Roles of stakeholders in sustainable shopping

As mentioned in Part A, workers in mass manufacturing factories are subjected to wage inequities and health problems. Sustainable shopping also contributes to the fight for the fairness of those workers. If you refuse to use inexpensive, mass-produced products, companies, plants will not cut production costs. The worker will also have a better working environment.

COST SAVING

Sustainability and minimalism go hand in hand, because all it takes is just to buy what you need. A great place to start is to buy your clothes from environmentally friendly brands and look for sustainability. Although these costs may initially be higher than those of fast fashion garments, they are often designed from higher quality materials to last longer. Besides, instead of buying something new on every occasion. You can check around your house, find some way to coordinate between the outfits you have. And so you will not need to buy a new set of clothes, the cost of clothing will also decrease. In addition, shopping at local stores and doing home cooking also saves you a great deal of the cost for imported food or eating at restaurants.

GOVERNMENT

Promoting sustainable shopping requires support from government and state agencies. This means that the government can guarantee all the basics of good governance; economic and financial capacity, security and law, and the elimination of corruption. Important alternatives government can execute may include: • Support for research and development of sustainable production and improvement of regulations and standards, subsidy changes and taxation. • Transform government shopping towards sustainable shopping. • Provide policy stability • Helping consumers to head towards sustainability and challenge unsustainable shopping. This includes introducing incentive policies that encourage consumers to purchase more sustainable products. State subsidies for non-sustainable products should be revoked. • Infrastructure investment alignment: The government does not always own or build infrastructure in its own country. However, they are the key to deciding what to build and where. Therefore, the government needs to assess the environmental damage and the impact of the project on natural resources. • Strengthen communication on sustainable production and consumption, from production companies to consumers.

Businesses exist to provide products for people and bring in profits for themselves. But that’s not the whole story. To survive and prosper in the long run, businesses must go beyond short-term profit motives, act as responsible members of the local, national and sometimes global community and avoid harming human and the environment. They play a central role in the transition to sustainable shopping. Multinational corporations have tremendous power to influence governments and regulation, to shape livelihoods through investment decisions and their employment practices, and influence tastes and behaviors of consumers. Unilever has argued that “for companies to reach the desired scale, companies must move beyond corporate social responsibility and address poverty and sustainability issues as part of their core business strategy.”87 Seeking business opportunities from sustainable shopping: research, development and building market for sustainable products. • Understand the social and environmental impacts of all raw materials, processed and manufactured in the supply chain, reduce harm to people and the environment and increase the benefits, ensure business against resources scarcity by developing sustainable alternatives.88 • Reduce or eliminate waste of resources and energy by reusing or recycling, take more responsibility for the impact of products on consumers. • Helping consumers to be more sustainable: Companies are closely linked to consumers, so companies need to build an understanding of sustainable products for consumers. The power of advertising and marketing needs to be focused on this, instead of creating ongoing demand for new products. • Improve the lives of workers and employees

CONSUMERS

Changes in the production of goods can not be alone in the development of sustainable shopping. Changing consumer behavior and attitudes toward shopping is extremely important. Awareness and responsibility for sustainable shopping among consumers will put pressure on producers and help drive their operations and suppliers towards sustainability. It will also provide politicians and governments with a political space to bring regulations, policies and market tools to promote social mobility towards sustainable shopping. Changing the heart, mind and behavior of a human seems to be a difficult task. It must be shared between civil society, government and businesses. And not every consumer will have to be persuaded. The challenge is to change enough people to promote sustainable shopping based on social standards. Many of them have started, or want to start the journey. In developed countries, almost all consumers have to reduce their carbon, water, soil ... so that their ecological footprint does not affect the entire population of the Earth. It implies that the total volume of products they buy will have to be reduced. But a deeper, broader change is needed in the values and attitudes of people - a relation to solidarity, responsibility and sense of community and less individualism.

87 Private Sector Outreach A Summary of Unilever’s Programme of Private Sector Outreach on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (Unilever, 2013) 88 Resource Revolution: Meeting the World’s Energy, Materials, Food and Water Needs (McKinsey Global Institute, 2011)