While symptomatic of and supporting economic growth, consumption has been directly linked with a range of global environ- mental problems – in highly industrialised countries consumption has reached rates that clearly cannot be sustained within the limits of the Earth ecological systems. Populous BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) with economies in transitions are heading in the same direction – everyone aspires to good life and prosperity. At the same time, a large portion of human population is still in dire need of economic and human development. The UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 12 focuses on ensuring sustainable consumption and pro- duction patterns.2
As the UN Agenda 21 states, there is a need for new concepts of wealth and prosperity. At this crucial juncture our civilization is redefining what constitutes a good quality of life and informing our understanding of
‘who gets how much’, in order to enable sustainable development where it is most needed, and secure living within ecological limits. To that end, policies are being introduced to address sustainable production as well as consumption around the world. Initially, the focus was on technological innovations to achieve sustainable production by industries; however, historical evidence suggests that, notwithstanding its merits, this is not enough if we are to achieve sustainable lifestyles. Therefore, consumption has been added as one of the key concepts for sustainable development, to complement the efforts in production, as stated in the 10-year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production adopted at the Rio+20 Conference.3 In essence, sustainable consumption
1 Topic Sheet prepared by Ljiljana Rodic, with inputs from David Wilson.
2 http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgsproposal
3 See, for example, http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?menu=204
calls for citizens and governments to consider the environmental consequences of their consumption patterns. Accordingly, business, people and government constitute the three groups on which the change towards sustainable consumption and production depends.
After the 1992 UN Conference in Rio, the Network of National Cleaner Production Centres (NCPCs) was established as collaboration between UNIDO and UNEP.4 UNEP’s 2012 Global Outlook on Sustainable Consumption and Production Policies5 provides a wealth of interesting cases of concrete policy measures and initiatives that aim at mandating, promoting and supporting sustainable consumption and production (SCP) in countries around the world. In addition, the UNEP’s Global SCP Clearinghouse was launched in 2013.6
Sustainable Production
Sustainable production addresses a broad range of production features, including (a) function as the starting point for design, rather than a material product, (b) design of products for durability, repair and disassembly, (c) properties of materials used for the product and in the production processes, (d) water and energy consumption, (e) responsible sourcing, including environmental impacts such as those on climate change, on land and biodiversity, (f) social impact on workers and local communities. A useful systematic overview of issues that play a role in sustainable production is provided in the UNEP’s 2009 document ‘Design for Sustainability’.7 Sustainable production can be directly linked with waste management; at the production stage, major gains can be achieved in both quantitative and qualitative waste
4 http://www.unido.org/ncpc.html
5 Reference to this and other UNEP publications on this topic are listed in Annex A, Chapter 2, section SCP.
6 http://www.scpclearinghouse.org/. Also, there is a European Round Table on Food Sustainable Consumption and Production, http://www.food-scp.eu.
7 Reference to this and other UNEP publications on this topic are listed in Annex A.
Sustainable consumption and production 41
prevention through design and selection of materials and production processes which eliminate or reduce use of hazardous substances. In addition, choice of materials and component assembly methods largely determine the recycling potential at the end of the use period.
Addressing production is also important because most waste does not come from households but from other sources, such as mining, agriculture, construction, manufacturing industry and others.9
Sustainable Consumption
Consumers can be citizens, businesses or governments.
Various education campaigns are launched and diverse channels and forms are used to provide individual consumers with information that will guide their future purchasing decisions towards (more) sustainable choices and thereby support them in developing a sense of environmental citizenship and empower them to take a key role as social agents in sustainable development.
However, the approaches to promoting sustainable consumption will probably be ineffective if they fail to address people’s more pressing, overarching social concerns about equity, power, privilege and justice which they see in their everyday life both in their communities and in the society as a whole. Also, telling people to consume less when so many people can hardly afford to consume enough, telling people what to do and how to live when governing institutions do little to address their own consumption issues, will not be received well.
Moreover, consumption is not just a way to satisfy human material needs for shelter, food and clothing. For better
8 It is particularly important to examine this effect in relation to decoupling of economic growth and resources use, as discussed in 2011 UNEP document on decoupling, cited in Annex A, Chapter 2, section SCP.
9 See data presented in Section 2.3.
or for worse, the act of consumption serves a multitude of other purposes; it is a way of expressing one’s identity, demonstrating status and social aspirations, as well as creating lifestyle and servicing personal relationships.
Therefore, in order to be effective, proposed sustainable alternatives ought to be adequate replacement not only in terms of product’s functionality but also in terms of these symbolic values and meanings.
Finally, how is it possible for an individual to live sustainably when society is not geared towards sustainable living?
Products are designed with planned obsolescence as a requirement and often cannot be repaired. Furthermore, it is difficult to make sustainable, ‘green’ individual choices within social structures and culture that promote materialistic consumerism, supported by the messages from the media and the government about the need to increase consumption in support of the economy.
Simplistic approaches that ignore the currently dominant societal context of consumption will not be successful.
More profound changes, nothing short of a paradigm shift, are needed.
Businesses, as one of the key actors in the system with direct influence on consumption patterns, have a major role to play in facilitating and promoting sustainable consumption and production. This can be achieved, among others, through their own purchasing choices from the suppliers, the extent to which they engage with them and other actors in their supply chain, as well as corporate culture and workers’ habits on the premises.10 A new discourse is being created through diverse forms of interaction between the public, civil society organizations and the governments around the world, including a constructive dialogue about joint efforts towards
10 More detailed information can be found in the 2010 UNEP/Wuppertal Institute document cited in Annex A, Chapter 2, section SCP.
Illusion of dematerialization: ‘out-sourcing’ of waste generation and management
A shift to the ‘information age’ is often seen as a trend of dematerialization of society, as technical innovations result in ever smaller electronic products such as computers and telephones, accompanied by incorporation of electronic components into electrical appliances, vehicles and industrial machinery. Researchers have been warning however against the prevailing ‘gut’ feeling that this gain in resource efficiency (amount of resources used per unit product) inexorably leads to decrease in the resource use and reduced environmental impact. The evidence suggests the opposite often to be true: technological efficiency improvements push consumption higher, resulting in higher use of resources in total. For example, technological gains in energy efficiency have been counteracted by increased energy consumption. Similarly, even though our electronic devices are getting smaller and smaller, in order to satisfy the market demand, the use of scarce materials such as rare metals for their production is sky-rocketing. This phenomenon is known as the rebound effect or Jevons paradox.7
The ‘service-based economies’ that have characterized development in industrialized countries are also seen as significant contributors to dematerialization. In reality, some of the service sectors, such as recreation and leisure, are responsible for large amounts of emissions. In addition, products for consumption in these ‘modern’ economies are largely manufactured elsewhere, with all the ensuing resource use, generation of huge amounts of waste from raw material extraction (mining) and from manufacture, and emissions to air and water. So it is not only production that is outsourced, but also the accompanying waste generation and pollution and the need for its adequate management and control. Environmentally sound waste management and pollution control in developing countries is thus an issue of both international social justice and corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Government as a ‘green’ customer
Around the world, governments procure trillions of dollars’ worth of works, goods and services every year in a wide range of sectors, with construction, health, transport and education being the predominant ones. While
in many cases the focus is still on tendering rules and opting for the lowest price, the purchasing power of government and the wider public sector is increasingly being used to support businesses that offer more sustainable products and services. Furthermore, being at least as effective as some of the (frequently used) research and development subsidies in fostering innovation, public procurement provides a major opportunity to further the policy goals in the areas of sustainability and innovation, often in combination with support to SMEs as an engine of growth.
In the EU, public procurement has recently received renewed attention and is now being used as a potentially powerful policy instrument to promote – both trigger and respond to – innovation.10
In order to prepare so-called ‘green purchasing affirmative procurement programs’, US Federal agencies use the EPA’s guidelines on Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP).11
Source: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/cpg/
11 The 2011 proposal for a EU Directive on public procurement is listed in Annex A, Chapter 2, section SCP.
12 The U.S. EPA guidelines are listed in Annex A, Chapter 2, section SCP.
sustainable communities, within planetary ecological boundaries. Inclusion of sustainability considerations in formal education, starting from elementary school onwards, is generally seen as an indispensible basis for such efforts. In addition, building strong and authentic
leadership, in combination with governmental institutions taking responsibility for their own day-to-day consumption practices, in other words, ‘walking the talk’ and abiding by the principles of fairness and equity, will have positive effects on public perception and behaviour.