Quote of the Day

A quote from my sustainable consumption research:

"The vulnerability of voluntary changes is a key problem. In the case of both green and ethical consumption, most corporations only responded to public pressure when their reputations or sales were at stake, thanks to activist groups such as Corporate Watch and Ethical Consumer. While consumer demand may be the carrot, it is high-profile and potentially damaging media reports into the less palatable aspects of firms’ activities which provide the very necessary stick to prompt changes in corporate behaviour (Pearson & Seyfang, 2001). Even these voluntary changes are vulnerable to erosion and shifting trends. In the UK, Littlewoods clothing stores were a major participant in the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), but a change of management led to its withdrawal from the ETI and its ethical trading team being closed down, as corporate responsibility was not seen as an important issue to consumers (ETI, 2003). Green consumerism was a trend during the
early 1990s, but as a result of changes in consumer preference during the 1990s,
sales of ‘green’ ranges of products fell and many supermarket own-brand ranges of ‘green’ cleaning products, for example, were discontinued (Childs & Whiting, 1998). These examples suggest that the social or environmental improvements made as a response to consumer pressure have been rescinded as attention shifted, rather than taken up as new minimum standards, and that ‘left to their own devices, transnational corporations] are likely to fulfil their responsibilities in a minimalist and fragmentary fashion . . . they still need strong and effective regulation and a coherent response from civil society’(UNRISD, 2000: 90)."

Source: Seyfang, Gill(2005) 'Shopping for Sustainability: Can Sustainable Consumption Promote Ecological Citizenship?', Environmental Politics, 14(2): 296