Examples of Sustainable Consumption: Review, Classification and Analysis

Abstract

In this report, we gather what could be seen as examples of sustainable consumption. The intention of the report is to help policy makers identify promising policy measures and strategies to reduce environmental and social impacts. We also would like to point to promising research directed at developing policies, tools, and evaluation methods for sustainable consumption. In order to fruitfully organize and present sustainable consumption examples, we group and classify these examples. A number of prior issues have to be addressed, most urgently the definition of sustainable consumption. We define sustainable consumption through a framework that can be used to analyse the social and environmental impacts of household consumption. In this framework, measures directed toward consumption are distinguished from those targeting production.

A more in-depth study of examples of sustainable consumption could yield insights in how these examples work, how well they are accepted, and how/to what degree they can be replicated. In the appendix, we proposed a detailed study to develop social science methods to evaluate acceptance and take into account the rebound effect.