Green Marketing: Incentives are the Way Forward for Activists and Policy Makers
Do humans want to fight over food, land and water in the future? Of the course the answer is no. The reality is that conflict over necessities is avoidable only if we take drastic action now to curb the rate our demand on the planet’s resources is increasing.
In some sectors a few simple actions or changes from consumers would make a huge difference in reducing the impact of our lifestyles. Food production and consumption is one such area — let’s take it as an example. Avoidable food wastage and spoilage along with red and white meat production are the chief hotspots in our food system that inflate demand on resources such as land and water. A few interventionist actions, including more careful shopping to reduce one’s individual food waste, buying local to cut out ‘food miles’, and becoming vegetarian or vegan are the standard prescriptions for immediately reducing one’s individual impact and thereby helping reduce the drain on resources that our food system demands.
If we can all see the benefit of changing our habits so we save the planet and don’t fight over food, land and water in the future, why isn’t everyone taking some responsibility and doing whatever it takes to avoid catastrophe? If you’re stumped, ask an economist or a political scientist. They’ll tell you that, while people have plentiful interests, it is a band of very narrow-minded ones that govern consumers’ behaviour at least some if not most of the time. These have been carefully analysed and exploited by manufacturers, advertisers and in general by opponents to the change that ecological activists would like to see. Meanwhile activists for the most part disregard this, and continue to ask magnanimous or charitable acts of people to achieve far-sighted objectives. While this may have worked in the past, the time has come for activists to accept that social change won’t be achieved off the back of people’s moral conscience spurring them on to ‘do their part’. Rather, consumers must be incentivised, most often financially, for behavioural changes to take place en-masse among consumers. This effectively transforms social change into just another product to be marketed — but that’s exactly how consumers will most willingly buy into it, and that’s exactly how activists and policy makers alike should be looking to most effectively make progress. Take England’s introduction of a plastic bag surcharge as an example.
When a mandatory 5p plastic bag charge was introduced for large stores, England saw an 85% reduction in plastic bag use — down from 7 billion to 500 million in the first six months. Surprisingly 5p was more than the convenience of a bag was worth — enough of a cost to rouse complacent consumers to tighten up their habit of wasteful repetition. So 5p was more persuasive than all manner of preaching to people’s sense of conscience. Congestion charge schemes have worked much in the same way as the 5p bag charge, by creating a cost and thereby also a way to save money. If ecologists step back and swallow their pride, they’ll realize they can score a big victory if they ‘market’ their objectives based on a benefits-vs- loss incentive, if that gets better results than preaching to people’s conscience. Of course approaches may be more or less effective depending on demographic and locality — the point is to constantly test what works and what doesn’t, and to use that body of knowledge to inform an adaptable strategy to accomplish your goals in a practical rather than idealistic way. In this way the gap between how we are living now and how we need to be living doesn’t need to be filled with disappointing sacrifices. Rather, the gap can be bridged by incremental, profitable baby steps to improve conditions here and now, feed back the positive results to support further reaching change, and so on, to build up cultural change. Self-interest and collective interest are placed at the heart of the progression.
There is huge potential to replicate changes in consumer behavior by using well-placed financial incentives amongst other progressive tools. This feeds into a broader strategy of applying what works to unite consumers behind more sustainable behavior and demands. It follows that the more sustainable the demand, the more sustainable the supply. This helps build up a mass culture of political confidence in sustainable approaches that becomes self-reinforcing. It just takes a change of heart from the activist to be open to motives of self-interest and exploit them as opponents of change have done.
My name is Jonathan Katona and I have a background in collective action campaigns when serving as vice-president of the small, radical IWGB trade union. My focus is on Urban farming and the re-localisation of food supply ownership as a sustainable solution for the future of our food supply. Please see a further article of mine about food supply, buying local, and hydroponics: CLICK HERE
