Buying green won't save the planet: How some companies are bucking the trend of sustainable consumption
An irony of mainstream corporate sustainability efforts is that they focus significantly on the power of consumption. H&M promotes its ' Conscious Collection ' that uses organic cotton or recycled polyester. Samsung's ' Galaxy for the Planet ' showcases its use of recycled plastics in its devices and sustainable packaging.
When companies advertise their products as sustainable, consumers frequently assume they can buy new items more frequently, making such moves paradoxically self-defeating. But these marketing ploys typically only focus on a selective element of a product's impact.
The problem is that while each individual product may have less of an impact than what came before it, the increase in overall consumption mitigates any environmental savings, and so inherently perpetuates the cycle of consumption that's a root cause of today's environmental problems.
Over the last half century and more, the environmental movement has gradually morphed into a consumer movement, with corporate messaging expertly shifting responsibility from systemic change to individual purchasing decisions.
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