Gullible Consumers: The Contradictions of Sustainability

Contradictions of sustainability are all around us. They are referred to as contradictions because the companies that preach about their sustainable practices drive the problems. The author dives deeper into the issue and explores why we, as consumers, find these initiatives attractive. In this chapter, the author focuses on brands they have documented as contradictions; for example, fast fashion brands, attempts to reduce the amount of clothing produced by offering (both online and in-store) a donation box for shoppers to bring in unwanted clothing. The problem with many sustainability initiatives is that they are no more than buyback initiatives; such short-term decision-making is that it only diverts the problem elsewhere: far away from our eyes, to second-hand markets and landfills in countries like Ghana and Chile, where we do not know what happens. The problem with the solutions we create stems from ignoring the complexity of our world. The author further argues that we must remove the shackles of the past that determine our future by relying on the same systematic patterns that produced the previous problem and leaving them to repeat those patterns; to let go of the familiar and lay with the discomfort, the discomfort that can help imagine the world anew.