Sustainable consumption (sometimes abbreviated to "SC") is the use of products and services in ways that minimizes impacts on the environment. Sustainable consumption is done in a way that needs are met for present humans but also for future generations. Sustainable consumption is often paralleled with sustainable production; consumption refers to use and disposal (or recycling) not just by individuals and households, but also by governments, businesses, and other organizations. Sustainable consumption is closely related to sustainable production and sustainable lifestyles. "A sustainable lifestyle minimizes ecological impacts while enabling a flourishing life for individuals, households, communities, and beyond. It is the product of individual and collective decisions about aspirations and about satisfying needs and adopting practices, which are in turn conditioned, facilitated, and constrained by societal norms, political institutions, public policies, infrastructures, markets, and culture."
The United Nations includes analyses of efficiency, infrastructure, and waste, as well as access to basic services, green and decent jobs, and a better quality of life for all within the concept of sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption shares a number of common features and is closely linked to sustainable production and sustainable development. Sustainable consumption, as part of sustainable development, is part of the worldwide struggle against sustainability challenges such as climate change, resource depletion, famines, and environmental pollution.
Sustainable development as well as sustainable consumption rely on certain premises such as:
Effective use of resources, and minimization of waste and pollution
Use of renewable resources within their capacity for renewal
The reuse and upcycling of product life-cycles so that consumer items are utilized to maximum potential Intergenerational and intragenerational equity
Goal 12 of the Sustainable Development Goals seeks to "ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns".
Consumption shifting
Studies found that systemic change for "decarbonization" of humanity's economic structures or root-cause system changes above politics are required for a substantial impact on global warming. Such changes may result in more sustainable lifestyles, along with associated products, services and expenditures, being structurally supported and becoming sufficiently prevalent and effective in terms of collective greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Nevertheless, ethical consumerism usually only refers to individual choices, and not the consumption behavior and/or import and consumption policies by the decision-making of nation-states. These have however been compared for road vehicles, emissions (albeit without considering emissions embedded in imports) and meat consumption per capita as well as by overconsumption.
Life-cycle assessments could assess the comparative sustainability and overall environmental impacts of products – including (but not limited to): "raw materials, extraction, processing and transport; manufacturing; delivery and installation; customer use; and end of life (such as disposal or recycling)".
Sustainable food consumption
The environmental impacts of meat production (and dairy) are large: raising animals for human consumption accounts for approximately 40% of the total amount of agricultural output in industrialized countries. Grazing occupies 26% of the earth's ice-free terrestrial surface, and feed crop production uses about one third of all arable land. A global food emissions database shows that food systems are responsible for one third of the global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Moreover, there can be competition for resources, such as land, between growing crops for human consumption and growing crops for animals, also referred to as "food vs. feed" (see also: food security).
Therefore, sustainable consumption also includes food consumption – shifting to more sustainable diets.
