Global Issues
Sustainable Living: Becoming an Unconsumer
A new buzzword has surfaced thanks to the recession: unconsumption. Unconsumption describes the now savvy and respectable trend of reducing, reusing, and recycling. It's a conscious consumerist mentality. In other words, it's the opposite of the buy-now-throw-away-tomorrow culture that permeated most of the 90s... (continue reading this blog post)
A new buzzword has surfaced thanks to the recession: unconsumption.
Unconsumption describes the now savvy and respectable trend of reducing, reusing, and recycling. It’s a conscious consumerist mentality. In other words, it’s the opposite of the buy-now-throw-away-tomorrow culture that permeated most of the 90s.
Just how much are Americans unconsuming these days? Sales at Goodwill stores grew 7.1 percent in the first three months of 2009. Craigslist saw 100 percent increase in bartering. And companies began to launch campaigns to appeal to the frugal consumer, like the Babies ‘R’ Us trade-in where customers brought in old car seats for discounts on new goods.
In one of my favorite talks at SXSW, Dr. Nita Rollins, Futurist at Resource International, walked through her research and insights on how values have been reset by the American super-consumer. Unlike consumption, the word used to describe the acquisition of things in exchange for money, unconsumption encompasses all actions after the act of acquisition.
Frugality has changed the internet and the internet has changed frugality. Digital forces have helped transform consumption, connecting consumers to ideas, transparency, and products. For instance, sites like Etsy—where material culture meets counter culture—disintermediate the middleman to allow artists to sell directly to consumers.
Unconsumption has sprouted from simultaneous developments: the recession and the green movement. While US consumption overall has slowed, a third of consumers are willing to pay more for ‘green’ products, especially food and large appliances, according to a BCG study in January. Rollins commented, “Environmental green and greed are not enemies.”
Halle Tecco is a San Francisco resident and social entrepreneur passionate about technology, service and healthy living. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Yoga Bear, a non-profit providing more opportunities of health and wellness to cancer patients through the practice of yoga. Halle has worked as a Product Manager at various consumer-internet startups, including Enternships.com and Kiva.org. She also serves as an advisor to GreatNonprofits.org. She is pursuing her MBA at Harvard Business School and will graduate in 2011.
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COMMENTS
BY Som Karamchetty
ON April 8, 2010 03:24 PM
This is a good and sensible movement. I buy batteries in big packs and am left with a number of them. I wish that the local community has a place where I can leave the excess batteries. The same situation with large sized Tylenol capsules but how do we share medicines? Everyone in my neighborhood has a lawnmower in the garage but has professional mowers come and do the mowing job. I wish we had only one big mower for the neighborhood that a small entrepreneurial professional would come and do the mowing avoiding several trucks coming from long distances and going around the neighborhood. I wish the USPS delivered mail to one box on the street and we all took turns to pick up mail, deliver it to homes on the street and said, “hi” to one another and save billions for the taxpayers.
BY Vincent Leung
ON April 9, 2010 07:10 PM
Things are not quite the same in this part of the world called China. On one hand there are still many very poor people living in the remote area. On the other hand a lot of the middle and upper class people are ordering too much food then throw away the unfinished, chasing after fast fashion, frequently changing their mobile phones, etc. People with a heart find it very difficult to set up NGOs here to organize volunteers. The voice of social entrepreneurs are difficult to be heard. Despite what are being said, I am confident that sooner or later, with the weather is becoming more crazy and unpredictable and the resources on earth are running out, people will find unconsumption is not a nice-to-have but a must. And if people can have a “second life”, why not all consumable goods?
BY C.J. Hayden
ON April 11, 2010 05:02 PM
One of my favorite ways to practice unconsumption is through www.freecycle.org , an online network of almost 5,000 local groups run by volunteers who practice “freecycling.” If you have something useful you don’t want or need, you post a notice on your area’s message board, and anyone who can use it replies. The San Francisco Bay Area group is so active that I usually get several replies within minutes every time I post. I’ve given away many things that could neither be sold nor donated, but were still useful. For example, partially used inkjet printer cartridges, open packages of stationery, a stained rug, used lumber, and more. I always consider freecycling now before either recycling or the trash.