Red, Green & Blue: Is Shopping Anti-Environment?
Even as many retailers are adopting the marketing slogan, "Buy Green," a backlash movement is emerging calling on people to "buy nothing" or, at least, "buy as little as possible and, preferably, buy nothing new."
Now, I can pretty well predict how free-marketers would respond to this ("Aaaagh! There goes the economy!"). But how effective is the buy-nothing strategy environmentally? I’ve seen arguments both pro and con.
I try to buy responsibly (local produce, fair-trade and sustainable goods) and not to buy what I don’t need … but buy nothing (outside of the obvious food, medicine, essential clothing)? Is this a legitimate strategy for conserving and saving the Earth? What do you think?
Tags: buy green, consumerism, consumers, environmentalism, green, Red, Green and Blue, shopping
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August 7th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Harkening back to Walden here aren’t we, Shirley? I actually enjoyed the idea of a minimalist lifestyle very much but obviously it drove Thoreau insane by count of his later writings and social theories.
But I think you do have a point. My wife and I joke that if we ever get divorced that the other has to take all the shhhhh…tuff. Me, I’ve got my favorite frying pan and my treasured Glock .40 but that’s pretty much all I’d need to start over and I don’t think I’d miss the material stuff a bit.
But what we need to consider is what motivates people in this country. Certainly accumulation of cr@p is one thing that does… you can see that by the lines at Wal-Mart every day. But hey… if that keeps people working and productive then even fuzzy slippers and XL spandex shorts have a purpose.
As long as we limit ourselves to recommending a limited lifestyle rather than demanding it I think the economy is safe though. There are two components to a successful economy. First you have to let people earn a living for the most part doing what they want. Then you have to let people spend their earnings on what they want to buy. If it’s a big honking SUV or gas guzzling Corvette that motivates Joe Lunchbox to get up and go to work every morning then I believe he should have the liberty of that indulgence. In doing so he will be a productive member of society paying taxes and generally buying things that keep other people working and paying taxes. When this cycle is hindered the economy suffers as does all things that depend upon the economy. Charities, government services, historic societies all suffer when the economy dips so we need to be careful about limiting what people can buy. Again, though, I believe it’s important to encourage people to live a limited lifestyle; certainly well within their means.
August 7th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Jimmy, I agree with you that both an absolute minimalists lifestyle and one with too, too much shtuff are probably equally undesirable. But what about the environmental costs of our purchasing decisions?
I return to the current wave of "Froogles" who advocate buying almost nothing new. Their argument is that buying at garage sales, flea markets and consignment shops is kinder on the environment. Yet some of the new purchases we can make aren’t actually as harmful to the environment as we might believe, as the report I referenced from the Union of Concerned Scientists pointed out (the UCS apparently has done a more detailed study of which purchases are most worth buying used or recycled, from an environmental standpoint, rather than used … but I haven’t been able to track it down yet, just that one chapter I cited.)
In any case, the gist of the UCS chapter I did find is that you can drive yourself crazy trying to avoid all or any sorts of purchases just because of their potential environmental impact, whereas we can make a meaningful difference by just focusing on a few specific investments (i.e., CFLs, better insulation, updated appliances, etc.). Given that, is "froogality" really a worthy cause, or are the Froogles fooling themselves and not doing much to help the greater environmental situation anyway?
August 7th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Well I think that depends on the person. I hope people don’t bring themselves to the point of worry about all of this. But if it’s something that interests them it can be like a hobby. My dad ran a grocery store for 40 years and his favorite thing now is guerilla shopping where he clips and organizes coupons then matches them up to loss leaders in various community grocery stores. He’s the guy that leaves the store with a buggy full of groceries for $12. He enjoys that and can spot the deals very easily so the time he involves in it is really not a cost to him.
I’d say if you feel that being an uber-green is a responsibility and you fret over it constantly then instead I would focus on more effective choices. Otherwise you might burn out and we’ll catch you at the Hummer dealership financing the balance of your down payment with a MasterCard.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
LOL!!! I like your Dad’s "guerilla shopping" (though I’d guess some of the local grocery store managers aren’t amused)
I’m not fretting over being "uber-green" constantly — just trying to do the right thing. I think it really has to come down to a case-by-case, person-by-person basis.
For example, I try to avoid Big Box stores and try to avoid buying out-of-season fruit shipped long distances, but if I happen to have to go to the local WalMart in February to buy groceries, have my oil changed and get a prescription filled (thus, saving gas by completing three tasks in one location), I might fall victim to the tempting "2 for $4" Chilean blueberry special, especially since I’d prefer my 4-year-old son eat fruit rather than fruit-flavored high-fructose corn syrup. So does that make me more of a pragmatist and less of an environmentalist, or is the occasional indulgence OK?
August 8th, 2007 at 3:33 am
I’ve been thinking about this since I reviewed the Lazy Environmentalist, and although one big reason I don’t shop is the environment, I think the main reason I cut back on shopping just for shopping’s sake (i.e. buying things I don’t really need) was because I realized that shopping is a way to numb people, just like any other vice. For me, it’s kind of like a one night stand (hey, it’s just a metaphor…): it feels good when you are doing it, but shame and remorse follow. I don’t want material things to be a source of validation of my worth.
From an environmental standpoint, "green" shopping is just like reducing energy use: many people just want to put solar panels on their roof, or offset, etc, without first seeing how they can cut down on how much energy they are using in the first place. It makes more sense to eliminate buying what you don’t need, THEN focusing on making sustainable choices when you do buy.
But I’m digressing…great topic!
August 8th, 2007 at 3:56 am
What I’d like to see is numbers of embodied energy, water, mass, and emissions for every product being sold, whether on labels or in an online database. I feel like such a thing could be a tremendous contribution to the conscious consumer as well as researchers. Of course, assembling this sort of database would require people to agree on lifecycle assessment methods at the -very least-, not to mention actually measuring those values…
As for the question at hand: whether or not shopping is anti-environment “depends” (lawyer’s answer). I’ve already trumpeted the Bill McDonough card enough, so I won’t go there. But I’ll say this: if I wanted to see a large-scale greening of store products (and I do), I would indeed aim straight for the king of kings: WalMart.
August 8th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Very good point Kelly. Conservation should always be the first step. There is a benefit to overt consumption though in that it helps fund all manner of environmental advancement through tax revenues.
And C!, do you think an Oil tax would build most of those components you want to track into the price of goods?
Shirley, I loath WalMart with its walk-a-mile parking lot and rude and often oblivious patrons. But when I need to stock up on Fancy Feast, shampoo and other toiletries then that’s where I’ll be. I think we just have to strike a balance. I think people fear the idea of hypocrisy when considering these issues. Bob Dylan summed it up best though: “Good and bad, I defined these terms, quite clear no doubt some how… Oh but I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now”.
August 8th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Kelli, you make a great point: shopping "green" for the sake of benefitting the environment is a bit silly when you haven’t checked for basic improvements you can make first (i.e., an energy audit, better insulation, etc.). It’s not quite as bad as putting lipstick on a pig, but …
c! I love your idea. Wonder if there’s any resource out there, online or off, that’s attempted anything like that. I’ve found plenty of carbon calculators, water-use calculators, etc., but nothing of that scale. I bet that would be a real eye-opener for many people, even those who think they’re doing very well environmentally.
Great quote, Jimmy. And, you’re right: I think people do fear the idea of hypocrisy. But we’re living in a culture where that fear is justified: the "gotcha" mentality seems to be everywhere, and one wrong move gets you top news billing (Paris Hilton notwithstanding), or at least a lot of tsk, tsks and whispering from the neighbors. Like the saying goes, even the paranoid sometimes have real enemies.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
I think there would have to be an international standard for lifecycle assessment before real work could be done on quantifying the contents of productions. New ISO standard, anyone? And oh gracious, how political would the creation of such a standard be! Part of the problem is the sheer reductionistic scale of the thing, basically requiring any product manufacturer to query its suppliers, which require queries down the chain and so on, right down to the actual energy and mass producers. Indeed it would be eye-opening to see real numbers.
Jimmy: an oil tax may spur some groups to look at lifecycle assessments, but I’m sure that there are many other ways to deal with an oil tax as well.
As far as hypocrisy goes: I think that as mere mortals, we are all hypocritical in some ways. I think that anyone, with some digging, could find past occurrences in our lives where we didn’t quite act as we claimed to believe. Ideology’s worst enemy is reality.
August 8th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
The argument seems similar to the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is doing things right where effectiveness is doing the right things. Choosing high yield / high return investments in our greening like say insulation or a high MPG car trumps agonizing over every aspect of our lives including whether our vegan burger was built with US or South American soy.
Everybody’s got a cause I guess and if it’s something you enjoy then go ahead and research the source of the burlap in your reusable grocery bags. I’m against, though, imposing these kinds of research and reporting costs on businesses for a small minority of shoppers. Let’s keep the product prices low and spend our savings on more effective uses of our green dollars.