What is sustainable consumption?

What we decide to buy is influenced by many factors, including our age and health, place of residence, income and wealth, social beliefs and even our moods.

Sustainable consumption asks us to consider issues that go beyond the individual when we shop. These include not only the ecological impacts of what we buy but also the equity, human rights and political dimensions of sustainability in the production and consumption process. These aspects of sustainable consumption provide guidelines on how to reduce the social and ecological impacts of what we consume.

For example, the Internet Just Shoppers' Guide suggests criteria to consider when buying such everyday things as chocolate, sports shoes, tuna, laundry detergent, soft drinks, paper, timber, clothing, and so on.

Guidelines such as these are not designed to make us feel guilty, but to encourage us to ask questions such as:
Do I really need this item?
Can I produce it myself?

And then, when we have decided to buy something, to think critically about each stage in the 'life-cycle' of a product:
Production
Transport and Retailing
Use
Disposal

There are many definitions of sustainable consumption, but most share a number of common features, including an emphasis on:

Satisfying basic human needs (not the desire for 'wants' and luxuries);
Favouring quality of life over material standards of living;
Minimising resource use, waste and pollution;
Taking a life-cycle perspective in consumer decision-making; and
Acting with concern for future generations.

As a result, Nick Robins and Sarah Roberts of the International Institute for Environment and Development suggest that a comprehensive definition of sustainable consumption needs to be grounded in a wider range of environmental, social equity and moral concerns - such as those explored in this module. They summarised these as:

Environmental damage

The extraction, production, use and disposal of many goods and services cause serious environmental problems such as resource depletion, energy wastage, pollution of the air, water and land, and growth in the levels of solid, toxic and hazardous wastes.

Poverty

While many people around the world, especially in the North, live lives of abundance and affluence, over a billion people still lack access to supplies of safe water, adequate sanitation, energy and nutrition.

Health

The production of many consumer goods cause extensive damage to human health through air and water pollution. While pollution is a major cause of premature death in the South, many diseases in the North are now considered 'lifestyle' diseases with people dying from the over-indulgence brought on by affluence.

Economic efficiency

Conventional development models have sought to compensate for the above problems by attempting to incorporate more people into consumer economy through economic growth (the proverbial 'bigger cake'). This has often been at the expense of changes in the distribution and pattern of consumption, which can be more cost-effective and resource efficient.

Global environmental change

Industrial, commercial and domestic energy use, especially in the transport sector, is the major source of greenhouse gases while air-conditioning and refrigeration are significant causes of ozone depletion. These global environmental threats can be addressed by changes in the design and construction of buildings and transport systems.

Quality of life

Increasing material affluence does not necessarily lead to a better quality of life due to the degradation of the human environment and the erosion of social relationships that it can bring.

Taking such principles into account, sustainable consumption can be defined in the following way:

Sustainable consumption integrates a range of social, economic and political practices at the individual, household, community, business and government levels that support and encourage:
reducing the direct environmental burden of producing, using and disposing goods and services;
meeting basic needs for key consumption goods and services, such as food, water, health, education and shelter;
maximising opportunities for sustainable livelihoods in the South;
consuming goods and services that contribute positively to the health and well-being of women and children;
increasing the development and adoption of energy and water efficient appliances, public transport and other demand-side measures, such as the production and sale of new goods and services adapted to global environmental constraints and lifestyles that place greater value on social cohesion, local traditions and non-material values.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_b/mod09/uncom09t06.htm