Sustainable consumption
Sustainable consumption is the use of products and services in ways that minimizes impacts on the environment.
Sustainable consumption refers to the deliberate process of making decisions throughout the consumption cycle—including choice, use, and disposal—so as to meet present needs while minimizing adverse impacts on the environment, economy, society, and culture. It is rooted in the concept of the triple bottom line, which emphasizes environmental, social, and economic considerations in consumption and production practices.
Sustainable consumption encompasses proactive behaviours such as purchasing sustainable products and services, avoidance behaviours including reducing consumption of unsustainable offerings, and practices that extend product lifecycles such as reuse and recycling. Research indicates that sustainable consumption involves complex decision-making processes that extend beyond simple purchase choices to include responsible interactions with products during their use and disposal phases.
Studies of sustainable consumption often highlight the role of consumer experiences, both in purchase and non-purchase contexts, in shaping sustainable behaviours such as recycling, sharing, and energy conservation. However, gaps remain in understanding how interventions influence sustainable consumption over time, highlighting the importance of dynamic and process-oriented research approaches in this area.
Sustainable consumption can be undertaken in such a way that needs are met for present-day humans and also for future generations. Sustainable consumption is often paralleled with sustainable production; consumption refers to use and disposal not just by individuals and households, but also by governments, businesses, and other organizations. Sustainable consumption is closely related to sustainable production and sustainable lifestyles. "A sustainable lifestyle minimizes ecological impacts while enabling a flourishing life for individuals, households, communities, and beyond. It is the product of individual and collective decisions about aspirations and about satisfying needs and adopting practices, which are in turn conditioned, facilitated, and constrained by societal norms, political institutions, public policies, infrastructures, markets, and culture."
The United Nations includes analyses of efficiency, infrastructure, and waste, as well as access to basic services, green and decent jobs, and a better quality of life for all within the concept of sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption shares a number of common features and is closely linked to sustainable production and sustainable development. Sustainable consumption, as part of sustainable development, is part of the worldwide struggle against sustainability challenges such as climate change, resource depletion, famines, and environmental pollution.
Sustainable development as well as sustainable consumption rely on certain premises such as:
- Effective use of resources, and minimization of waste and pollution
- Use of renewable resources within their capacity for renewal
- The reuse and upcycling of product life-cycles so that consumer items are utilized to maximum potential
- Intergenerational and intragenerational equity
Consumption shifting
Studies found that systemic change for "decarbonization" of humanity's economic structures or root-cause system changes above politics are required for a substantial impact on global warming. Such changes may result in more sustainable lifestyles, along with associated products, services and expenditures, being structurally supported and becoming sufficiently prevalent and effective in terms of collective greenhouse gas emission reductions.Nevertheless, ethical consumerism usually only refers to individual choices, and not the consumption behavior and/or import and consumption policies by the decision-making of nation-states. These have however been compared for road vehicles, emissions and meat consumption per capita as well as by overconsumption.
A 2024 global survey found that even amid inflation and cost-of-living concerns, consumer demand for sustainably sourced goods remains strong, with many willing to pay nearly 10% more for sustainable products.
Life-cycle assessments could assess the comparative sustainability and overall environmental impacts of products – including : "raw materials, extraction, processing and transport; manufacturing; delivery and installation; customer use; and end of life ".
Sustainable food consumption
The environmental impacts of meat production are large: raising animals for human consumption accounts for approximately 40% of the total amount of agricultural output in industrialized countries. Grazing occupies 26% of the Earth's ice-free terrestrial surface, and feed crop production uses about one third of all arable land. A global food emissions database shows that food systems are responsible for one third of the global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Moreover, there can be competition for resources, such as land, between growing crops for human consumption and growing crops for animals, also referred to as "food vs. feed".Therefore, sustainable consumption also includes food consumption – shifting to more sustainable diets.
Novel foods such as under-development cultured meat and dairy, existing small-scale microbial foods and ground-up insects are shown to have the potential to reduce environmental impacts by over 80% in a study. Many studies such as a 2019 IPCC report and a 2022 review about meat and sustainability of food systems, animal welfare, and healthy nutrition concluded that meat consumption has to be reduced substantially for sustainable consumption. The review names broad potential measures such as "restrictions or fiscal mechanisms". In, science advisors in the European Commission's Scientific Advice Mechanism came to the identical conclusion, finding that "our diets need to shift towards more plant-based ingredients, rich in vegetables, fruits, wholegrains and pulses. Our diets should be limited in red meat, processed meat, salt, added sugar, and high-fat animal products, while fish and seafood should be sourced from sustainably managed stocks".
A considerable proportion of consumers of food produced by the food system may be non-livestock animals such as pet-dogs: the global dog population is estimated to be 900 million, of which around 20% are regarded as owned pets. Sustainable consumption may also involve their feed. Beyond reduction of meat consumption, the composition of livestock feed and fish feed may also be subject of sustainable consumption shifts.
Product labels
The app CodeCheck gives versed smartphone users some capability to scan ingredients in food, drinks and cosmetics for filtering out some of the products that are legal but nevertheless unhealthy or unsustainable from their consumption/purchases. A similar "personal shopping assistant" has been investigated in a study. Studies indicated a low level of use of sustainability labels on food. Moreover, existing labels have been intensely criticized for invalidity or unreliability, often amounting to greenwashing or being ineffective.In one study, individuals were given a set budget, "which could be spent once a week on a wide range of food and drink products", then data "on each item's carbon footprint was clearly presented, and individuals could view the carbon footprint of their supermarket basket on their shopping bill."
The processes of consumption
Not only selection, quantity and quality of consumed products may be of relevance to sustainable consumption, the process of consumption, including how selected products are distributed or gathered could be considered a component of it as well: for instance, ordering from a local store online could substantially reduce emissions. Bundling items could reduce carbon emissions of deliveries and carbon footprints of in-person shopping-trips can be eliminated e.g. by biking to the shop instead of driving.Product information transparency and trade control
If information is linked to products e.g. via a digital product passport, along with proper architecture and governance for data sharing and data protection, it could help achieve climate neutrality and foster dematerialization. In the EU, a Digital Product Passport is being developed. When there is an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in one country as a result of an emissions reduction by a second country with a strict climate policy this is referred to as carbon leakage. In the EU, the proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism could help mitigate this problem, and possibly increase the capacity to account for imported pollution/harm/death-footprints. Footprints of nondomestic production are significant: for instance, a study concluded that PM2.5 air pollution induced by the contemporary free trade and consumption by the G20 nations causes two million premature deaths annually, suggesting that the average lifetime consumption of about ~28 people in these countries causes at least one premature death while developing countries "cannot be expected" to implement or be able to implement countermeasures without external support or internationally coordinated efforts.Transparency of supply chains is important for global goals such as ending net-deforestation. Policy-options for reducing imported deforestation also include "Lower/raise import tariffs for sustainably/unsustainably produced commodities" and "Regulate imports, e.g., through quotas, bans, or preferential access agreements". However, several theories of change of policy options rely on information being available/provided to "shift demand—both intermediate and final—either away from imported completely, e.g., through diet shifts, or to sustainably produced FRCs, e.g., through voluntary or mandatory supply-chain transparency."
As of 2021, one approach under development is binary "labelling" of investments as "green" according to an EU governmental body-created "taxonomy" for voluntarily financial investment redirection/guidance based on this categorization. The company Dayrize is one organization that attempts to accurately assess environmental and social impacts of consumer products.
Reliable evaluations and categorizations of products may enable measures such as policy-combinations that include transparent criteria-based eco-tariffs, bans, support of selected production and subsidies which shifts, rather than mainly reduces, consumption. International sanctions during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine included restrictions on Russian fossil fuel imports while supporting alternatives, albeit these sanctions were not based
on environment-related qualitative criteria of the products.