A couple days ago I came across a video of a girl who recycled, reused or composted almost everything she used for the past two years. In disbelief I clicked open the video and I watched with amazement as she pulled out the content of her jar.
The average person generates 4.3 pounds of waste per day, which adds up to 1,569 pounds per year. So how did she do it? In the video she summarized three things:
- Know your trash
- Use reusable products
- Make your own product
Most of consumers can be educated to understand and follow the first two points however, it’s the third point of making your own product that may hinder and cause the average consumer to generate trash.
However, as we live in a more digitalized world, we are more open and exposed to information and can easily find the recipe and ideas online. In fact, consumers are exposed to more and more people with ideas for sustainability and healthy living, and from that they are motivated to make a change.
From today’s lecture we can see that she is a person with an internal locus of control with an economic orientation making her choices a value parity and green differentiation. This is the ideal consumer and will likely be able to search out and buy economic products. With the help of the internet and examples like this, consumers can act upon what they see and gradually change from an external to internal locus of control, and this will drive companies to compete to be more sustainable in the long run while also lowering their prices.
It could be a possibility that in the future, the majority of consumers will have internal locus of control and they will not need to choose between economic and altruism because industries will be competing with each other driving the prices down.
Read more about Reuse and Recycle at her blog.
Let me know what you think!