Sustainable Consumption

How can we survive without consuming goods?

Impossible. Consumption is woven so deeply into the fabric of society that we now cannot see its threads. Its all comes down to how intelligently you can consume goods.
Consumption is prevalent is almost every facet of daily life. Sustainable Consumption is a type of consumer activism that relates closely to the idea of dollar voting. You have the power to choose what you spend your money on, and can be seen as the same as a vote, vote for good products and stray from damaging ones. Consuming ethically or morally leads to purchasing goods that are seen as positive or beneficial to the individual who is buying. Company-based purchasing is a similar concept but applies to brands as a whole. If you produce goods sustainably then people will recognize that brand as morally kind to the planet and continue to support how they do business.

Popularized by the UK magazine the Ethical Consumer, is the idea of consuming goods because of cross-beneficial properties. The magazine’s key innovation was to produce ranking tables that gave positive and negative marks across categories relating to the products affect on animals, environment, people, politics, sustainability of sourcing, and more.

Ethos rankings for Companies on http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/

This rating table allows conscious consumers to see the impact of the goods that they purchase and how to avoid products that are damaging to everything but their wallet.

The issue with green consumption is that a majority of people are not able to afford the extra price of cost-internalized products. This means they rely on purchasing goods that have been subsidized or extracted, manufactured, and, transported by methods that are looking for the highest positive difference between production costs and sale price.

Cost – from an economic standpoint- is simply the materials, labor, and time put into the creation of something. A meal at a restaurant, your new prius, or even getting a college degree. Price on the other hand is driven by supply and demand, or what someone would subjectively pay for such a good. When there are fewer goods provided or more goods being desired prices can raise and these prices can become unhooked from the reality of their cost. This can cause problems for individuals who already do not have much money and rely on cheap-externality heavy-products.

Life Cycle Assessment is another crucial step in determining how to consume products sustainably. Time is put into researching the source materials used and the steps taken during manufacturing to ensure damage is minimized where ever possible. Inputs of production are closely scrutinized for

Products with longer life cycles are preferable-and often have a higher cost- due to less damaging material sourcing methods, internalized costs of production and transportation emissions, and products that ideally last a lifetime.

Buying well-made, non damaging, products can be tough for an individual because most do not have direct knowledge of how products are sourced, assembled, and, transported behind closed doors or even beyond our nation’s borders. Groups like Ethical Consumer, will need to become more accessible to a broader audience and feature more products to give alternatives to individuals with budget or locational constraints.