Written by: Isha Vashista
Edited by: Jaanvi Thorat
Illustration by: Saranya Bhakuni
Green consumerism is a phenomenon that refers to a list of behaviours that promote pro-environmental effects. In an effort to be more sustainable, green consumerism is a concept that holds a dilemma at best and is hypocritical at worst. Yet, before we dive into the multiple facets of green consumerism, it is important to trace its origin.
Sustainability, a concept that holds captive the whole world, took on a capitalistic persona just over the last decade due to the worsening condition of the environment. The increasing awareness about climate change and the need for sustainable development paved the path for the capitalist regime to bring sustainability into the hyper-consumerist way of living. With a market ripe for exploitation, the very industries and corporations that were the cause of global warming and climate change, took the capitalistic sustainability facade as their way into a form of revenue that now advocated for eco-friendly ideologies. Thus, ecological calamity and ‘sustainable capitalism’ gave birth to the culture of green consumerism. It became a pseudo-solution to the problem of climate change caused by the hyper-consumerist way of living that society has adopted at the behest of capitalism.
Ideal green consumerism is a state that holds multiple pros and cons. Admittedly, widespread green consumerism could lead to a shift in systemic policies to give way for a more environmentally friendly economy and producing sector. A “foot in the door '' psychological effect could also be induced by encouraging the people to change their lifestyles to something more sustainable. However, this ideal doesn’t necessarily always come true. Green consumerism puts the moral responsibility of taking care of the environment on the individual by having them engage with the capitalist system that caused the environmental issue in the first place. Foundations of this can be found to coincide with what has been termed “fundamentalist capitalism”. This idea claims that acts of individual choice are the remedy to larger societal disorders. It is also important to notice that green consumerism works in tandem with green labelling (claims that state certain products to be in line with specific environmental standards) and greenwashing (providing misleading information about how a company's products are more environmentally sound).
For example, Sephora, a beauty brand in the US, boasts of the number of products that they sell under the “Natural standards” initiative. When, in fact, multiple products contain harmful chemical agents, according to the Environmental Working Group's Cosmetics Database. Thus , the green labelling enables the idea of green consumerism, which merely provides a superficial glamour over the real problem of climate change and does not engage with the true systemic problem of overproduction and overconsumption. Another aspect to consider is the privilege that attaches itself to green consumerism. More often than not, the products that are considered to be sustainable cost a lot of money, making them accessible only to the privileged classes and forsaking those who cannot afford them, awarding another strike against green consumerism in the department of sustainability.
Green stands to be synonymous with sustainability in this context, and yet is placed next to the word that is the cause of climate change and global warming. Green consumerism, as understood by the majority, thus works into the oxymoronic implications, which on deeper perusal, can be deemed as hypocritical. The same can be said for green labelling and greenwashing. It is perhaps time to rethink our idea of contribution to sustainability and employ better methods to do so.
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