Eco Friend or Foe?
The Ego-System of Sustainable Products
The hills are alive with the sound of eco-consciousness. Whether claiming to be “green”, “eco-friendly” or “climate neutral”, the consumer market is saturated with goods that claim to benefit our environment.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that this is a bad thing per se. Like any individual of sound mind, I’ve heard in David Attenborough documentaries, read in the news and, quite frankly, viewed first-hand the havoc that we are wreaking on our planet. Obviously, something needs to be done if we are to turn the tide of climate change.
Equally, however, I would argue that recent trends towards the consumerisation of “green” goods is working to quite the opposite effect. To the marked detriment of our climate, the “eco-friendly” movement, for all its ostensibly good intentions, is becoming increasingly “ego-friendly”.
To take an example, let’s examine the mysterious case of the reusable shopping bag. Now, I’m not so sceptical as to suggest that, back in October 2015, the ‘5p charge’ on plastic shopping bags was introduced with anything but the most honourable of intentions. In fact, like the rest of us, I was convinced that this would be the harbinger of widespread climate consciousness; surely, such a marked effort to decrease our single-use plastic consumption was a step in the right direction?
To be honest, I could practically hear the birds chirping as I strolled through the aisles of Tesco, clutching a trusty Bag for Life at my side; I envisioned a new, carbon-neutral world, in which I had truly purchased a life-long shopping companion. Add to this the comforting slogan of No Time To Waste, which didactically adorned its red-white-and-blue exterior, and the bag became something of a patriotic symbol; a pledge of my allegiance to our green and pleasant land.
Cut to the statistics, and it’s safe to say that my confidence was rather naïvely placed. It seems that the ‘comforting slogans’ of various Bags for Life proved rather too resonant with the public consciousness. According to Greenpeace, these bags, which contain more plastic than their single-use counterparts, proved so commercially popular that their sales amounted to some 1.5 billion in 2018.
And, if we fast-forward to 2022, an even more alarming trend comes to light: the rise of the cotton tote bag. Don’t get me wrong, I accept that I, like everyone else, have fully bought into this trend. Let’s not kid ourselves, though. Laying claim to being an “eco” alternative, evidence suggests that a tote bag would need to be used some 20,000 times to offset its environmental impact. Unless your shopping habits rival Cher from Clueless, this target seems rather unrealistic.
Better, then, to abandon all pretences. The purchase of tote bags and such-like is not a display of selfless environmentalism; these bags draw us in with eye-catching designs and funky slogans, associating us with a suitably high-brow or “edgy” institution. At the end of the day, they are “ego-friendly”.
The same principle can be applied to several frontrunners of the eco-consumer revolution, particularly when it comes to our diet. This isn’t to undermine the ecological intentions of movements like veganism; I seriously commend anyone who can commit to environmentalism so wholeheartedly.
But let’s face it: if veganism meant eating Spam, Brad Pitt probably wouldn’t be doing it. Thus, type “veganism” into any search engine and you will find countless images of brightly packaged foodstuffs, often overwritten with so many claims of being friendly that one begins to imagine they are overcompensating. While the purchase of green food alternatives is far from futile, the marketing of eco-friendly products is increasingly conducted in the interests of an ego-system, which treats the environment with secondary status.
Take Wunda, Nestlé’s all-new, plant-based, yellow-split-pea milk alternative. Claiming to offer an eco-friendly, high-protein, “Wunda-fully versatile” – yes, they went there – option, the product epitomises “environmentalism” as a consumer category. Yet the company has dedicated just €1.6 billion to its research budget, while Nestlé ranks among the top three plastic polluters. Clearly, in seeking to be more planet-conscious, our generation has become the target of an effective commercial enterprise.
And it doesn’t take much cross-examination to see why. Like the now-infamous Depop “y2k” hashtag, the label ‘eco-friendly’ justifies a notable mark-up in price. Non-dairy milk alternatives cost up to double that of cows’ milk, while the rather nebulously defined tag of ‘organic’ invariably comes at a premium. Are we really to think that, across the board, these products are drawn from the interests of our environment? As in the case of Wunda, eco-consciousness risks becoming more of a branding tool than an authentic commercial agenda.
Note, too, society’s disdainful treatment of anti-consumerist “eco” switches. For the 1960s hippie counterculture, environmentalism meant the rejection of capitalism, consumerism and materialism outright. That such an approach was widely vilified as tree hugging shines a critical light on the state of our environmental consciousness, which remains grounded in consumerist values.
By all means, carry your tote bag and drink your oat-milk latte. In the spirit of Bags for Life: “every little helps”. Equally, we should remember that the environment’s worst enemy is, ultimately, consumerism. Before reaching for a product that claims environmentalist allegiance, it would be wise to question whether it is geared towards our egos rather than our ecosystem. Better still, it would be wise to question whether we need to reach for it at all.
Illustration: Sarah Knight