The Era Of Sustainable Consumption Is Over — Why That May Be Good News For The Planet

-Analysis-

BERLIN — Let’s begin with clothing, for a timely reason. People are buying more clothes than ever before, according to a new report from the European Environment Agency. And it’s hard not to set those numbers (19 kilograms, or nearly 42 pounds, per capita in the most recent reporting year) alongside other statistics. For example, the rise in global air passenger numbers, or the stagnation of organic food’s market share in Germany.

This paints a bigger ideological picture. And that’s what makes the report so interesting. The days when an ecologically conscious lifestyle was fashionable are over. People are back to consuming like there’s literally no tomorrow.

The signs point to a parting of ways from an ecologically mindful cosmopolitanism that manages its emotions with restraint, that thinks about its children and grandchildren, and even takes a kind of joy in doing the right thing, because a wind turbine really can be a beautiful toy.

It makes you want to call out to climate activists: the world isn’t like this anymore. Even in the realm of the climate, there’s been a — terrible word — vibe shift. This is the world of U.S. President Donald Trump, of “Drill, Baby, Drill,” of Tesla CEO Elon Musk en route to Mars, and of all those people who simply don’t see why they, of all people, should skip that mustard-colored coat that will look so good on a quick EasyJet trip to London for a musical. In short, it’s over, eco.

Both disheartening and liberating

Of course, it’s always about what numbers mean. The figures on European clothing consumption are from 2022, and they’re compared with data from 2019. So this has absolutely nothing to do with Trump in 2025. And it’s hard to say how much the global shift in awareness triggered by the Fridays for Future movement between 2019 and 2022 might be reflected in the data.

But that doesn’t make it any better. If anything, it makes it worse. This comparison period perfectly illustrates how little political trends in individual countries ultimately affect what’s actually happening on the ground. Other forces are clearly driving things. Inflation, the energy crisis, war — and in the case of clothing, an industry whose increasingly refined tricks of built-in obsolescence keep everything turning.

Yes, if you were looking for more proof of just how globally irrelevant it is that a few hundred households in the suburbs of a big German city are sewing their own high-quality clothes because the kids came home all fired up from a climate protest, well, here you go.

It’s not really freedom when the burden of securing the world’s future is shifted onto consumers.

The realization this leads to is both disheartening and liberating. The takeaway is that waiting for individual consumer epiphanies is a dead end, at least if the goal is lasting change. Yes, there are strong emotional reactions that have short-term effects, even if they’re not mainly in the realms of climate or resource conservation. Yes, Canadians have briefly boycotted American products. Yes, in Germany, with its many homegrown alternatives, it might actually be possible to topple a car brand like Tesla through consumer rejection.

But then again, you’ve got the tangled ownership structures of corporations in a globalized capitalist world. And you’ve got services so ubiquitous they’re almost impossible to avoid. Put differently, it will probably take a lot more daycare groups switching from WhatsApp to Signal before that kind of protest has any real effect, beyond the admittedly comforting notion that at least Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta isn’t reading the messages at Kita Sonnenschein daycare anymore.

Widening the battlefield

It’s now been 16 years since German journalist Kathrin Hartmann dismantled a whole bunch of myths about the social impact of individual consumption in her book End of the Fairy Tale Hour. Many of her ideas have since become common knowledge. For example, that we shouldn’t fall for corporate greenwashing, or that when a small “elite of responsibility and pleasure” embraces the sustainable lifestyle, the impact on society as a whole is questionable at best.

In the meantime, the battlefield Hartmann described has expanded. The problem is no longer just the bourgeois lie of a clean conscience. What’s dangerous now is putting any faith at all in the players who profit from the market of goods and services in the middle of a climate crisis.

The focus must finally shift to the producers. And the clothing industry is a good place to start. The fact that our shopping carts keep getting fuller year after year has a lot to do with the triumph of fast fashion, which is surging ahead despite full awareness of the harm it causes, from microplastics and textile waste to the water used in production and the fuel burned in transport. And no, this is not primarily a consumer problem, driven by some endless demand for cheaper goods.

Many people are simply stuck in a cycle of limited income and low-quality products. People may want a lot, but the real question is whether they have to get it, and what the true cost really is.

A calculated overload

Ideally, this question should be decided by proactive governments. But these are the very institutions that have recently dropped the ball, both nationally and internationally, when it comes to supply chain laws and heating regulations, often in the name of protecting individual or economic freedom. But it’s not really freedom when the burden of securing the world’s future is shifted onto consumers.

It’s a calculated overload, and also a deliberate distraction by those who actually do have the power and the means to bring about real change. They are the ones who gain from the endless tug-of-war between hardline environmentalists and shoulder-shrugging pleasure seekers. They are the ones who benefit from fights over washcloths, train tickets and the unavoidable existence of cheap, throwaway clothes in lower-income communities.

Save me from myself

Consumers need to be taken out of the spotlight, especially when the EU tries to tackle the clothing crisis with appeals not to toss worn-out garments into household trash (but then, where are they supposed to go? There are hardly any clothing bins around).

The best way for consumers to help the climate is as voters, by supporting politicians who take the old crime-novel plea to heart: “Save me from myself.” Because only in that way, as the current wave of overconsumption makes painfully clear, can freedom be preserved for the long haul. And not just for future generations.