Why don’t we engage more with sustainability?
My colleague, deeply absorbed in the topic of sustainability, recently asked me last week why so many people fail to engage with the topic.
I was able to offer some understanding, based on projects I’ve personally been involved with and some of the psychological research I’m familiar with around the topic.
But while offering these suggestions, I had to share that there were likely many other reasons why – not least because “sustainability”, as a topic, covers such a wide and complex range of issues.
I started pulling together what appear to be the principal reasons for a lack of engagement in the wider topic of sustainability.
Some of these fall at the individual level, while some look more towards social and environmental factors.
As with any behavioural issue, it can be useful to look through two lenses:
- What motivational forces are at play?
- What enabling forces are at play?
For those already familiar with the COM-B model, the second of these lenses brings opportunity and capability together.
In exploring what barriers exist, I couldn’t help but wonder how such barriers could be overcome – always an easier task in theory than in practice, but a worthwhile ponder nonetheless!
Over the following days, I will deep dive into these barriers, all the while looking through a behavioural lens, while keeping an eye on how we might design for change.
Expect to be exploring …
- how we might overcome the challenge of complexity embedded in sustainability
- how temporal differences impact our sustainability-related behaviours
- how our limited sense of agency and impact can affect our desire to engage
- how our unconscious decision-making processes and habits play a role in perpetuating non-sustainable behaviour
- how our physical and social environments often make it challenging to engage and/or act.
Before getting into the reasons, let’s first make sure we’re talking about the same thing.
When we talk about sustainability, we’re essentially looking at how to balance current development and resource use with long-term environmental, economic and social wellbeing.
This can apply at industrial scale or within a single household.
Hopefully, all frameworks in and around the topic of sustainability fall within this definition, be it the triple bottom line, the circular economy, the UN sustainable development goals or any other which you are familiar with.
And with that, I invite you onto the first area of exploration – the hindering complexity of “sustainability” and how we might design to change this…
The Complexity Conundrum: Why Sustainability Stumps Us
In a world increasingly aware of its environmental footprint, one might wonder why sustainability isn’t at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
The answer lies, in part, in the sheer complexity of the issue.
Sustainability isn’t just about recycling or using eco-friendly products.
It’s a vast, interconnected web of environmental, social, and economic factors that influence each other in myriad ways.
There are different levels of scale – from deciding to use less water at home, to industrial considerations of energy use and operational waste.
And the inter-relatedness of the wider picture can be mind-boggling to get your head around.
It’s like a global-scale game of Jenga – pull out one piece, and you could affect the entire structure in ways you never anticipated.
For instance, consider the seemingly simple act of buying a t-shirt.
A truly sustainable approach would consider the environmental impact of cotton farming, the working conditions of textile workers, the carbon footprint of transportation, the longevity of the garment, and its eventual end-life / disposal.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
This complexity can be overwhelming. Many people, when faced with such a multifaceted issue, simply don’t know where to start.
It’s like being asked to solve a Rubik’s cube when you can only see one side – frustrating and seemingly impossible.
In addition to all this, the interconnected nature of sustainability issues means that solutions in one area can sometimes create problems in another.
Biofuels seemed like a great alternative to fossil fuels until we realised the impact they were having on food prices and deforestation.
So, what can we do?
Education is certainly one part of the solution.
Perhaps a key part.
We need to break down these complex issues into digestible chunks, helping people understand the connections without overwhelming them.
But, more than just focusing on disseminating information, we need to find ways of presenting the information to people in formats and contexts which engage and carry meaning.
Graphs need to be easy, attractive and informative. And not misleading!
Designers can bring information, instructions and data to life in imaginative ways.
Imagine our brains having a constant flurry of red and green lights – red lights signalling friction, and green lights signalling progress.
A heavy body of text containing information will likely trigger red lights.
Likewise an inaccessible and complex graph or data presentation.
Animations, depictions, and stories on the other hand are likely to trigger green signals – activating a motivation to absorb and learn.
Just think about how Duolingo and Headspace present the complexity of learning a new language and the challenge of pausing for a few minutes amidst the constant battle for our attention.
Celebrate small actions while keeping the bigger picture in view.
This can foster a positive feedback loop (more on that later on in the series), while still keeping the bigger challenge in mind so it becomes more of a long-term, embedded, mindset.
Foster systems thinking
This is perhaps the most important – the ability to see how different parts of a system influence one another.
Understanding in full the complexity of a system, particularly one in which there are dynamic parts, might be a tall ask to achieve at scale.
But even embedding a mindset in which we realise actions do not occur in isolation, and wanting to know what the consequences of those actions are, would be a fantastic move forward.
For example, knowing that purchasing the latest Shein release has “x” social consequences and “y” impact on the environment might at least get some to pause in their tracks.
By embracing complexity rather than shying away from it, we can start to unravel and understand the sustainability puzzle. It won’t be easy, but then again, the most worthwhile challenges rarely are.
