither efficiency nor innovation—the things a market does best—are sufficient.  Care and prudence are required.  Consumers must care enough to willingly change their consumption patterns and citizens must collaborate to empower governments to set and enforce global standards that level and define the playing field within which businesses can operate and sustainable development can be achieved.