Will this be a fad or are we undergoing a revolution in consumerism?

Will this be a fad or are we undergoing a revolution in consumerism?

I have deep sustainable roots.  Some of my strongest childhood memories: weeding our sizeable vegetable garden, grown without pesticides, making jams and chutneys with my mom.  Our subscription to Mother Earth News which led to the giant compost heap in our backyard. Summer camp where I learned to make sumac tea and recognize the constellations. 

As an architectural student in the early 80’s, I chose to train in the UK where renovation was long the predominant design exercise. Coming from the US, I was already sickened by the constant need to create new, identikit sheds, and larger and larger homes which seemed to be more about ego than requirement.  As a young architect, we all worked on endless renovations, the sturdy Edwardian and Victorian buildings altered in an incredible variety of practical and useful ways to extend their life for future generations. As my practice matured and my friends had kids, I added a specialty in playground design, having read extensively about the subject and as a bicyclist, only too aware of urban planning which prioritized cars over humans.  I designed and nearly oversaw building of the first underground house in the UK—it got planning permission but then the client bailed, moving overseas instead of completing his deeply interesting commission.

I then made an abrupt change, moving to Vietnam, where I had the opportunity to design many new buildings. Still flying the flag for sustainability, and excited by the challenge, I tried to design building suitable for the harsh tropical heat, and especially for resorts, to emphasize the abundant local tropical vegetation, water-saving and energy-saving to reduce tourists’ footprints, and owner’s bills, and using carefully sourced local materials and craftsmanship. This ecological emphasis wasn’t a stretch—it came from the simple act of spending time on virgin sites and realizing that these often sublime locations would be utterly compromised by development, forever—ironically extinguishing some of the underlying reasons for choosing these sites in the first place. I thought that at minimum, developers had an ethical requirement to consider the least-damaging way of developing their projects. Sadly, this expectation wasn’t met. After years of frustration, I decided, spurred on by my very practical boyfriend, to abandon design and I launched the first company in Vietnam dedicated to providing sustainability consultancy. I helped found the Vietnam Green Building Council, helped write and edit a green building certification system suitable for Vietnam’s particular cultural and climate environment, and wrote and spoke extensively on the subject in conferences across South-East Asia.

Fast forward 15 years. I moved to London two years ago, keen after a decade and a half of helping forge a new greener construction marketplace in Vietnam—though the market transformation is not as robust as one would hope, it shows a steady trajectory in the right direction—and found that the UK was far from being the “clean and green” society I had anticipated. Construction had slightly moved on, with a small corner of it filtering through BREEAM and mention in the planning documents of some mainly unfeasible energy targets. The UK Green Building Council has a prominent seat at the government lobbying table. However, developers don’t seem at all keen on green, and green development is still rare and notable, not the norm.

Then, suddenly last year, 2019, climate change seemed to become real to the average educated citizen.  The reasons for this are many, including unambiguous scientific data revealing a much more rapid and uncontrollable shifting climate than previously imagined, stubbornly vocal activists, beautifully-filmed documentaries highlighting the damage, corporations realizing that companies like Patagonia were doing very well, thank you, with a sustainable message used to sell stuff, and a general, creeping realization that recycling doesn’t work and that we are surrounded by a sea of garbage and our air is steadily getting worse. Now every publication, every business conference, nearly every commercial entity, has a sustainable message to contribute to the near-cacaphony in an attempt to be more-sustainable-than-thou. We don’t want to miss out on this marketing opportunity, or be thought to be on the wrong side, do we?

How much of this is real and how much is phony?  Are we in a trend which will exhaust itself as soon as a few straws are eliminated, instragram posts admired,  and we collectively realize that we don’t know what to do without our individually-plastic-wrapped salads, our big cars or our fast fashion? 

Speaking as a person who has been observing and participating in the sustainability space for nearly five decades, I am excited but also wary. Reasons for utter joy: the number of engaged young people who are likely to spearhead a new era of invention and intervention to improve alternative energy solutions,  re-conceptualize materials and come up with new consumer models. The fact that sustainability is no longer the dead-end zone for social misfits and cranks.

Reasons for modest applause: The fact that many entities having sat on the sidelines, will however reluctantly, be forced to find better ways of doing business.  The fact that we’ve already cycled through the first iterations of some unworkable solutions and are already moving on to second-generation ideas, more plausible, perhaps on a larger scale.

Reasons for gloom: (besides the obvious, that we are too late to the table): that as much as people like to laud their efforts, we’ve only barely touched the easy gets, the low-hanging fruit. Changing all your lightbulbs to LED? This is neither costly nor difficult (the payback is straightforward and the longevity of LEDS not only means vastly reduced toxic rubbish and reduced energy demand but a lot less time replacing new bulbs). Saying no to straws? (I just can’t go there). Once we’ve done this easy-peasy stuff, once some new companies are up and running on the back of their fresh, eco-friendly marketing schemes, and the novelty of some “flagship products” wears off, will it just colour our business-as-usual, a little bit more energy efficient here and there (more trains) but still unfettered growth business growth elsewhere (more planes)? Will we really do the math to realize that replacing our screen porch with insulated glazing will pay back on energy bills in 5 or 10 years or will we just go for the cheaper option as we always did?  Will we cut down on consumption or just replace stuff that still had a viable life with something new but with a few eco-bells and whistles? And what about those individual salads, hey?

I’m going to take an informal poll in 12 months’ time to find out if the people I know are making big changes in their lives due to the new realities of climate change, or if they are treating it as window dressing.

Key to meaningful change of course is some clear understanding of what we can do—we can’t expect action in a vacuum and most people have no idea what is required or will quickly come to the conclusion that there are too many barriers to doing more than the odd visit to a plastic-free greengrocer (we’re all too busy to go more often than once every couple of weeks, mind you) . If the commercial world simply offers us similar products without meaningful underlying structural change to our economy, people may easily believe they’ve made important changes when little has actually happened.  Key will be to educate people about their capacity to make real change, and for leaders to start to drive change at the top. (I believe in a bottom-u[p + top-down model, both are required). Not while Trump is president, maybe, but even at my most cynical, I think he’s possibly floating, oblivious, on top of a real sea-change. Let’s hope so for all of our sakes. Personally I think a brave new environmental world will create, not kill, jobs and I think we can get there though it will be a bumpy ride. Understanding what’s at stake may have commenced. But we have to be willing to make big changes.  I throw out the challenge—what are you willing to do to meaningfully cut your environmental footprint, both personally and in your leadership roles?

My next post: Everyone can save energy