Hello and welcome to my blog!

Fellow students from the UEA Sustainable Consumption module will know all about the idea behind this blog, but for anyone else who happens to glance in from the blogosphere - we're using these blogs to share and discuss ideas and concepts regarding sustainable consumption learned from the course and other media sources, with a dash of personal views and opinions.

I’m reading an MSc in Environmental Sciences at UEA which has a broad choice of modules in both the social and natural sciences, so why choose sustainable consumption?

For me, it is because I have become increasingly interested in consumption and my role (duty?) as a consumer. The choices we make when purchasing goods and services are implicitly casting a vote of approval on not only the quality/desirability of the item produced, but also the methods used to produce it. For instance, the choice between a fairtrade product and a cheaper alternative. These are the kind of decisions that I have started to make over the last few years, but only at a fairly superficial level on well publicised schemes/brands. I had not started to consider many other factors (such as the Carbon footprint) let alone the psychology behind changing patterns of consuming on a large scale. Hence my first goal from this module (a very personal one) is to better understand the reasons for and potential ramifications of the buying choices I currently make and so improve my decision making process. The revelations from this process will also hopefully help me to understand the difficulties and complexities of changing buying habits.

Leading on from this, I want to know more about the current and future schemes/policies/theories to address our current unsustainable consumption rates at structural and societal levels. As part of this, I also hope to gain the tools necessary to deconstruct and evaluate these theories and so understand their associated challenges, opportunities and implications.

Really enjoying the content and format of this course so far – looking forward to the rest :o)