While perusing through the recommended reading, my mind vividly recalled a slide presented by Andrew Hoffman during our first workshop. The slide divided change agents into ‘Bright and Dark Green’. Essentially, the Dark Green agents (such as activists) promote changes which are transformational while Bright Green agents promote more enterprise integration and change within the system. As Hoffman explained, both groups are required to achieve sustainable change and reverse the impacts of the Anthropocene in a way that is palatable to society, businesses and at an individual level.
I saw sustainable consumption through a similar lens. The radical Dark Green change is the one which leads to a significant change in our lifestyle or a transformative change in our society that reshapes how we consume goods. For example, what if, during your adult years you had a few pairs of shoes and continued to maintain and repair them over your lifetime rather than replace them? What if you kept the same car? Imagine if each person in the developed world maintained enough clothes to fit in a suitcase. Such changes would release the enormous strain that consumers exert on the planet’s resources.
In comparison, a Bright Green change is less radical and permits a continuation of our current lifestyle and current habits by the substitution of more sustainable products and options. This could include products that are only available if they are made and shipped within an emission cap or the growth of the collaborative and sharing community that increases the utilisation of existing resources. People could continue their lifestyle through conscious or unconscious consumer choices. For example, people could use labelling and marketing to make more sustainable decisions or their product selection could be edited such that only sustainable options are available.
While it can be argued, that drastic action is required to curtail our outrageous demands on the Earth’s resources, we also must consider what drives our consumer behaviour. Once our basic needs are met, our purchases reflect our lifestyle and how we wish to be perceived by others. The life we lead and the perception that we wish to cultivate is generally dictated by social norms. While Goldstein et al. (2008) describe social norms to be crucial in influencing change, the deciding factor will be our individual value system. Such is to say that, our values, and the prioritisation of a person’s values will dictate our ultimate purchase decisions. For every consumer decision, there is an internal assessment using our values which may not always be quantitative or purely rational (Chang 2014). As an example, let’s consider a person who strives to purchase sustainable products and only acquires ethically produced clothes but then chooses to buy a fuel inefficient, luxury brand car. This demonstrates that, during the decision to buy that car, there were other values that were more important to that individual than ensuring the product had a low environmental footprint. Perhaps the luxury car fulfils a person’s value of prestige, which is more weighted in their vehicle choice than clothing. This inconsistency of environmental and social concern and ultimate purchase purchases is termed the “value-action” gap (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002).
Is the Bright Green option easier? Yes. Is it less impactful and does it create less beneficial action for reducing our environmental footprint compared to the transformational Dark Green change? Both approaches are required to create an immediate and effective pathway to achieving a lower environmental and social negative footprint. The Bright Green change is a strong driving force for sustainable production levers such as improving efficiency, increase recycling, superior material selection, promoting better social conditions for manufacturers and better disposal handling. This approach provides consumers with better options in their current lifestyle. In comparison, the Dark Green approach challenges our social norms and creates a transformational change in the way we lead our life. Framed differently, the Bright Green approach allows us to operate with our values in a familiar consumer framework and unlock phenomenal leaps in progress if it can tap into our value system.
References
Chang, R. (2014) Ruth Chang: How to make hard choices [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choices
Kollmuss, A. and Agyeman, J. (2002) Mind the gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behaviour?, Environmental Education Research 8 (3) 239-260
Melange 
Good topic! Interesting to talk about the values side of it, and think about how some advocacy challenges people’s values vs. the kind of things peope accept because it’s easy. Where does the advocacy intersect with government action, and potentially adding a financial dimension to the question? For example – putting a small tax on single use plastic lined coffee cups and subsidising the biodegradable version with the revenue.
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Interesting idea – the taxes would help with a more sustainable substitution and assisting creating a market for biodegradable cups. There also seems to be a push by cafes to BYO re-usable cups by offering discounted coffee. This eliminates cup wastage and allows me to continue to drink my beloved coffee and at discount. Its likely that the business also profits by reducing the cost of cups. Wins all round.
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Very interesting post.
The power of social norms and values is indeed a very big issue and it will take time to change those in order to achieve sustainable consumption.
The question is how long it will take to narrow this “value action gap”. I am not sure anyone can answer it but the problem is that urgent action is needed to tackle climate change.
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Interesting article, I am pretty much agree with bright green will be an easy way in in terms of change management. From experience in advisory for transportation sector clients, without need of investing on new infrastructures is the easiest way to pushing changes. You can see example on more investment on biofuel aircrafts in comparison to electric aircrafts. Even, there are longer term potential in electric aircrafts. Because of dark green changes needed for electric aircrafts with new infrastructures and new technology for fast charging, lightweight battery and battery disposal. In the other hand, there are no change of technology is needed for the aircrafts itself for biofuel aircrafts. Only, different way to manage fuel supply chain and related technology needed for biofuel aircrafts.
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Thank for your insightful and enjoyable post. I’ve just finished reading a book called ‘Clothing Poverty’ by Andrew Brooks. It’s pretty radical and tackles the two schools of thought that you describe – Light and Dark Green (with regard to the fashion industry) – head on.
His strongly made point is that ‘Bright Green’ consumption behaviours directly undermine the potential emergence of ‘Dark Green’ solutions through reinforcing the existing deeply embedded unequal systems of exchange (capitalism) on which the current marketplace is built.
For this reason he’s highly critical of sustainability initiatives such as Fair Trade, Toms shoes (http://www.toms.co.uk/) and truly scathing of Vivienne Westwood’s Ethical Fashion Initiative (http://ethicalfashioninitiative.org/partners/vivienne-westwood/).
My gut reaction, as someone in the ethical fashion industry; someone who cares deeply about development yet wants to maintain my lovely lifestyle; someone bought up with all the trappings of a western consumer, was that I really didn’t want to agree with Brooks. Surely doing my (light green) ‘bit’ (buying some things ethical, making small adjustments here and there) is contributing to a larger, darker change?
I actually find it quite easy to dismiss such radical writing, maybe because its pretty uncomfortable reading. Surely there’s much good intention behind these initiatives, and surely something is better than nothing? We can’t all be calling for radical (possibly unrealistic) change can we; someone has to be pragmatic. And haven’t I seen first hand producers in developing countries happily talk about the benefits that such initiatives have bought to their lives?
However, I have to admit that what Brooks writes resonates with me the more I think about the scale of social and environmental challenges that we face. It would be fascinating to further explore how our value systems interact to influence the relationship between the Light and Dark Green movements.
We need to challenge ourselves to ensure that being Bright Green isn’t darkening the path even further for the other more radical Greens to pick up the baton…
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Thank you, Naureen! I really enjoyed Andrew Hoffman’s Bright Green vs Dark Green comparison of change agents as well. During his lecture, I recall Dr. Hoffman’s example of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s in the US. He described how Bright Green and Dark Green change agents worked together in driving change. In his example, he described how Dr. Martin Luther King’s ideas about the civil rights movement were initially perceived by the public as too radical. Enter Malcolm X and the militant Black Panther movement. All of a sudden there was enough contrast between the two change agents that Dr. King’s ideas didn’t appear to be so radical after all, which lead to significant social change.
As industry professionals active in the area of sustainability, I think you and I are clearly members of the Bright Green camp. I’ve been collaborating on a few projects with some academics and NGOs involved in food systems and let’s just say that they may be of a darker shade of green. As I address certain issues related to sustainability within the industry, such as food waste, renewable energy and sustainable growing practices, it’s interesting to see how the darker shaded academics, NGOs, etc. are able to ‘darken’ the dialogue, which seems to “normalize” my conversations with industry peers. Such contrast is important, I think, in driving change.
I like your analysis of Bright vs Dark Green approaches and how the Bright Green approach reflects a more familiar, consumer framework. In this sense, the framework can be understood as a spectrum of colors—not necessarily the linear, stark contrast of Bright vs Dark Green. I’m looking at color wheels from a Google search now and wondering what a Yellow (extension in the direction of Bright Green) or Blue (extension in the direction of Dark Green) individual might be like. Would the Yellow option be easier still than the Bright Green? Would the Blue option be more challenging than the Dark Green? Or, moving inward, what would the individual of the light, neutral space often depicted at the center of the color wheel be like? In systems thinking we’re challenged to not perceive the world in linear terms, so I think it’s especially interesting to explore the spectrum or framework you described and how it relates to the potential shades of others, not just us green folk.
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