A guilty conscience is a dangerous thing for an environmentally conscious human to have.
Wannabe tree-huggers who purchase eco-friendly products in hopes of canceling out their negative impact on the planet are damaging Earth even more, according to a new study published Monday by Frontiers in Psychology.
Researchers found that the “eco-guilt” we feel about our carbon footprint spurs us to pursue convenient untruths — i.e., “environmentally friendly” labels — in a bid to counterbalance our bad consumption habits.
“People might purchase some extra groceries because they are eco-labeled — [and] think that they can justify jetting abroad for vacation because they have been cycling to work or take longer showers because they’ve reduced the water temperature,” says lead author Patrik Sörqvist, an environmental psychologist and professor at Gävle University in Sweden.
Sörqvist calls BS on these “quick-fix” sentiments: “You can’t kiss and make up with the environment. Jetting to the Caribbean will make you a huge environmental burden, no matter how many meat-free Mondays you have.”
But it’s not just the little people who are at fault here, as “companies — nations, even — claim to balance greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees or by paying for carbon offsets through the European Union Emission Trading Scheme,” Sörqvist says.
“Meanwhile, the best thing for the environment would, of course, be for us to consume less overall,” he says.
Researchers call for stricter legislation of marketing ploys and new methods for estimating the environmental impact of products to guide consumers and corporations away from harmful purchases made in the name of climate compensation.
“Terms like ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘green’ encourage the view that objects, behaviors and decisions with these labels are ‘good’ rather than ‘less bad’ for the environment,” writes study co-author Linda Langeborg, also of the University of Gävle. “Calling a hamburger restaurant ‘100 percent climate compensated,’ for example, may deceive people into believing that eating dinner at that restaurant has no environmental burden.”
Real-time, guilt-free information about “eco-labeled” products is crucial, Langeborg says.
“We should give consumers immediate feedback on … the environmental impact of what they are buying,” she says. “For example, self-scanning systems in supermarkets could provide customers with an accumulated carbon footprint estimate of their shopping basket.”