The following is a C and a podcast. Welcome to the climate conversations, I'm Jeremy Hall. If you walk into a supermarket, chances are sustainability will shout out at you more these days, sustainably farmed fish coffee that is ethically sourced and perhaps even pet food made from insects. Green products have no doubt become a significant part of the consumer goods market. In part, this has no doubt been driven by a greater awareness of the impacts of climate
change and a drive to turn awareness into action. But human habits are also hard to break, especially when we live in a world where e-commerce continues to grow, where you can buy anything you want in just two or three clicks and when someone can deliver it within the day. So when it comes to the very act of consuming is that gap between what we believe in and what we practice. Can consumers walk the talk on living sustainably? And what does that look like? Does it mean simply
buying greener or just buying less? Or is that a hard bridge to cross? With me to talk about this is Sharon, an associate professor of marketing, Nanyang Business School. Welcome, Sharon.
Good afternoon and thanks for having me.
Let us start with this first question. Studies show that awareness of sustainability and climate change have obviously increased driving, sort of like a mindful consumerism and caution over buying products and wastefulness. And you teach at a local university. So give me a sense first, whether you've seen this awareness grow over the years. What are some of the things your students talk about now in this area, your
sense of what they think? And maybe, you know, compared to when you were in school and how things have changed in this period of time?
I think the younger generations are definitely more environmentally conscious. I teach a bunch of kids there are about 20 years old to 22 in the classes. We talk a lot about sustainability. And usually I get them to make choices between different products, green products versus non green products. And if we measure attitude, I would say that a significant portion of them definitely support sustainability. They feel this important,
any shift of behaviours. I can't say for sure, though, whether they really are willing to put the money where it is.
Well, that's the key thing. Yeah.
We see this kids during break time. You can get drinks. I ask them, Why do you pick a plastic bag when you don't need it? And the reasons will be always convenient is easier to carry. But do you consider the fact that it's not environmentally friendly? Oh yeah, I do, but it's just easier. The trade off is still hard for a lot of us to make. But in general, if you ask just about attitude, I think definitely this generation is way more conscious of the environmental impact of
bad behavior compared to my generation's. And Varma isn't actually quite a conversation. And if not, then
yeah, I'm going to talk about the trade offs and it is an excellent point. This is something that I've been thinking about a lot as well, and I'll use the example of e-commerce. E-commerce has existed. It's grown significantly. It's made it so easy for people to basically consume exactly and especially the younger crowd as well. So they are faced with this potential trade off and we buy everything from furniture even to phones and stuff like that.
Do you think then separate from the kids that the pandemic itself in a way has shifted our approach to consumerism and consuming in ways actually made it easier? And I wonder whether sometimes is that making it easier? The environmental sustainable consciousness has taken a little bit of a backseat.
It does, at least from my casual observations. That's two pastors. I don't think attitude white people are becoming less environmentally conscious. I think the pandemic actually highlighted the idea that we are connected to a disease in one place affect all countries, and therefore it actually creates this whole belief that we need to take care of each other and we need
to take care of the Earth. That said, I think at the individual level when it comes to consumption because we are all stuck at home, we want to feel good, we buy comfort food, we buy things to sell just because we are so bored and then nothing better to do. We buy online products, we buy takeaways. And if you think about all these things that we'll be doing is actually really bad for the environment at the consumption level, at individual level, people are probably not thinking about it.
But if you just measure attitude, I believe that actually the pandemic should make people more conscious. But the consciousness does not translate. The tradeoff is still difficult to make.
Well, that's really the crux of it, isn't it, in that while awareness while attitudes are trending in the right direction, the crux is whether it actually translates into meaningful action and educated action as well. I'll use the example of what people may think is ethical consumption or green products, right? So some will say that actually that there's no such thing as a green product. And one of my favorite
examples is the cotton tote bag. For a while when people started trending towards a tote bag because they felt it was a bit more environmentally friendly than a plastic bag. But I'm not sure yet if people understand the environmental footprint of a tote bag and how many times you've got to use that tote bag for it to make sense in terms of emissions and in terms of sustainability
and the production of the cotton bag. And therefore there was this shift away from plastic bags to which sometimes if you think about it, it may not be such a bad thing as an alternative if you consider what the cotton tote bag brings itself. So that's the thing of people firstly aware enough, you think, from your studies of these trade offs and then after that being even aware, then being able to really make the hard decisions.
I don't think people are necessarily that aware and most people want to feel good about helping the environment. I mean, that is an excellent example in my heart. We have plenty of tote bags and some point I was. Telling my kids that we have so many of them, we don't use it. And each of these actually take longer time to biodegrade than competitor plastic bags, so it's not necessarily a good thing. But that said, the question is
what is the alternative? I've always been telling my students when we teach sustainability, the best solution is to reduce consumption. The best solution is not to consume as much as we have been consuming. If we cannot stop consuming well, then the next best alternative is to hopefully throw the security economy, tried to reuse the materials and products that we have. Reducing consumption is not something that is structurally
embedded in a society. Businesses have no incentive to reduce consumption, to encourage us to reduce consumption the businesses or try to be as sustainable as they can. There are various methods, but I'm not going to ask you to consume less. Consuming less is not good for business. Neither is it necessarily good for the country's economy, if you will. The hardest choice to make is to reduce consumption, to reduce consumerism. But the structurally the way our world works, the way
the society works does not support that. Therefore, the next best alternative is at least have some green awareness, at least do something to make the consumption that we have to consume a little bit more environmentally friendly.
Yeah, I mean, that's a deep frustration that I have as well, because it would appear to me that what we've been doing in the last decades, even as we've become more environmentally conscious, is that we have been trying to solve a problem related to consumption. We've just consuming differently and consuming something else. Exactly. So whether it is a stainless steel straw versus plastic straws, we just consume differently.
And again, it's no guarantee that the stainless steel straws any better than 10 plastic straws that you may have replaced it with.
Exactly edible by putting stainless steel straws.
Yeah, exactly. So that's the trick for me. And whether or not when you do your courses, when you speak publicly, do you think there's been enough done to talk about the first priority, which is to reduce consumption? Do you think there's more that can be done, as you said, to ask so much economic structural impediments to talking about consuming less? But that's the truth. Can more be done there?
Oh, definitely. But I don't think this is something that one company can solve. It probably requires an entire shift in societal norms. If you think about why we consume so much from a marketing point of view, we always say that people consume so fulfill some social needs to fulfill some psychological needs. We consume so that we can
celebrate our success. We consume because we see some people having something and we desire that and we connect our identity to the products that we consume, to the things we buy. So until that piece is resolved, if you will, or at least we tempered the way we look at our own identity with the products we buy, that is going to be a hard piece to solve because there will always be people who want to buy a better car.
You buy things to show you buy things just a few good to pamper yourself that social norms with the way we have to identify ourself with the products that we purchased needs to go in. That piece doesn't go no matter what you try to do is going to be very hot to reduce consumerism. And that's actually what we have been observing for the past decade that people has been consuming more because as you get more affluent,
you can afford it. And so you don't think about it, you buy more things, you used it to identify your stuff, you buy a bigger house, you buy a bigger car. Now we can go out to restaurants. You eat more expensive food, food that actually probably has more environmental impact to have the cows to farm. And so all of these things comes into picture. But when we consume, we don't think about it. We only think about it when the environment, somehow the context trigger us to think about it.
So if I ask now, you said, what if he has that, nobody would say, no, I guarantee you that you have never seen anybody telling us, no, but can you willing to eat less? Not really. Are you in Dubai loss? Not all will. Until we disconnect self-identity through products, that's going to be hard to sell.
Yeah. You know, one of the industries that fascinates me the most as well is fashion. And because as you see, so much of our identity is linked to fashion and we've seen how the explosion of fast fashion has had such a significant environmental impact and footprint. I'm not sure again whether people know the consequences of the fashion industry and cotton and the materials that go into it. But you see on the fringes of movements day in the fashion industry, there are some brands who try to at
least see what's needed to be said. Who may try to do what's needed to be done? But do you think that using the industry as an example, there are sparks of potential that the industry itself certainly industries themself may see? Actually, the focus should not be on volume of consumption, but the quality of consumption, and I'm willing to go there and push the boundaries. Or do you think the economic structures are so embedded and so stuck that we're not going to be able to move away?
My personal opinion is, I think, is pretty much back until the companies are willing to say that I'm OK. I'm making less sales short of that. I think that would be hard. That's why I think the next best alternative is really to look at the circular economy. And hopefully, if we don't really take so much resources from the US, we don't pollute the Earth as much and hopefully through re using a recycling the materials that we have, we can reduce a little bit on the impact on consumerism.
That would be great. But I really don't think structurally right now, at least at this stage, they begin to see companies saying that, yes, it's OK to consume less by less and we OK. We can tell investors and our stakeholders that we're doing good for the environment and it's okay that we are making less revenue. I can't see that happening, and it's mind as they look at the number of smartphones we're buying. That's how we achieve a level that we two years.
I was slightly more pessimistic, but is hoping for a positive take from you. But never mind. Let me use another example that as I introduce this, I spoke about supermarkets, right? And this whole thing about organic produce is also quite recent. It's all within our lifetimes where we saw this trend was people consuming differently, knowing full well that organic products
have comes with its benefits. And it showed that people were willing to consume differently, consume maybe less but better, or at least knowing what they are consuming and therefore making decisions based upon that. Are we not hopeful that some of this can sort of translate elsewhere, especially with the younger as we now go back to talk about your students and stuff like that? Is this something that governments need to do? Society NGOs? Where does it start from to start these conversations?
Oh, definitely. I'm sure that the younger generations, for example, my students, they would definitely be more supportive of organic products. But one of the caveat is this a lot of these so-called green products, as organic products are more expensive and need the technology to do these products right now, it's not mature enough such that you they are a lower cost or the same price as a regular products, so it can attract people who have the economic means
to buy such products. At the same time, feel that it's important to support the environment, but that still leaves a whole group of people who may not be willing to make the financial trade off the fact that the organic products cost significantly more on average. I think at this stage it will have an impact on the small segment of the market that can afford it and feel
this important. But we need more advances in technology such that the price of organic products will be similar to the price of the regular products that you can't really see a major push towards such consumption.
I'm going to Segway and move our conversation maybe a little bit higher level and then talk about trends globally and what we can learn or at least look out for, we look at countries in the region, for example, when you talk about consumerism consuming and consumption. Obviously, there may be two groups of countries and societies that you can
look out for. Obviously, there are the rich economies and societies like the United States, like Singapore, which have the highest purchasing power and ability to change things through consuming. But at the same time, you have rapidly developing countries with huge populations who similarly, as we've said earlier, aspire to consume. And that's the whole point of moving from being developing to more developing to developed. And where do you think the challenges are going to be in the
long term? Is it possible for us to start looking at some of these developing countries? Is it fair for us to look at their consumption patterns? Or is it more realistic to look at developed countries and developed societies and tell them to take the first actions and to lead the pack, so to speak? Or is it a mixture of both in terms of how we attack the problem of overall consumption patterns?
I don't see that from a financial trade off perspective. I think that if you look at the more affluent countries, the fact that they are more able to pay for that, the more expensive green products. I think that will be one direction you can go. But if we look at just from a consumer attitude perspective, from our research, we don't see a difference between affluent and unappealing countries. So
we have to actually conduct the surveys in four neighboring countries. So, for example, Indonesia's and Malaysia and some of the neighboring countries of Vietnam and such. And we do not see a major difference actually in the Delta two towards green consumption. So it's not that the more affluent the country people are more likely to feel that it's important. In fact, there's a few bits that we see. For example, Indonesia
people are actually quite supportive of sustainable consumption. The difficulty comes when the cost comes the picture. If you can't afford it, then yes. At the consumption level, the barriers to entry are too high. The price difference is too high. You're not going to see it. But if the difference is not significantly higher, I don't think you've noticed that in affluent countries necessarily will be more supportive of sustainable
consumption compared to a non affluent countries. That's right to me. I think at the end of the day, the technological piece needs to be solved. If we can make it such that the green products that you see are at least seen by so that people do have to make a tradeoff in our research, what we did in one of the studies is we give people the same products they want is green. One is not as green, but same price almost 90, and the higher percent people choose
a green product. But the minute I increase the price of a 10 percent, the percentage of people choosing the green product we use close to 30 to 40 percent
is just 10 percent. Is that the ceiling?
Okay, this is one sample. So I don't want to say generalize to the whole population. That would not be scientifically correct, but at least one that one study you reduce is quite a lot. So really, it's at the end of the day. I think the attitude I don't see a difference between affluent and on the following countries her chased the conversion. That's the piece that we may see, and that purely is economically driven in the extra 10 percent could mean quite a bit to do on this one country.
Yeah, I'm going to start closing off and you're an educator as well. So obviously we've spoken about huge structural impediments to changing the mindsets overall within societies as far as consumption is concerned. But you're an educator. Obviously, the most significant efforts will have to be focus on even younger and younger people to imbibe or at least make them aware that there are alternatives to the kind of consumption that we have become used to overall as a society.
As you see where there's a phone, whether it's a flat, whether it's a car, all these things are part of us as a society in terms of consuming them. What would you say? You, I would say, try and develop a curriculum, or at least something that can start as young as possible to make people more aware so that by the time you reach a certain age, but you become environmentally conscious when you start thinking about economic theory, right?
And suddenly I'm reminded of Y equals a C plus I plus g that sometimes you know the C can be rethought a little bit. How would you design that to insert a little bit different conception into overall consumption?
I'm from New Zealand to you. We actually have many causes. First, we have a cost to holding on sustainability and in all the other causes that are not unsustainability. We also insert a couple of lessons on sustainability. So just to get the students to really have some awareness of the impact of consumption that is for marketing, for example, then
power consumption and sustainability and how if they're going. To be future business leaders, what are some of the thought process that she comes into their mind if they're going to lead a company? How would the action affects the environment? If you have a positive environment potentially leads to a better outcome for the company in the long run. In A., we do have a number of causes that looks at sustainability already, and we also embed sustainability in most of
the classes at the university level. The students are already fairly mature. They know they know these issues. So what we are trying to do is to develop a next set of business leaders who are conscious of these issues. If you look at, for example, my son is in secondary school, they are actually also having classes that talks a little bit about the impact of the environment. They are writing essays about it from young. If we can just keep reminding the kids the impact of how our
behavior influences the environment. We will eventually be able to see a next generation of students and younger generations while conscious of it. Consciousness does unnecessary equate to consumption because the trade is an issue, but at least they are more aware. They are more conscious that the action has impact. And how are they going to convert that to at least reduce their impact on the environment? All we can do at this moment increase the saliency of the problem.
Change the mindset and when the technology is really advanced. Where we can actually make the products the same in terms of pricing. In terms of attributing into the features, I can really see the younger generations being more green, being more sustainable and choosing the more sustainable product.
A final question that I have for you coming from Nanyang Business School. Yes, right? Representative of business schools all around the world in my mind, there seems to be a little bit of a disjunction as well in the traditional mindset of what a business school is going to teach its students, which obviously, as we see, is built upon basic economic theory of consumption, economic growth and building
a business through customer consumption. That's on the one hand. Increasingly, though, as you say, you're going to build in more and more sustainable elements of it, as well as you design curricula now and in the future. Do you think that there will come a point where you realize, you know, the entire structure of how we teach business has to change? Yes, business decisions are one thing, but sustainability must be really part of it, and that may change downstream. How business is taught?
Definitely. That's why I said in our causes right now, this is why I have been teaching the students now is that there are few major considerations. One is, of course, clearly the financials are economic. But the other piece is actually the company's purpose and the company's role in the society and sustainability being one. But there are many other broader social impact companies can make in the society and
how they make decisions. The best position that you can have is at the intersection of these two, where it makes financial sense. At the same time, you are making a positive impact on society, and companies that can do that has a longer runway into the future so that the thought process cannot purely be a financial and economic position that you are taking is something that we have already been teaching, and I definitely think that this trend
is going to continue. I don't see how we can move back and just look at a company purely from a commercial point of view. Companies no longer just commercial entities, are social entities. They're part of the broader society, the part of the world. And therefore, to be able to think of how the company's role in the broader society is as important is not something that is upcoming is something we are doing, something that we have been doing
and we will continue to do. That's why we are hoping to educate the next next generation of business leaders to understand that, understand that business decisions is not just a purely financial economic decision. There's also another big piece that you have to start thinking about, which is your company's role, your company's purpose in the society and how you affect the environment.
Going back to something that we said at the start of our conversation that hopefully this translates to at least consuming less companies being on the right to do that. But if not that, then then of course you mean very, very much differently. Sharon, thank you very much.
Thank you.
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