What a Waste! The Hard Truths About Consumers and Sustainability

Are we really going green?

The world is grappling with the ever-present effects of climate change, and there has been an ongoing effort across the world to encourage households to go green, recycle, and be sustainable consumers in general.

But our recent survey of over 8,500 respondents from 6 Southeast Asian countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines) conducted in February 2023 reveals that sustainable behaviour has not advanced as far as some media might suggest.

While 98% of Southeast Asians are eager to reduce their waste and live more sustainably, 60% of people across the region say they make little to no effort to reduce the waste that surrounds their lifestyles.

This flies in the face of millions of dollars spent in public education campaigns and advertising undertaken by governments and businesses to extol the virtues of sustainable consumption, not to mention the relentless coverage across mainstream and social media.

Are people seeing these messages – check. Are they in agreement – yes. But this is failing to translate into real life behavioural change. Why? What could be the possible barriers to this?

Putting food on the table trumps everything else

For one in five (21%) Southeast Asians, the task of more sustainable consumption remains much too expensive for them. They believe that they lack a high enough income to select more sustainable options.

Part of this issue lies in the messaging around it. Sustainability is too often presented as virtuous and essential to being a responsible citizen. Furthermore, more sustainable products are typically marketed in ways to make them alluring to middle and upper middle-class shoppers. Often, produce is markedly pricier compared to their regular counterparts just because they have a sustainability, non-GMO, or similar sticker on them. For the average Southeast Asian, being sustainable is sometimes just too expensive.

Tech behemoths create repair barriers for consumers

The second biggest factor cited by SE Asians that prevents them from living more sustainably is the fact that they feel it is often cheaper to throw things out than to pay to repair them. The right to repair movement is now picking up steam in the US and Europe, and it is likely that Southeast Asian governments will soon follow suit and look at changes enacted elsewhere.

It is crucial that the policies of major global manufacturing companies align with wider sustainability objectives to ensure that manufacturing practices and warranty restrictions do not perpetuate a never-ending cycle of consumption that we were promised nearly a generation ago would become a thing of the past. Yearly smartphone upgrades, for example, which tend to offer minimal cosmetic upgrades are both unnecessary and grossly wasteful.

Individualising the problem

Our survey also reveals that a proportion of Southeast Asians (17%), while expressing a personal desire to live a more sustainable lifestyle, feel that their families do not share the same level of concern. This is especially true for younger adults who often live in traditional intergenerational households, which remain common across Southeast Asia. It can be a frustrating situation, as individuals may feel like their efforts to be sustainable are going to waste due to the lack of support from their families.

This highlights an essential lesson — the sustainability message aimed at individuals may not be as effective in more collectivist societies in Southeast Asia. To make a real impact, it's crucial to engage households and local communities in sustainability initiatives rather than just focusing on individual efforts. New ways to communicate and engage with these groups can help create a collective shift towards sustainable living. As hyper-localisation becomes more of a focus for governments looking to make positive change and reduce undesirable behaviour, the psychology behind sustainability messaging may need to adapt.

Our ongoing obsession with plastic over other pollutants

If one movement is succeeding in SE Asia, it is the anti-plastic campaign. Consumers across the region overwhelmingly cite plastic as the greatest of all environmental evils.

Microplastics has become a favourite and concerning topic for many environmentalists and social activists. Citing tiny plastics smaller than grains of sand (less than 5mm), scientists have raised the alarm bells that microplastics have entered the food chain. In 2017, Belgian scientists announced that seafood lovers could consume up to 11,000 plastic particles a year by eating seafood such as mussels. And it is even claimed that by the year 2040, the volume of fish in our oceans will be outweighed by plastic litter.

As part of the anti-plastic campaign, people have been inundated with messages of banning single-use plastics such as straws. The images of plastic laden coast lines and riverbanks or the shock of something like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have had more impact than almost any other environmental crisis in recent decades. A picture paints a thousand words, and the sight of a million empty soda bottles shakes the collective conscience! For at least 53% of Southeast Asians, plastics are the key threat to the environment behind petrol cars, e-waste, and international flights.

However, global plastics production has not changed much in recent years. It doubled from 2000 to 2019 to reach 460 million tonnes according to a 2022 OECD report. Clearly, plastics are not going anywhere despite the anti-plastics education. For example, producers and supermarkets often individually wrap their fruits and vegetables with plastics (even organic produce!), which makes little sense and is extremely wasteful.

Issues such as greenwashing where some companies purportedly incorporate environmentally sustainable practices into their production at least on paper and rarely in practice have also surfaced in recent years.

Do we need to change tack on sustainability messaging?

Public messaging in support of more sustainable consumption has undoubtedly entered the consciousness of most Southeast Asians. However, governments and businesses may need to rethink their messaging. Two things at least seem obvious. Firstly, sustainable consumption should not equate with luxury lifestyle practices. Celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Prince Harry carry little impact as sustainability ambassadors beyond marketing and column inches.   

We need to get to the basics. Simple actions such as shopping locally or using fewer plastic bags are both impactful and affordable activities for most. As an example, the km0 movement in Italy has had great national success and supports local producers.

Secondly, the preponderance of sustainable consumption messaging aimed at individuals holds limited significance when individuals themselves play a relatively smaller role in households. This needs to be understood much better in the years ahead. Much of the push for sustainable consumption is shaped by businesses, often in a well-meaning fashion. But much of it is also wrongheaded or simply subservient to revenue goals. Companies need to put more than just their marketing teams on the sustainability cause to shape improved efforts ahead.

Overall, while our findings across SE Asia are, on the surface, disappointing for those committed to change, we can at least draw lessons from what people are telling us. That is, sustainability needs to match more closely with real lives and less with affluence and virtue signalling. The truth is people want to do what’s right, but many feel the incentives and signals fail to make the impact that’s intended.

To make a real, lasting impact towards sustainable and more mindful consumption, the messaging and actions required of citizens need to evolve. If you would like to work with us to review what your organisation is doing and how you can make a bigger difference, reach out to us at connect@blackbox.com.sg