Purchasing “sustainable” products such as reusable totes and trendy stainless steel water bottles might make some feel better about their individual environmental impact, but no real change is made by simply purchasing a product.
We must stop putting pressure on the public to save the planet because the change we can do is minimal compared to big corporations that should change their production means.
Shelie Miller, University of Michigan professor of sustainable systems, said in an Oct. 28, 2020 Popular Science article that people often focus on consumer habits, such as reducing plastic grocery bag use as essential solutions to the climate crisis.
While Miller said this isn’t a bad approach in itself, the issue is the tunnel vision we’ve created by telling ourselves that limiting plastic and “going green” will solve all climate problems.
“It’s not that we don’t want to worry about single-use plastics, but it really is not seeing the forest for the trees,” Miller said.
A September 2017 Stanford Magazine article discussed different types of grocery bags and their environmental impacts. It stated the carbon cost of creating single-use plastic bags was less than creating cotton totes or paper bags.
That’s not to say reusable bags are useless. They can be useful and also have a low carbon footprint. But according to the same article, “an average cotton shopping bag would need to be reused 131 times to account for its higher impact on the production side.”
The article suggests that someone would need to use the same cotton tote for the next five years to cancel out its carbon footprint during production. But that is just idealistic at best.
A 2015 Norway National Institute for Consumer Research study on the active life of clothing found that clothes are only actively worn for about four years and are often kept until considered “out of use” after about five years.
What happens when there’s a hole in someone’s tote they’ve only been using for a year? Are they going to stitch the hole, or simply buy a new bag while believing it’s sustainable?
I must admit, I have reusable bags and use them when I can. I prefer them over plastic bags because it makes me feel better about what I’m doing for the environment.
I also have reusable straws that make me feel like I’m actively saving turtles and I have a steel water bottle I use instead of plastic ones.
But putting stress on individuals’ small choices will not save the Earth.
The 2017 Carbon Disclosure Project carbon database report regarding fossil fuel producers and greenhouse emissions found 100 companies were responsible for 71% of total industrial emissions globally.
Our carbon footprints are minuscule in comparison to big corporations. It’s still important for individuals to buy less, buy responsibly and actually use the item for the duration it was intended.
However, to address such a large issue out of our direct control by buying into slick, superficial corporate marketing isn’t the answer.
