The ironies of green consumerism

A rather fascinating psychological study emerged last week from the University of Toronto: Do green products make us better people? (pdf) In a series of experiments, the researchers discovered that exposure to green products made people act more altruistically, but buying them made them more mean-spirited and more likely to cheat.

Participants in the study were asked to browse and select products from an online store that included green or ‘ethical’ products. They then took part in a series of games where they had the opportunity to lie or to cheat, knowing they would get away with it. Those who had bought green products seemed to give themselves license to behave unethically – a sort of moral offset. As the study puts it, “purchasing green products may produce the counterintuitive effect of licensing asocial and unethical behaviors by establishing moral credentials.”

It’s wise to take psychological studies with a pinch of salt of course, especially ones that make headlines, but the results don’t surprise me much. Buying organic milk and driving it home in an SUV is common middle-class behaviour in the south of England. Plenty of ethical alternatives actively trade on the idea of moral credentials. Travel is particularly susceptible, flying us across the world to stay in an eco-lodge.

In many ways green consumerism reflects what Stanley Jevons discovered with coal over a hundred years ago – that improved efficiency is likely to make no difference to actual levels of consumption, and may even raise them. If our boilers use less gas, we can afford to keep our houses warmer. If we get good mileage from our car, we might use it more often. Energy saving lightbulbs might just be serving to innoculate our consciences against the green guilt of our unsustainable lifestyles.

The problem is not with the products themselves, although some ethical alternatives are more credible than others. We should vote with our wallets for the positive changes we want to see, by choosing local, seasonal, fairtrade, organic, sweatshop free, FSC wood, sustainably harvested fish, and so on. But we should do so with humility. The challenge to us as shoppers is to be examining ourselves as well as our choices, reading our motives as well as the packaging, and maintaining a healthy scepticism about both.