Responsible consumption shouldn't be this hard!

From The Independent (UK):

What should we be asking for?

That all products subscribe to some basic environmental standards covering how much energy and water is involved to make and to use them, how their raw materials have been sourced, and whether they can be recycled.

We could add to that list some durability standards, so that gadgets and appliances can be repaired and upgraded, or maybe not even owned in the first place, but leased so that large items such as furniture can be replaced on a whim but are then refurbished for the next customer.

I'm not talking about labels bearing information so that we harried consumers can make an informed choice, but standards that remove a large element of that choice from our shoulders and place it firmly in the laps of product manufacturers and their army of design professionals.

After 25 years of environmental campaigning, I have come to the view that this is the only way to achieve change, because the second problem with the idea of the green consumer is that few of us have either the capacity or the interest constantly to weigh up all the factors that amount to a genuinely "green" set of choices.

--Julie Hill, author of The Secret Life of Stuff: A Manual for a New Material World

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