Ethical consumerism reports tell us … practically nothing

Results of the Co-operative Bank’s annual survey of ethical spending (pdf) were published last week, showing how much British consumers spent on various categories of ethical products in 2006.

The report shows that we are spending more on green products (such as energy efficiency appliances or furniture made out of green timber – or any product choice that is motivated ‘at some level’ by a concern for the environment), with the spend per household almost trebling from £84 in 2002 to £232 in 2006. What does this tell us about how much greener consumers’ lifestyles actually are? Practically nothing, for four reasons:

1. Choices between different types of product are much more significant that choices between ‘ethical’ or ‘non-ethical’ versions of the same product. A vegetarian meal, for example, will always have a lower carbon footprint than a meal including beef.
2. The green credentials of the products are suspect. In the US, Terrachoice recently reviewed over 1,000 green products (pdf) and found that most were guilty of hidden trade-offs (the product is organic but used more fuel in transportation, for example) or weak evidence behind the green claim. It would be surprising if the situation was not similar in the UK.
3. It is very difficult to evaluate whether ethical spending replaces or is in addition to ‘non-ethical’ spending.
4. Inflation is not factored in. There were significant changes in prices in many of the areas that the report looks at. Inflation in retail electricity between 2005 and 2006, for example, was 22%, accounting for almost one sixth of the increase in spending on green energy reported in the Co-op’s report.

Focusing on types of product rather than the outcomes that you want to control has never been a useful activity. It generally means that you forget to measure the things you are really interested in. To measure how green consumers are, we need to look at the environmental impact of each part of their shopping basket, rather than what each part costs.

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