ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
may be little different. Many environmental problems can only be solved if
individual citizens accept their share of the responsibility by changing both
thenature and the level of consumption.
One phenomenon that is consistent with the ecological modernisation
discourse is the rise of ‘green consumerism’, whereby ‘knowledgeable’ con-
sumers apply environmental criteria when making purchasing choices with
theaim of influencing the economic activities of businesses (Spaargaren and
van Vliet 2000 : 70). Thus the ‘green’ consumer is the driving force of market
transformation (Seyfang 2005 : 294), encouraging manufacturers and retail-
ers to advertise the environmental friendliness of their products with the
intention of winning the custom of a more discerning and usually affluent
shopper. The Body Shop, for example, grew exponentially in the 1990s by sell-
ing its franchises worldwide on the back of the cosmetics market for ‘beauty
without cruelty’. Ethical investment, a broad term for any investment activ-
ities that aim to influence companies to adopt policies that benefit society
and the environment, has also become big business. In 2003, total ethical
assets in the USA reached $151 billion, the value of European ethical funds
was€12.2 billion, and£4.2 billion was invested in UK ethical unit trusts
(Carter and Huby 2005 : 258).
It is easy to decry green consumerism. The ecological modernisation of
domestic consumption requires knowledgeable consumers, but consumers
are frequently subjected to false or misleading claims about products: wash-
ing powders that never contained phosphates are suddenly marketed as
‘phosphate-free’ whilst refrigerators are described as ‘ozone-friendly’ when,
although CFC-free, they contain ozone-depleting HFCs. Stricter advertising
codes of practice and tough eco-labelling standards could remedy some of
these flaws.Abiggerproblemis that green consumerism remains a minor-
ity activity; too few people engage in it on too few occasions. An important
equity issue is that many people cannot afford the higher prices that char-
acterise most ‘green’ products. Yet many middle-income consumers are also
only intermittent green consumers, either because they are selective about
which high prices they will pay, or because there are numerous lifestyle
sacrifices, such as giving up the second car (let alone dispensing altogether
with a car) or dishwasher, that they are not prepared to make.
More fundamentally, green consumerism appears to be a contradiction
in terms, for how can weconsumeour way out of the environmental crisis?
By encouraging us to alter the type, rather than the level, of consumption,
‘shopping to save the planet’ does nothing to halt the inexorable overall
growthof consumption. Indeed, there is a danger that individuals will think
theyhave done their bit by buying a few green products, while maintain-
ing their high-consumption lifestyle. Consumers need to undergo a much
deeper process of social learning. However, Press and Mazmanian’s ( 1999 )
observation that in the USA ‘There is simply no visible governmental or
corporate leadership devoted to reducing extreme consumption and the
perceived need for high-volume, high-polluting, high-obsolescence products’