For decades, consumers have been held accountable for waste, litter, and pollution. People are shamed with the term litterbug, scolded for buying from fast-fashion brands, urged to bring reusable coffee mugs to cafes and reprimanded in comments sections for their habits of overconsumption. While these lectures are important, valid and true, they fail to address the larger problem, the brands.
In 1970, an advertisement was aired featuring a stereotypical Native American man canoeing through a river tainted by plastic pollution and industrialized banks, ending with the man shedding a single tear after a driver throws their trash out the car window at the man’s feet. At the end of the ad, a pamphlet, “71 Things you can do to Stop Pollution” is displayed. The ad in question was aired by Coca-Cola, which was declared by the Sierra Club in 2022 to be the largest polluter in the world. The scale and effectiveness of this ad were unprecedented, marking a shift in how pollution is viewed and handled.
Studies have shown that many major corporations, such as the fossil fuel giant, Exxon Mobil, use wording in their public documents intended to shift blame over pollution from corporations to consumers for their demand. However, this narrative is unfair.
In the example of Exxon, US infrastructure caters to cars, reducing many options for consumers to reduce their gasoline demand. Moreover, the infrastructure caters to gas cars over electric, limiting long distance travellers in their sustainability choices, making demand change incredibly difficult. Unfair and unsafe production practices are also hard to be changed by conscious consumption because of high cost for sustainable items and corporate greed. Many companies are well aware of the health and environmental impacts of chemicals in their goods and sketchy production practices, but refuse to address the issues unless they face widespread public scrutiny or government action. This response is due to ease- they don’t want to pay to study safer alternatives, lose public trust by admitting they were wrong, or they may find alternatives cost more.
In some cases, such as Coca-Cola’s, the company started with more sustainable practices and switched for convenience. Coca-Cola used to use glass bottles that could be returned by the consumer to be washed and reused, like a regular cup. However, as plastic started gaining popularity, the company switched for convenience and to keep up with the trends. While one could argue this change was the consumer’s fault, the company has not tried to shift back, even after learning the environmental and human health effects of plastic bottles.
The biggest issue of blaming consumers for pollution is that our entire economy hinges on consumer spending. One way for an individual to reduce their carbon footprint is reducing consumption, but this risks our economic health. This risk puts the government in a situation in which large corporations have great power. This allows them to avoid legal persecution, mostly using the large amounts of money available to them. Corporations can also determine their own levels of regulation because the EPA is unable to regulate undeclared (new) substances, putting responsibility on corporations to self-report any new chemicals they are using.
So, while consumer responsibility, demand and awareness help to reduce negative environmental impacts, the real monsters to blame are the large corporations that know all of the consequences of what they are doing.