Reinventing Consumer Capitalism

Having spoken on a panel session at the Applied Green conference Russell Davies has put his thoughts down in a great blog post about how we get consumers green. He suggest that we need to reinventi consumer capitalism and says that it’s the responsibility of the Western countries to create a version of consumption that’s both completely sustainable and glamorous and attractive enough that the rest of the world will want to adopt it:

Can we use our powers for good rather than evil? Can we encourage and direct desire in a way that satisfies people’s desire to consume (and therefore allows businesses to charge them money for something and keep the wheels of capitalism turning) without creating endless torrents of new stuff.

The first obvious approach here is to deploy ideas, images and information in such a way that we can get people to re-love the stuff they already have. Or revalue it…

And of course, the ideal would be to eliminate the need to produce carbon-producing stuff altogether, so that the gaping maw of consumption is sated entirely through the consumption of ideas, images and information.

Take a good read of Russell’s thoughts on Applied Green here and also check some related reading:

2007 Trends : Brand Abstinence
Why Build Sustainability Into Your Business?
Allan Chochinov on the Consumption of the Idea vs the Consumption of the Product