Conscious Consumerism can be improved.
It all started with a cold email to Everlane: “I am going to be frank, while I love your products, they are simply too expensive for me to afford.”
I had my heart set on buying new shirts. It had been over a year since I had updated my closet, and the same four shirts that I had were starting to get old. I spent hours scouring through the mall trying to find “somewhat” fashionable shirts from a company that does not practice modern slavery with no success. After many more hours of searching, I found Everlane, an upcoming fashion brand that is advertised to have “exceptional quality, ethical factories, and radical transparency.” Although they were a bit out of my budget, I sent them an email to see if we could work something out. To my surprise, a thunderous ping greeted my inbox with an email reply that they would be happy to send me some shirts for free! I had a brand new closet and a sense of joy knowing that I was a conscious consumer. While I was able to go home fulfilled after my hard work, not everyone has the time to find a company that is genuinely sustainable; I believe that conscious consumerism can be improved through rating labels to better protect global working and environmental conditions.
Conscious consumerism is a direct avenue for individuals to influence the market by endorsing products that align with their ethical and sustainable values. This form of endorsing products “can take the shape of two diametrically opposed actions — buying en masse and boycotting en masse — that are after the same goal” (Plante). When a group of people unite under ethical and sustainable values to purchase a product en masse, they are financially supporting that product and its company, allowing them to create more products with those values. Purchasing en masse also impacts the larger market as it signals the importance of those values to competitors, prompting them to include the same values onto their products to keep up with changing buyer needs. On the other hand, boycotting a product en masse can financially strain a company, diminish its reputation and prompt competitors to remove certain values from their products. In both cases, buyer demand is the determining factor behind the success and failure of products in the marketplace; thus when individuals become conscious consumers, they have a direct effect on the market.
Encouragingly, people want to be conscious consumers; a growing focus on sustainability and ethics issues and a generational cultural shift means that the modern consumers are willing to pay more for conscious products. Andrew Boyd and Gan Golan’s 62 feet wide climate clock looming over the Union Square in Manhattan, counting down from 7 years and 283 days, is a stark reminder of how little time we have before the likelihood of devastating global climate impacts is very high. As the climate clock gloomily counts down, the focus on increasing that number has never been greater. Individuals are growing their knowledge on sustainability and ethics from social media and they are pushing for change through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Perhaps, no other generation has been more activated than Gen-Z, the generation that is at the most risk from a climate crisis. Having learned the importance of sustainability and ethics since grade school, Gen-Z understands the urgency of the situation and is acting on it with full force through events like Greta Thunbergs climate change rallies. That is why it is no surprise that 85% of Gen-Z are willing to “put their money where their mouth is” and pay more for sustainable products. Only a few percent off from the national average where 66% of all age groups are willing to pay more for sustainable products. This survey, replicated in study after study, shows that Americans are willing to be conscious consumers because they are well aware of the consequences if they do not.
Unfortunately, conscious consumerism has been transformed into a trend that has artificially increased prices and flooded the market with greenwashed products. Recently, influencers have popularized sustainable and ethical products by promoting them on their social media platforms. Whether these influencers were paid to advertise by sustainable companies or were genuinely motivated to share these values, their message spread to their large followings and supported the rise in popularity of sustainable products. However, as many followers became bombarded with posts about sustainable living, the well-intentioned movement transformed into a trend that was a lot more harmful. Many individuals started participating in this trend just to be validated by their influencer role models and the people around them. The sentiment changed from making sustainable decisions based on individual means to an egotistical competition where paying extra and making greater sacrifices to one’s lifestyle makes them a better person. This is perhaps best reflected by the familiar caricature of a “metal-straw wielding, dairy-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, vegan-vegetarian millennial” that has become a part of popular culture. Here, the metal straw is the perfect symbol for an expensive product that can be flaunted to others while doing very little for the environment. Because the people buying into this trend had the money and room in their lifestyle to accommodate for sustainable living paired with the intention to pay more to be perceived better, the prices for sustainable products skyrocketed. Moreover, greenwashed products, products that are disguised as eco-friendly alternatives using fluffy marketing terms when they are not, became more common in stores as companies realized that consumers could not tell the difference between genuine and fake sustainable products. The rise in greenwashed products is because many people buying into this trend were doing it for appearances and they could not be bothered to research the difference between genuine and fake sustainable products. The grim truth if this trend continues is that conscious consumerism will move to an innately detrimental collapse if prices stay propped up, greenwashed goods stay rampant, and the majority of consumers cannot afford it.
Sadly, I was also defeated by the rise of greenwashed products when I proudly wore my new Everlane shirts. Michael Preysman, founder and CEO of Everlane, had lofty ambitions when he wanted to radically change the fashion industry with a project that has transparency and honesty at the forefront. Unlike big fashion houses, Everlane revealed the pricing breakdowns, the clothing suppliers and the ecological footprint for every product. Unfortunately, case-studies that dig deeper into Everlane find a darker truth behind their aim of sustainability: they have no evidence that they minimize textile waste, no evidence that they reduce carbon emissions, and no evidence it ensures payment of a living wage in its supply chain. Their proudest achievement: better factories and working conditions compared to their competitors is only partially true because workers claim that they chose select pictures to advertise on their site which are not reflective of the entire manufacturing process. While the list goes on for their offences, Jon Foor, a worker at Everlane’s customer experience team succinctly summarizes that “They do some good work, but I wouldn’t describe it as radical. The most radical thing about Everlane is the marketing” (Testa). The success of many greenwashed products lie on marketing, and bigger companies like Everlane hold greater power to market deceptive products and cash in at the expense of sustainability.
The solution is clear: rating labels that provide a standardized sustainability score can help buyers make genuine sustainable purchases. Although consumers are ready to purchase products that are sustainable, they may be wary of greenwashed products that would not make a genuine impact on the environment. When they are already spending more money and putting in extra effort to accommodate a sustainable lifestyle, picking between an ocean of greenwashed products can be an extra effort that might hinder their shift into a sustainable lifestyle. Rating labels can normalize the score between various relevant indicators like water consumption, worker benefits, or ecological footprint, to produce a total score that indicates how sustainable a product is. Since every product is held to the same degree of scrutiny, rating labels also level the playing field in the product market between startups and established companies that have bigger marketing capabilities. Traditionally, rating labels are operated by an auditing company that ensures equal scrutiny, and product companies buy into a rating certification to increase the ethos of their product. This is already successful in grocery stores, where Fairtrade certified products have positively impacted 1,605,010 farmers at Fairtrade certified small producer organizations. However, this concept can be expanded to more industries like fashion, mining, and technology. As individuals start buying into certified products, the market will naturally shift to recognize the importance of a certification, and that certification will become more common in the store.
As I end this essay and step onto the sidewalk bustling with USC students rushing to classes, I adjust my jacket and button my Everlane shirt, something that I am already rethinking. I would not have made the same mistake if a rating label plastered a Grade ‘B’ on the Everlane website, and I hope that in the near future, someone does.
Works Cited:
“Deloitte 2018 Survey” Deloitte, https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/4737_2018-holiday-survey/2018DeloitteHolidayReportResults.pdf.
Plante, Stephie Grob. “Shopping Has Become a Political Act. Here’s How It Happened.” Vox, Vox, 7 Oct. 2019, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/10/7/20894134/consumer-activism-conscious-consumerism-explained.
Testa, Jessica, et al. “Everlane’s Promise of ‘Radical Transparency’ Unravels.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 July 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/fashion/everlane-employees-ethical-clothing.html.
