Education for Sustainable Consumption

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): Education for Sustainable Consumption (ESC) aims to provide knowledge, values, and skills to enable individuals and social groups to become actors of change towards more sustainable consumption behaviors. The objective is to ensure that the basic needs of the global community are met, quality of life for all is improved and inefficient use of resources and environmental degradation are avoided. ESC is therefore about providing citizens with appropriate information and knowledge on the environmental and social impacts of their daily choices, as well as providing workable solutions and alternatives. ESC integrates fundamental rights and freedoms including consumers’ rights, and aims at protecting and empowering consumers in order to enable them to participate in the public debate and economy in an informed, confident and ethical way. (UNEP 2010: ABC of SCP. UNEP-DTIE) This definition makes clear that ESC goes beyond increasing knowledge, aiming to develop values and skills for action. It refrains from reducing sustainable consumption to green purchasing alone and instead associates it with the adequate use of resources to meet needs and improve the quality of life for all. The definition defines learners as both consumers and citizens, participating in processes that could potentially change the collective contexts in which their individual consumption is embedded (see Consumer-Citizen). However, when it comes to specific ESC activities, the UNEP definition still focuses on “information and knowledge”.