What is ‘Conscious Consumerism’? Who is a ‘Conscious Consumer’?

Towards understanding what it means to be a conscious consumer in the 21st century

A conscious consumer is an agent of change who considers the social, environmental, ecological, and political impact of their buycott and boycott actions.

‘Conscious consumerism’, ‘conscious lifestyle’ and ‘conscious living’ are relatively new phrases featuring in almost any sustainability related narrative. Lately, this over-use of the word ‘conscious’ (as someone who is also deeply interested in the hard problem of consciousness) has started to ruffle my feathers. From a language editor’s perspective, ‘conscious consumerism’ doesn’t really mean too much to me as a phrase. I do believe that to live a balanced life, we must strive to align our intentions, thoughts, words, and actions. It’s a meditation — an all-the-time process. So sometimes I tend to dwell on words so that I may properly align them with my thoughts, intentions, and actions. And today is such a day.

Identifying the (my) Problem

Looking up the word ‘conscious’ in the learner’s dictionary, I find that definition number 4 (not 1 or 2 or 3 but 4) matches the context in which it is being used:

4: [more conscious; most conscious]: caring about something specified

She is environmentally conscious. [=she thinks and cares about the health of the environment]

a cost-conscious shopper [=a shopper who is concerned about the price of things]

A Google Scholar search on ‘conscious consumer’ throws up several defining studies, most of which appear in the 70s, with a few in the 90s, and a growing number in the late 2010s.

It’s notable that all studies, in alignment with the definition above, qualify the word conscious:

‘Socially conscious’

‘Environmentally conscious’