Blog Post 6: Conflicting ideas of sustainability in contemporary supermarkets. What are we really consuming?

Profit versus the Environment- Greenwashing, Ecolabeling, Label Proliferations and more

As during week 6 we partook in an activity centred around a specific case study rather than the exploration of new theory, I shall instead dedicate this blog post to the themes of consumption and education explored in week 9. 

More specifically, the following blog post shall explore the ideas pitched in Lyon and Montgomery's (2015) paper The Means and End of Greenwash and portray how their call for increased research surrounding Greenwashing can be the first step to clarifying, and sustaining the public's determination towards sustainable environmental practices. The aforementioned shall be illustrated by providing a commentary on a recently read Independent article titled Sustainable diets will remain a minefield until we change the way we approach food (West et al, 2018). 

In their article West et al (2018) highlight how the contemporary supermarket is a ground in which contradictory sustainability goals can clash, causing confusion amongst the consumers and therefore result in a movement towards sustainable environmental practice that is questionably beneficial to the environment. They highlight the consumers' wish for sustaining environmentally beneficial practices through the food they purchase in the supermarket, and the corporate aims of sustaining profits. They portray the consumer as one who is increasingly aware of the changes that are taking place in the environment and, in result, is one who wishes to exercise their consumer buying powers in order to initiate change. In opposition to that are corporations such as the retailers and producers of food who wish to sustain profits by meeting their consumers' demands. As West et al. convey it- "The global population continues to grow in a world with limited resources, increasing the pressure on producers to maximise the amount of food that can be grown on existing land. As the long tentacles of transnational corporations seek the most cost-effective and efficient supply chains to feed these extra mouths, the environment has often had to take the strain." (2018) 

As numerous retailers, and food production companies, are  faced by contradictory demands (the consumers' desires to sustain the environment and the aim to sustain profits) they seek to meet both through the retention of information. West et al highlight, "Food supply chains are now often so complicated and opaque that consumers are rarely – if ever – presented with a comprehensive picture of the journey their food has been on. Instead, we have to rely on businesses and individuals at each stage to act ethically – and on supermarkets to provide the information necessary for us to make sustainable choices." (2018) They go on to give the example of meat with an "organically certified" label which denotes it's quality and sustainable practices in terms of animal welfare and wellbeing, however, the label fails to disclose what the animals were fed on. It is likely that the meat we buy was previously fed on soybeans, a food source which is responsible for a large portion of today's deforestation practices (West et al, 2018). The failure to disclose information is a prime example of how a single product is the substantiation of a complex interrelation of sub-systems, many of which are severely abstracted by retailers and the ecolabels which we assign to the products themselves. This practice of  abstracting information under a single label in order to meet the contradictory sustainability demands is summarised as the concept of 'Greenwashing'. Lyon and Montgomery (2015) define it as follows.

"The word greenwash is used to cover any communication that misleads people into adopting overly positive beliefs about an organization’s environmental performance, practices, or products." (Lyon and Montgomery, 2015). In their study, Lyon and Montgomery (2015) highlight Greenwashing as an umbrella term that is applicable to numerous organisations and practices and therefore requires further research aimed at defining its parameters. They highlight that the concept of greenwashing is an immensely broad subject which cannot effectively be ceased by the introduction of ecolabelling or through regulations. In their view, the solution to the problem of greenwashing lies in further research aimed at determining the different forms which it embodies and therefore the different aims and effects which the concept has on stakeholders. 

"What is needed is not to corral “greenwash” into a narrow definition but rather to flesh out the taxonomy of greenwash, measure the prevalence of the varieties of greenwash, theorize the social welfare impacts of greenwash, and identify the impacts of green- wash on greenwashing organizations and society more broadly." (Lyon and Montgomery, 2015)

To finalise the arguments presented, I shall propose the reasons for which I believe Lyon and Montgomery's (2015) proposition to solving greenwashing is a valid one. As is highlighted by West et al (2018) I believe that the range of Ecolabels and marketing techniques (ranging from pictoral to verbal depictions) primarily contribute to an abstraction of subsystems under a single product. Many of the subsystems which are being abstracted may indeed be partaking in environmentally unethical practices which are unsustainable in the long term. And, it is this abstraction of subsystems that makes exercising consumer buying power in order to achieve change a seldom simple task. By identifying the research yet needing to be undertaken into different modes, and and effects, of greenwashing, Lyon and Montgomery (2015) introduce the first step to achieving an easier and more efficient way of exercising consumer buying power. The identification of the forms greenwashing illustrate a promising future in terms of improved ecolabels which help restrict the abstraction of environmentally unethical subsystems from the consumer, therefore reducing the contradictory modes of sustainability within the supermarket into a single aim- that of finding new ways to produce food in a profit sustainable way that simultaneously helps sustain the environment we live in.


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Bibliography

• Lyon, T. and Montgomery, W. (2015) The Means and End of Greenwash. Thousand Oaks:  SAGE Publications.
• West, C., Doherty, B. and Heron, T. (2018). Sustainable diets will remain a minefield until we change the way we approach food. The Independent. [online] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sustainable-diets-minefield-way-approach-food-nutrition-chains-a8235946.html [Accessed 12 Nov. 2018].