Slower Consumption Reflections on Product Life Spans and the “Throwaway Society”
FORUM
Slower Consumption
Reflections on Product Life Spans and the
“Throwaway Society”
Tim Coope
Summary
Sustainable consumption is unlikely to be achieved as long
as the quantity of household waste generated in industrial
nations continues to rise. One factor underlying this trend
is the life span of household goods. This article contributes
to recent advances in life-cycle thinking by highlighting the
significance of product life spans for sustainable consumption
and exploring the cu
ent state of research. A theoretical
model is developed to demonstrate how, by contributing to
efficiency and sufficiency, longer product life spans may secure
progress toward sustainable consumption. Empirical research
undertaken in the United Kingdom on consumer attitudes
and behavior relating to the life spans of household products
is reviewed and factors that influence the market for longer-
lasting products are discussed. A need is identified for furthe
esearch on product life spans and some themes are proposed.
Keywords
eco-efficiency
life-cycle thinking
obsolescence
product durability
product life spans
sustainable consumption
Address co
espondence to:
Dr. Tim Coope
Centre for Sustainable Consumption
Sheffield Hallam University
Howard Street
Sheffield S1 1WB, UK
XXXXXXXXXX
www.shu.ac.uk/schools/slm/csc.html
© 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Yale University
Volume 9, Number 1–2
http:
mitpress.mit.edu/jie Journal of Industrial Ecology 51
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Introduction
Sustainable consumption has been defined by
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD 2002a) as “the consump-
tion of goods and services that meet basic needs
and quality of life without jeopardizing the needs
of future generations.” This may be interpreted
in many different ways, but there is a general
consensus that for industrialized countries, at
least, it implies a reduction in the throughput
of resources. This requires a shift from a linea
economy to a circular economy so that inputs
of virgin raw material and energy and outputs
in the form of waste requiring disposal decline
(Cooper XXXXXXXXXXThis approach is increasingly rec-
ognized in public policy and long established in
countries such as Germany (through its Closed
Substance Cycle and Waste Management Act)
and Sweden (through the work of its Ecocycle
Commission).
In Britain, McLaren and colleagues (1998)
calculated that a fair use of “environmental
space” (the earth’s capacity to support human
activities) requires that the nation cut its con-
sumption of steel, aluminum, and energy by ove
80% by 2050, implying reductions of at least 20%
y 2010. For timber, the figures are 73% by 2050
and 65% by 2010—a dramatic short-term reduc-
tion. Such analysis has prompted renewed inter-
est in energy and material flows (e.g., Biffa 1997;
DEFRA 2002) and has led to the emergence of
esource productivity on the public policy agenda
(Cabinet Office 2001a; Green Alliance 2002;
OECD 2001; Sustainable Development Commis-
sion 2003).
The literature on sustainable development in-
creasingly recognizes a need to address resource
throughput, but only rarely is mention made of
the potential role of longer product life spans in
slowing it down. Increased longevity could be
achieved by greater intrinsic product durability
and by improved maintenance through careful
use, repair, upgrading, and reuse (“product life
extension”). Product durability and product life
extension were key themes in an early contri-
ution to the debate on sustainable production
and consumption by the World Business Council
for Sustainable Development (Falkman 1996),
and in promoting the “factor four” concept, von
Weizsäcker and colleagues (1997, p. 70) argued
that “durability is one of the most obvious strate-
gies for reducing waste and increasing material
productivity.” Likewise McLaren and colleagues
(1998, 53) described durability and reuse as “crit-
ical in increasing overall efficiency” in resource
use. Despite such sentiments from industrialists
and environmentalists, however, the twin themes
of product durability and product life extension
have attracted relatively little research interest
to date, and whether the academic community
egards them as central or peripheral to sustain-
ability discourse remains unclear.1
This article considers the proposition that
greater attention must be paid to product life
spans for industrial nations to make adequate
progress toward sustainable consumption. It
presents a theoretical model to demonstrate how,
y contributing to efficiency and sufficiency,
longer product life spans may be needed to se-
cure progress toward sustainable consumption. A
discussion of product life spans in the context of
life-cycle thinking is followed by a review of re-
cent empirical research and factors that influence
the market for longer-lasting products. A need fo
further research on product life spans is identified
and some themes are proposed.
Resources and the “Throwaway Society”
Municipal waste in industrialized countries
has been increasing at around the same rate as
economic growth, around 40% over the past 30
years, and “the delinking of effluence from afflu-
ence remains elusive” (OECD XXXXXXXXXXDespite evi-
dent public concern about waste (DEFRA 2001),
the popular concept of a “throwaway society” is
arely explored in adequate depth and, with a
few exceptions (e.g., Redclift 1996; Strasser 1999;
Thompson 1979), there is a dearth of academic
esearch linking waste to the consumption of
household goods. A reasonably substantial body
of literature explores consumption in a socio-
cultural context (e.g., Cross 1993; Featherstone
1991; Lury 1996), complementing the extensive
marketing research on why and how individu-
als consume. Some (more limited) research into
disposal behavior investigates why individuals
discard products (Antonides 1990; Bayus 1988;
Box 1983; Boyd and McConocha 1996; Coope
52 Journal of Industrial Ecology
F O RU M
and Mayers 2000; Hanson 1980; Ha
ell and
McConocha 1992; Jacoby et al. 1977).
Explanations for the growth and persistence
of our prevailing throwaway culture, however,
have been less adequately addressed. This per-
haps reflects a failure in liberal democracies
to associate waste with consumer choice. Un-
til recently, public policy has appeared to
equate increased consumption and human hap-
piness (Donovan and Halpern XXXXXXXXXXConsume
sovereignty has been regarded as sacrosanct and
consumer choice treated as a “right.” Advo-
cacy of restrained consumption, by contrast, is
often marginalized in public debate. Hansen and
Schrader (1997, p. 444), though, have proposed
a new model of sustainable consumption criti-
cal of “the model of consumer sovereignty ac-
cording to which individual consumer behav-
ior is seen as ethically neutral.” They conclude
(p. 455) that “the consumer should no longe
tolerate and
ing about what he objects to as a
citizen.”
In earlier environmental debate, arguments
for using resources carefully were often motivated
y concern about depleting finite resources (e.g.,
Conn XXXXXXXXXXA consensus is now appearing that
although materials scarcity does not pose a seri-
ous threat in the short or medium term, the envi-
onment has a limited ability to abso
material
streams without being harmed and reserves of fos-
sil fuels are limited (Frosch and Gallopoulos 1989;
Westkämper et al XXXXXXXXXXThe more recent de-
ate on resource productivity has been prompted
y a desire to reconcile economic and environ-
mental objectives (an efficiency objective) and a
concern that excessive consumption in affluent
nations is at the expense of people in less industri-
alized nations and of future generations (a moral
objective).
One important determinant of resource pro-
ductivity is the length of the period over which
esources are used. When the British Govern-
ment’s Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU)
produced a report on resource productivity, the
process was as revealing as the final report. In its
initial Scoping Note, the PIU highlighted five
ways of increasing resource productivity, the first
of which was “resource prolonging” by increasing
durability, decreasing turnover rates (i.e., presum-
ably, less frequent replacement), and redesigning
products (or components) for longer use; anothe
was the reuse of products or components (Cabinet
Office 2001b). The published report, however,
excluded any reference to resource prolonging o
euse (Cabinet Office 2001a). The implied chal-
lenge to traditional approaches to economic pol-
icy was evidently too profound for Treasury offi-
cials to accept.
The Treasury’s stance may be explained by
the conventional economic wisdom that growth
in GNP, which requires ever-rising consume
spending, should be its principal policy objective.
By contrast, a trend toward longer-lasting prod-
ucts would appear liable to reduce or even reverse
growth (although in practice the outcome would
depend on many complex factors, including em-
ployment practices and people’s spending aspira-
tions). Thus the PIU’s final report addressed the
need for resource productivity, considered mea-
surement issues, and proposed strategic tools (e.g.,
the role of market-based instruments, innova-
tion, public procurement, and cultural change),
ut excluded any reference to durability or othe
more specific and detailed mechanisms.
Slow Consumption
Beyond the co
idors of power in Britain, an
alternative model of consumption is being devel-
oped in which temporal factors are taken more
fully into consideration. Reisch XXXXXXXXXXnotes
critically that “mainstream economics is deeply
embedded in modernity’s vision of progress and
growth” (p. 369) in which “time is money” and
people consume ever faster: “timescales of con-
sumption are steadily decreasing due to shorte
product life spans and an increasing speed of prod-
uct innovations which are in turn the outcome
of accelerating R&D processes” (p XXXXXXXXXXNot-
ing the “new models of wealth” being developed
y Germany’s Wuppertal Institute, she suggests
that human well-being derives in part from the
attention people give to their possessions and
their involvement with them, and notes that this
attention and involvement requires time. Thus,
she concluded, “the assumption of nonsaturation
which is at the core of economic theory must be
challenged” (p. 378).
The PIU’s approach to resource productiv-
ity focused on eco-efficiency, the potential fo
Cooper, Slower Consumption 53
F O RU M
educing environmental impacts and economic
costs simultaneously through more efficient use of
energy and materials. Such innovation, though,
may not lead to sustainable development as
long as consumption continues to increase. Fo
example, the OECD (2002a) reported that in the
Netherlands electricity consumption increased
y 14% between 1974 and 1994 despite signif-
icant efficiency improvements in many appli-
ances. This suggests that technological improve-
ments will not suffice and there is a need to slow
the rate at which raw materials are transformed
into products and eventually discarded, a process
that has been described as “slow consumption”
(Ax 2001).
Two international initiatives have provided
signs of a significant cultural shift in this direc-
tion. Recent discourse on slow consumption has
een initiated through Slow Food, a social move-
ment of critics of the fast food culture, which
originated in Italy in 1986 and now claims 80,000
members in over 100 countries. Slow Food locates
its philosophical origins in the 17th-century writ-
ings of Francesco Angelita, who considered slow-
ness a virtue and, believing that all creatures bore
messages from God, wrote a book about snails.
Slow Food thus adopted a snail as its symbol,
noting that the creature is “of slow motion, to
educate us that being fast makes man inconsid-
erate and foolish” (Slow Food XXXXXXXXXXThe slow
concept is now being applied as a prefix in othe
contexts. Slow Cities is a network of towns and
cities formed in 1999 with