Environmental issues have reached new heights of public awareness, which has had an affect on the way people conduct their everyday lives and business operations.

Sustainability and environmental issues now hold greater significance for global consumers. Since the ecological movement began to highlight environmental problems in the sixties, the developed world has become more educated and aware. Global initiatives, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have raised consciousness. While the focus then was about global environmental issues, these days people are also concerned with the immediate effects of pollution and harmful chemicals on themselves and their children, whether in or out of the home.

Mainstream channels of discussion have increasingly populated the prevailing debate about how to achieve sustainability. National and international communities have been increasingly involved in discussing and affecting sustainability and environmental issues: from politics to the media, and from societies to individuals. This heightened awareness has communicated the overall message that everyone and everything has the potential to influence these issues. For example, consumer choices about whether to travel by plane or by train have enjoyed publicity as people become more aware of the kinds of activities that are at the forefront of the carbon emissions debate. Terms such as global warming, pollution, renewable energy and nuclear energy are now part of our everyday language and recycling has become as common an activity as shopping in some countries.

Ethical and Environmental Consumption

As consumers become more educated, companies are having to work harder at proving their green credentials and meeting their consumers’ new aspirations.

Consumers are becoming more aware of their actions and how they impact on environmental issues such as climate change and renewable energy sources. This heightened consciousness has empowered them and they are demonstrating enthusiasm about sustainability and the environment and the kinds of things they can do to make a difference. This has impacted on everything from the commercial world to the world of politics to the domestic world. Consumers are seeking greener credentials from their political parties, the businesses and brands they invest in and their local councils. While they want to make a difference at grassroots level by taking the time each week to separate their recyclable packaging and food waste from their general refuse, they also want to see that businesses and industries are contributing by, for example, trying to reduce their carbon emissions. Consumers are becoming more aware of the bigger picture. While they have known about huge environmental issues such as atomic waste and nuclear energy for decades, today, they are also concerned with pesticides and other toxic substances in everyday cleaning products.The notion of recycling has changed in line with the general heightened awareness. The term recycling no longer just refers to the way people think about organising their rubbish, it now refers to consumer attitudes towards the products they buy and use. Whereas the average product 20 years ago was designed for longevity, today products are in some cases planned obsolescent and are designed to be disassembled. This is in part to do with the rapid pace of technological progression, which has lead to a quick turnaround in production; but it is also to do with changing consumer attitudes towards the way we consume products. There is currently a widespread consumer habit of discarding products every few years. In terms of furniture and interior design, this quick turnaround has been made possible for consumers by furniture outlets such as Ikea selling inexpensive, up-to-date and stylish designs.

While this has made frequent redesigning of interiors easy for people to achieve, it has also adversely affected the recycling movement. Consumers may pride themselves on separating their glass jars, plastic bottles and metal cans, but they are simultaneously contributing to a general waste management problem by throwing out products when they are broken instead of fixing them; similarly, by purchasing new products when fashions have moved on instead of managing with older styles, it has also impacted upon eco-friendly design, creating challenges for environmentally-minded designers to make use of discarded products to create newly usable and trendy products aimed at environmentally conscious consumers.

This acute awareness of everything deriving from and affecting the environment has lead to a large and still growing consumer movement towards organic and ethical produce. For consumers it is largely a question of trust. Previous agricultural crises such as Mad Cow Disease (BSE), or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), and Foot and Mouth Disease have lead many British consumers to support ethical farming of livestock and organically grown food because they want to know where what they consume comes from. However, this trend towards ethical eating is also about fashion. Many city-dwelling consumers like to partake in aspects of a rural lifestyle by, for instance, attending farmers’ markets, which are increasing in size and popularity as they become social, political and lifestyle destinations for ethically-minded and ‘trendy’ consumers.

Supermarkets are picking up on this rural inclination by increasingly promoting and labelling their products by naming the farmer or area they are from (cf. Waitrose). Supermarkets are now also imitating the local organic box schemes, which revolve around the central idea of creating a direct link between producer and consumer, thereby circumventing the supermarkets as intermediaries by allowing consumers to order weekly deliveries to their front doors of a selection of seasonal, organic produce that should be as local as possible. Therefore the mass-reproduction of these ‘veggie boxes’ seems to contradict the idea at the very core of the scheme, but they are still appealing to consumers looking for a quick fix to ethical and environmental consumption. This big corporation imitation of a grassroots initiate comes after Nestlé launched its own brand of fair trade coffee after previously dismissing the idea as unfeasible. Both of these examples of locally originating initiatives being adopted and adapted by large businesses raises the questions: ‘How ethical are supermarket veggie boxes?’ and ‘How fair is ‘fairtrade’?’.

Consumer enthusiasm for making a difference in green issues is not consistent; it can be contradictory depending on the amount of effort required and the sector involved. People living busy lives often see green issues as an aspiration more than a realistic goal or a necessity. They therefore seek brands to identify with that deal with the issues they do not have time for, and so they expect higher green standards than they often meet themselves. Often the move to ‘green’ is prompted by a life change; childbirth, illness or a quest for wellbeing.

Environmental Business

Business is becoming more environmentally-minded, but only because governments are pushing for greener practices and consumers are demanding greener credentials.

Businesses are well aware of the necessity to provide their consumers with the reassurances that they require about sustainability and environmental issues. Yet companies are often accused of ‘greenwashing’ and portraying themselves as being environmentally concerned, but really only making the most cursory of gestures. This situation arises because companies often can’t see the contradictions inherent in their overall brand message when it is set against the non-environmental background of their other activities.The issue of carbon dioxide emissions is a major concern for many large businesses (as it is for many nations) as governments work through policy and strategy options for the future that have the potential to limit business’ operational capabilities. However the probability of governments regulating carbon dioxide emissions more in the future means that there will be a movement towards greener technologies. If businesses can prove that they are complying with government regulations then these industrial credentials will filter down to consumers, who are looking for any reason to support a business or brand that denotes by association that they are ‘doing their bit’.