ENVIRONMENT: Get the Boredom Out of It

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Feb 5 2003 (IPS) - The environment matters, of course, but why does it have to be so boring?

That question is being asked now by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). And it is looking for answers by way of recruiting psychologists and advertising agencies to put a message across without putting people to sleep.

"We just need to find new ways of telling people of the environmental aspects of our actions," Jacqueline Aloisi De Larderel, Director of UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics which is spearheading the new initiative, told IPS on phone from Nairobi.

Ministers from about 100 countries at a UNEP governing council meeting are being urged to pay up for the new messages to go out. Norway, France and Sweden have already pledged some additional funds, De Larderel said. More pledges are expected by the time the council meeting ends February 7.

Environment experts now say that traditional messages are too ‘guilt-laden’ and disapproving, and instead of ‘turning people on’ to the environment, are switching them off. The want to market ‘cool’ lifestyles to sell clean and green products.

"You don’t have to go on talking about pollution and dark skies," said De Larderel. "You can give the same message by talking of clear skies."

Some new experiments are already attracting interest. The Korean car company Kia is offering free mountain bikes in Britain with its people carrier Sedona. But dealers are going further. "If you really want to buy one of our other cars, we will not fall out with you for the sake of a bicycle," a dealer told IPS.

The sales strategy is really a message, a Kia spokesman told IPS. "We all use our cars too much, and this is a way of asking people to cycle to the shops instead."

UNEP sees other experiments of interest:

– Kia is also helping organise "walking buses" which are networks of parents who escort children to school on foot.

– The European "Wash Right" campaign extols the virtues of low temperature washing by emphasising the benefits to the clothes as well as the energy-saving made.

– A fashion company in Brazil, Copa Roca, has made a real hit out of making clothes from recycled fabrics.

– Kluber, a leading lubricants company based in Munich has developed a mobile laboratory that visits industries to ensure their machinery is operating efficiently. Benefits include reductions in smoke, vibrations and noise pollution.

– Allegrini in Italy, which supplies detergents, uses a mobile shop to sell direct to consumers, reducing the need for them to travel by car.

UNEP now plans a broad campaign to take over from interesting experiments here and there. A conference of advertising executives and marketing managers has been called in Berlin in October to plan new ways of delivering old messages, or simply delivering new ones, De Larderel said.

"Messages from governments exhorting people to drive their cars less or admonishing them for buying products that cause environmental damage, appear not to be working," Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP told the conference. "People are simply not listening. Making people feel guilty about their lifestyles and purchasing habits, is achieving only limited success."

According to a UNEP study, only five per cent of the public in northern countries are embracing so-called sustainable lifestyles and sustainable consumerism. "We need to make sustainable lifestyles fashionable and ‘cool’ as young people might say," Toepfer said. "We also need to make it clear that there are real, personal, benefits to living in harmony with the planet."

UNEP is turning to social scientists and behaviourists under its Sustainable Consumption Programme and Life Cycle Initiative which is looking at a wide range of issues, from labelling to eco-friendly product design. The initiative is working in tandem with moves to develop cleaner production centres.

The new messages will be different in kind, and with different aims. "We have been looking too long at the production and supply side," said De Larderel, "but we now need to look at demand, which means sustainable consumption." That is not about consuming less, "it is about consuming differently, consuming efficiently, and having an improved quality of life."

United Nations Environment Programme (http://www.unep.org)