Case Study: Recycle Bank - a recycling loyalty scheme

My chosen case study will be on a pilot scheme currently running in the Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead by an American company called Recycle Bank who run recycling loyalty schemes. Here is a link to the council website info page.

All non-garden is placed in the same bin and points are awarded based on the weight, i.e. heavier bin, more points. As with other loyalty schemes, you can then use the points to "buy" goods and services from local and national partners. Wonder if you can exchange them for airmiles...

My book for review - Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism.

A little behind here I think! I’ve chosen Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism by Geoffrey Miller. The author is an evolutionary psychologist who examines how our individual and social evolution have led us to use the things we buy to express our “fitness” – to show our intelligence, personality, wealth, health and basically anything that will help us survive and propagate.

I chose this book because I’m interested in how evolution has created the marvels of nature that surround (and include) us. I’ve read popular books on the subject before, but know very little about human psychological and social evolution – the memes passed down I guess. Understanding consumption in these terms is something I want to find out about.

Is advertising enough to bring about sustainable consumption and how does advertising effect my consumption behaviour?

No, better advertising isn’t enough to bring about sustainable consumption, but it’s a necessary first step. If the message is not in the public sphere, I believe people tend to view it as “old news” and will stop thinking about it. We have a lot of factors competing for our attention and so if there isn't anything reminding and informing us of issues like sustainable consumption, it’s easy to slip back to our most comfortable position, i.e. one that involves the least change.

However, advertising sustainable consumption, particularly on television, is only going to have a limited effect. It doesn’t help that it’s competing for airspace with adverts that are mostly encouraging us to consume more. More innovative ways of getting the message out there are needed – surely there’s room for more sustainable consumption reality TV shows! Just need a couple of soon-to-retire sports stars, a former Big Brother contestant, the odd glamour girl and an aging news reader going through a mid-life crisis and we’re almost there.

As for the effects of adverts on my consumption behaviour, I’d like to think they have very little impact. I don’t have a tele at the moment, which I guess limits my exposure, but I can’t remember the last time I saw an advert and thought “Ahh, that’s what I need.” I think it impacted me more when I was younger, especially during my teen years where I guess I was trying to find out how to fit in, to define myself. Buying the “right” trainers was an important choice at the time and making “wrong” choices would have led to ridicule. This is one example of the impact of advertising as a whole, which is big – very big. Not just tv adverts, but the whole range of media, e.g. tv shows, sponsored events, magazines, newspapers etc. They have a large hand in creating and defining lifestyle choices - creating and manipulating social norms.

So revisiting the effect of advertising on my consumption behaviour, I’d say that it has a small direct effect and large indirect effect.

What needs to be done to encourage people to consume more sustainably?

Mmm nice small topic for the blogs this week then! I’d say that a range of methods should be used. I think a lot of the government campaigns with goals to raise awareness and/or change behaviour are definitely a good start. I don’t think that the kind of behaviour changes needed are going to happen over night and these schemes should maybe only be judged on their effect on the next or at least up and coming generations. Also, as is it generally the case that the older you get, the more change resistant you become, these campaigns should be youth focused and the suggestion in PositiveEnergyShifts blog to include these in education curriculum is an excellent one.

Governments should also lead by example. The UK government has been poor at introducing, supporting and enforcing greener methods of provision. Supporting and encouraging more efficient and cleaner ways to provide not only shows the government leading from the front, but also a lot of these are better than the way we do things at the moment. Showing people that “going green” doesn’t always have to be about sacrifices would make people a lot more agreeable to changing their behaviour.

Both of these don’t really address the main problem though as they only require small behavioural changes. As people are naturally change and loss averse, schemes that advocate significant lifestyle changes and imply that people are going to have to give something up immediately trigger negative reactions. I think the best way to get people to consume more sustainably is to stress the positive aspects of sustainable choices. This should go past financial incentives and look to stress factors such as working locally gives you more time with friends & family, buying food locally sourced food allows you to engage with and support the local community more, etc.

I also think that these need to be supported by stronger regulations and a decent grant/incentive system to support the growth of organisations that will give people looking to change their life styles information, support, encouragement and access to more sustainable provision networks.

GDP or GNH? What should governments be striving for and why?

GDP is the total value of goods and services produced within a country (or other specified territory) and is currently the most widely used measure of economic performance. There are a several criticisms of its ability to do even this, but on top of this it has also become a proxy for judging standard of living. At low levels this is probably true, but the higher GDP gets the less accurate a measure it becomes. Also, as the proxy has become the de facto “standard of living”, achieving increases in GDP have become policy goals in themselves, without thought about whether these increases are actually raising living standards. Hence, the measure has become the target and is just another manifestation of chasing money (or growth) for money’s sake rather than for the benefits it is supposed to confer.

So if not GDP, what instead? It comes as no surprise that due to the many questions over the validity of GDP as a measure of both economic performance and standard of living, there are a range of alternative measures currently around that are used to gauge societal progress that each use different methodologies and factors. What we don’t have is consensus over a suitable alternative that is globally comparable over a range of political ideologies. And that’s what we should be striving for. By identifying and agreeing the factors that we (as a global society) consider the best measures of our well-being we’re in effect setting goals to develop our economies/societies in those directions.

Does business have a duty to promote sustainable consumption?

Hmm, don’t really like saying this, but no I don’t think they have a duty to promote sustainable consumption. I think they should as we’re going to start hitting walls (if we haven’t already) that will make life on this planet not very fun, to say the least. The people who run businesses are as mortal as anyone and will face the same consequences, so I hope they (and everyone) will start to think about it more.

However, in an economic system that is based on increasing consumption levels, it’s not practical for most businesses to encourage sustainable consumption as it directly threatens their profits and hence their ability to compete. Indeed, in the case of corporations it could be deemed illegal! For this to change, the system has to change, which means…

…the duty lies with us. In general, as a global society, in particular, on us in the developed world and specifically on the governments we choose to elect. I think it’s a long, complex change and one that isn’t particularly palatable for developed nations as we’re the ones who get the most benefits from the current system. But change is good and more importantly – inevitable!