The Twisted Lie of Consumer Guilt
How corporations rely on consumer guilt to make a profit.
Anyone with a social media presence knows there are certain things you just don’t post, unless you want to be harassed. For starters, you do not post pictures of problematic brands. You don’t post food pictures, unless they are vegan, locally harvested, or from a respectable food chain. You don’t show yourself drinking from plastic water bottles, using plastic straws, or any other wasteful material. And, if you decide to break any of these rules, you must be ready to answer for it.
Thanks to the popularity of digital communities, people around the world are held to a higher standard of living. We are pressured to live sustainably and care for the environment. However, discussions of this nature often force consumers into a state of guilt that is both manipulative and dishonest. Rather than holding companies accountable for unethical means of production, the focus shifts to the consumer.
In layman’s terms, big businesses are able to get away with harmful actions by making consumers believe climate change, pollution and overconsumption is entirely their fault, and not the fault of the companies.
While it is true that everyone has a certain amount of control over their purchases, and should do their part to better the environment, it is also true that big businesses have more power to harm the world through unethical means of production. The Average Joe does not dump loads of oil into gulfs and oceans; nor is he responsible for cutting down rainforests, or filling small islands full of trash. Yet, the guilt of these actions is forced upon him whenever a big company like Shell goes to Twitter and asks people what they, personally, promise to do to help end these tragedies.
By pushing the blame onto the consumer, these businesses are able to skid by doing the bare minimum to reduce their waste and fix the global issues they have benefited from for years. One way companies successfully do this is by picking up on a tiny problem and blowing it out of proportion to detract from larger issues.
For instance, a video went viral in 2015 depicting a turtle that had a plastic straw stuck in its nose. The removal process was gruesome and inspired a ban on all plastic straws almost immediately. Companies like Starbucks promised to stop using plastic straws, while lawmakers proposed bills that would ban them statewide. To this day, it is considered unethical to use plastic straws, under the presumption that they hurt wildlife.
Although this initiative sounded good in theory, it was ill-conceived, manipulative and did very little to cut back plastic waste. Research from 2018 indicates that plastic straws only made up 0.025 percent of plastic waste in the ocean, compared to the eight million tons overall. That is not to say that plastic straws are not dangerous to ocean wildlife, but rather that their threat is far outweighed by the several million tons of plastic debris that goes unmentioned in these discussions.
The anti-plastic straw ban also neglected the needs of many differently-abled people, for whom plastic straws are not merely an option, but a necessity of life. Many of these people were asked time and time again whether they could not use alternative straws, like metal or silicone which can be dangerous for some people will allergies, seizures or other health risks. Over time, the “Why I Need Plastic Straws” videos became popular on sites like YouTube, where differently-abled people expressed upset over how they were guilted for their special needs.
Rather than holding companies accountable for the tons of plastic waste they produce, use and sell, people looked to one another to fix the issue. They blamed each other, rather than the companies who were really at fault. All the while, those same companies continued to make a profit off of using plastic, such as Starbucks, which kept their plastic lids and cups. By 2019, Starbucks announced a new plastic lid to replace plastic straws for cold beverages, boasting of the lids’ thinness. This marketing strategy served to boost their name in the anti-plastic straw debate, while ignoring the fact that the company still uses a surplus of plastic.
This is a highly effective marketing technique known as “greenwashing.” It allows companies to appear sustainable and environmentally conscious, without actually committing to doing better. By exploiting this technique, companies are able to trick consumers into buying their products under the belief that they are shopping ethically, when in actuality, the company has done the bare minimum to maintain appearances only.
Companies rely on consumer guilt to boost product sales. So long as the consumer believes that they alone can stop global crises by shopping at the right stores, those stores will continue to make a profit, even when they are perpetuating the problems. As consumers, we must remember that we only make up a small percentage of the world’s waste, and while we should do what we can within our means to make the world a better place, it is ultimately up to big businesses to pave a way for us to make that possible.
We cannot rebuild the rainforest until companies stop cutting it down. We cannot clean the ocean until companies stop polluting it. And we cannot shop ethically until businesses create ethically. The guilt is on those who create and benefit from harmful material, and it is past time to hold those companies reliable.
