I first heard “sustainable consumption” when John Wilbanks uttered it yesterday. At first I thought he was joking about his work around large international well-meaning entities such as the World Economic Forum. By that I mean, large economies with large industries wishing to keep consumption by served populations up to economy-sustaining levels. It was later that I looked it up and found at Wikipedia that a definition dates back to the Oslo Symposium on Sustainable Consumption, which called it,
the use of services and related products which respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimising the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or product so as not to jeopardise the needs of future generations.”
So my assumed definition was at odds with the Oslo one, and others raised since. I therefore sit corrected, but wish to retain the ironies around the topic.
And, since nobody had blogged anything here in a long time and I’d like to fire the blog up again, I thought I’d flag the whole topic, since in the long run it is bound to bear on infrastructure.
Not speaking of which, a service called Zemanta, which works as a plug-in with WordPress, suggests these as related bonus links:
- From Mass Consumerism to Mass Change: Hope for Sustainable Consumption (shareable.net)
- Using Consumers to Drive the Market for Sustainability (impact.webershandwick.com)
- How Will the $1,000 Genome Change Society? Hear From Wired’s Thomas Goetz, MDV’s Sue Siegel, Kauffman’s John Wilbanks on Monday (xconomy.com)
- BASF First Chemical Company to be Founding Member of The Sustainability Consortium (prweb.com)
- Sustainable Lifestyles 2050: Visions and Policy Actions (iflanewsbrief.wordpress.com)
- Sustainable Future for Our Natural Resources (jamieross.com.au)
- The imperative of sustainable production and consumption (http://www.iisd.ca/consume/)