Green Consumerism

Some of the things I have learned over the last month are about how I can make an impact by being more aware of how carbon or ecological intensive the items I purchase are and then basing purchase decisions on that. As you may have also seen in some of the earlier posts last month, I signed up for some newsletters from the source websites. Yesterday these two things came together in an article from World Changing. The article titled New Emissions Measurements Show "Green" Consumerism Failing was startling, it is failing? I only just started to participate and it is failing! Well, I read on through the article and I found it very interesting. Two important statements from the article were:

Gains in emissions reductions from technological advances have been wiped out by increases in consumption as people demand higher levels of affluence.

The UK's 50-70% of gains from home energy conservation are lost when they're redirected for other resource consumption, by people buying other goods and services with the money saved.

After reading this, I thought to myself, I am probably very much involved in this statement. What do we do when we save money in one area, we like to spend it in another area, often an area that is a luxury compared to a necessity. After reading this I am more aware of this aspect of green consumerism and I will try to be more alert to how this impacts me.