The standard form under pressure? On the ecological reconfiguration of product presentation using the example of consumables (2024)

Abstract

1. The rise of sustainable consumables

Industrial capitalism, throw-away society and consumerism are increasingly the subject of ecologically motivated criticism. The omnipresence of ecological sustainability is undeniable. As a political strategy, the agenda of social movements, and the imperative of individual everyday practice, it has now advanced to become society's leitmotif. At the level of individual consumers, there is also a greater awareness of environmental impacts in purchasing decisions. Indeed, supermarket shelves in Western countries are increasingly stocked with everyday goods that are supposed to offer an ecological alternative to classic products of the standard form. Various product features operating under the umbrella term of ecological sustainability, such as ‘vegan’, ‘climate-neutral’ and ‘plastic-free’, have shed their niche image and can be found almost everywhere, from discount stores to the luxury segment.

This development, which can also be observed in everyday life, led us to the question of how far the market for products of everyday use—for example, from the areas of personal hygiene, cosmetics, clothing—is coming under pressure from new alternatives that are proclaimed as ecologically sustainable. In this context, we start from the assumption that sustainable consumables cannot simply replace previous, non-sustainable standard products, especially since they usually have a higher price and are sometimes associated with more elaborate consumption practices or a certain loss of consumption quality compared to the established equivalents. Instead, some legitimizing strategies are needed to place the new, sustainable variants on the market and put them in serious competition with the established products on mainstream markets.

This article builds upon the work of Boltanski and Esquerre (2020), as well as Boltanski and Chiapello (2005). Against the background of an increasing ecological critique of capitalism (Chiapello, 2013, pp. 73–76), we note a change in the so-called commodity structure, leading to the standard form of commodities coming under pressure. Commodity structure addresses a link between society and actor; it exists both as a body of knowledge in society and as a cognitive pattern among actors. In order for a collectively organized exchange of commodities for money to be possible, actors need an orientation framework that enables them to make a judgment about the price of a commodity and to be capable of acting within the world of commodities (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2019, p. 149). We argue that this framework is challenged by new forms of product presentation which highlight environmental sustainability as the main product characteristic. Based on the studies of Boltanski and Esquerre (2020), we refer to these strategies of product presentation as forms of sustainable enrichment. Simply put, enrichment refers to the tendency to use characteristics of commodities to valorize those that go beyond mere use value. This can include, for example, narratives about the context of origin, special production conditions and special associated personalities.

We also find efforts on the part of suppliers of sustainable consumables to tackle the social mode of consumption as a whole. They refer to the (high) price of their own products as the ‘true price’ and put it in relation to the low prices of non-sustainable products, which according to them only comes from externalized environmental costs. In this way, they try to have a regulating effect on society's common notion of what an ‘appropriate’ price is—a concept we call ‘sustainable meta-price’, following Boltanski and Esquerre.

Our results are based on a sample of 26 suppliers of sustainable products from Germany, the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, France and Denmark. We rely on document analysis, qualitative interviews and ethnographic field visits.

Although this work does not intend to provide any test criteria on real sustainability of products, it proposes a working definition of ecological sustainability, which enables a structural analysis of the presentation of sustainability.

The following section provides a brief overview of the state of sustainable consumption research and clarifies key terms. We then open our theoretical framework in Section 3. Section 4 explains our methodological approach. Section 5 presents the central empirical findings and Section 6 contextualizes and discusses them. The conclusion in Section 7 recapitulates our key findings and identifies the limitations and need for further research.

2. Private consumption and sustainability

The term sustainability is both omnipresent and indeterminate. Depending on the context, different concepts can be associated with it. At its core, sustainability refers to a specific mode of utilization of ecological and planetary resources, that is, a mediating relationship between economy and nature. The most popular concept of sustainability is the triple bottom line concept, which was derived from the WCED definition and emphasizes ecological, social and economic sustainability as equally important aspects of sustainable development (Batz, 2021, p. 26). The model functions as a conceptual framework for social, political and economic program designs, which can then fill the three dimensions with their respective objectives.

Sustainable consumables, which will be examined in this article with regard to their valorization, are mostly aligned with this understanding of sustainability. They are thus products whose consumption aims to reduce or avoid damage to the ecological and social environment and subsequent generations (Jonas, 2016, p. 347).

Although combating environmentally harmful production and consumption patterns is now generally recognized as a desirable social goal, ecologically sustainable products and companies are repeatedly confronted with accusations of greenwashing. This comprises the criticism that companies conceal their fundamental environmental harmfulness through particular sustainability activities and marketing (Lenczuk, 2017, p. 3).

In contrast, this article proposes a pragmatic definition of sustainability. We do not understand sustainability as an objectively measurable relationship between the economy and nature, but rather as a social construction that is mobilized and justified in different ways by different social actors, each with different goals and for different purposes (Neckel, 2018a, pp. 13–14). Thus, the present study is interested in any product, as long as it is flagged and advertised as ‘ecologically sustainable’ by the providers. However, whether and to what extent products are actually ‘sustainable’, that is, whether their consumption truly has measurable positive effects on the ecological environment, cannot be evaluated in the present analysis. Whilst we understand sustainability as a disputed and socially constructed concept, it is important to highlight that sustainable efforts remain real in their consequences (Thomas 1928, p. 572).

Thus, on the one hand, we distance ourselves from the accusation of greenwashing, which is mainly used in everyday language and already includes a judgment on whether a product is ‘sustainable’ or not. On the other hand, we connect to a genuinely sociological perspective on sustainability, which considers the latter not simply normatively as a strategy worth supporting in the face of complex socio-ecological crises, but as a socially constructed object which is to be investigated from a problem-oriented perspective (Neckel, 2018a, p. 13).

In this study, ecological sustainability is defined as an overarching concept used by actors involved in commodity exchange to coordinate transactions in the market and to assign value to products. Environmentally sustainable private consumption is now commonly considered socially desirable (Adloff and Neckel, 2019) and is also being pushed politically; for example, it is enshrined as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations. Suppliers of ecologically sustainable consumer products tie into these expectations for private consumption and offer their customers products that possess various attributes advertised as ecologically sustainable. These attributes can be presented either analytically or narratively—for example, in terms of CO2 saved compared to the conventional equivalent, or in terms of places or animals protected by the purchase. Using these analytically or narratively presented attributes, understanding about the environmental sustainability of the products is coordinated between suppliers and customers. Suppliers justify their product as sustainable based on one or more of these attributes, and customers agree to the market exchange under the situational definition that they pursue their personal sustainability goal through the purchase. In addition, however, the price of the product is also justified based on these product attributes. In the context of this study, the concept of environmental sustainability is always linked to a set of analytically and narratively presented product attributes.

In the following outline of the economic and social significance of sustainable private consumption, there is necessarily a recourse to the concepts and categories that will become the object of analysis in the course of the study. Market shares of ecologically sustainable products, used here as an indicator of the dissemination and relevance of the subject matter, are measured on the basis of objectifiable criteria such as certificates, which can themselves represent an analytical form of presentation and are awarded on the basis of the product properties considered in this study (cultivation method, material properties). However, this seems necessary to classify the scope of the present investigation.

Whilst ecological sustainability has become a buzzword of private consumption and is omnipresent from discount stores to luxury consumption, the economic and social scope for private individuals to influence overall societal sustainability goals through conscious consumption decisions is comparatively small. The German Federal Environment Agency (Steinemann et al., 2017) puts the share of private households in Germany’s total CO2 emissions at 17 percent. However, only around 35 percent of this is attributable to areas that can be directly influenced by individual consumption decisions, such as food, everyday products and services, while the remainder relates to heating, electricity and mobility (Steinemann et al., 2017, p. 12), that is, infrastructurally pre-structured consumption that is used by private individuals but leaves them no or very limited options. Especially from this point of view, the vehemence with which private actors are called to sustainable consumption is remarkable. Political actors such as the United Nations or the European Commission, as well as transnational and governmental sustainability programs adopted in each case, explicitly anchor sustainable private consumption as an important building block for combating ecological crises (Jonas, 2016, p. 346). This resonates with a complementary awareness on the part of consumers. Consumers experience their own consumption as an instrument of political and social participation and subject it to appropriate sustainability tests (Jonas, 2016, p. 346).

Various data on sustainable consumption is available and documents an overall increasing trend in almost all areas of consumption, although the market shares vary greatly depending on the area (Steinemann et al., 2017, p. 25). For sustainable consumables, however, there is hardly any meaningful data available, since for products such as fashion or hygiene articles there is an almost unmanageable number of seals of approval that also include different, sometimes non-transparent standards. As an example, however, a survey of eco-certified textile companies showed sales have been growing at an annual rate of five percent for the past 10 years (Errichiello and Zschiesche, 2021, p. 48).

The consumption of organic food is well documented. Steinemann et al. (2017, p. 22) state that the market shares of organic food have increased continuously since 2008. In 2019, organic food accounted for 5.68 percent of total food sales. In contrast, however, in the same year, 37 percent of respondents said they currently buy frequently or solely organic products, with another 41 percent stating they buy organic products ‘occasionally’ (BMEL, 2020, p. 9).

Similar empirical findings are available for the supplier side. Around one-third of German companies stated that their clientele demanded sustainable products and services as well as production processes (Bellmann and Koch, 2019). Sustainability is also important or very important for more than half of the companies surveyed, according to their own statements. In contrast, however, only an average of around 13 percent stated that they use quantifiable measures such as certifications or standardized sustainability management (Bellmann and Koch, 2019).

Thus, although ecologically sustainable consumer behavior is certainly considered socially desirable, it is not (yet) equally reflected in the respective market shares. In fact, sustainability research quite reliably proves that positive attitudes toward ecological sustainability tend to be correlated with a lifestyle that is particularly harmful to the environment (Moser et al., 2016).

The growing market shares of sustainable consumables, the increasing knowledge of ecological problems, and the rising approval ratings for ecological sustainability within society have not yet been reflected in the emissions figures either (Steinemann et al., 2017). CO2 emissions from private households have stagnated at the high level of 7.6–8.2 tons per capita and year since 2005. In order to achieve the climate protection goals of the Paris Agreement, a reduction to below one ton by 2050 would be necessary (Steinemann et al., 2017, p. 25).

The reported empirical findings support the assumption that ecological sustainability can be conceptualized as a form of enrichment of everyday products that satisfies distinct consumption needs (Neckel 2018b, pp. 62–63). Social discourses about ecological crisis phenomena and sustainability as well as market structures shape the consciousness of customers and awaken desires for everyday products that are flagged as sustainable alternatives to conventional mass consumption, which is (rightly) criticized as environmentally damaging, without having to accept general losses in accustomed consumption practices.

The high approval ratings for organic foods and the extent of the effects of social desirability in surveys on ecological sustainability are evidence of an increasing social relevance and suggest that sustainable products on the market meet with a corresponding demand and suitable sales markets. However, the extent to which sustainable product alternatives can trigger social transformation towards ecological sustainability is not directly relevant to this study.

Nevertheless, sustainability is also increasingly important for everyday consumption. To fathom how exactly the abstract goal of ecological sustainability enters into the development, presentation, and distribution of products, we propose a theoretical framework of analysis that helps to classify the observed developments historically, to analyze them in relation to their presentation and to explain the mechanism of value attribution.

3. Enrichment as a principle of valuation

This article is intended to explain the strategies by which sustainable products are placed and marketed while competing with long-established standard products. Therefore, it is about the forms of valuation that different actors, for example, sellers and buyers, can apply to a product. Thus, this article will draw on both the concepts of enrichment and the metaprice, that allow for a deeper insight in price settings and their justifications.

The way sustainable products are produced in the commodity economy, their value and quality are constructed, evaluated, categorized and tested are a subject that fits into the approach of the economics of convention which has ‘worked out a framework for the analysis of socio-economic coordination and socio-economic institutions’ (Diaz-Bone, 2017, p. 239).

The key concept of convention refers to conventions as culturally established frameworks of coordination (Storper and Salais 1997, p. 17). In uncertain situations, actors rely on conventions to structure and justify their actions, for example, in cases like consumers choosing between sustainable and standard products. Conventions play a central role in shaping market behavior, influencing how products are categorized, valued and presented.

Focusing on the actual forms of valuation and presentation of sustainable products, it is helpful to understand them as embedded in contemporary capitalist logics in a similar way as Boltanski and Esquerre do in regards to luxury products in ‘Enrichment—A Critique of Commodities’ (2020). The authors identify a capitalism that distances itself from industrialized standard products and utilizes the history of things as a selling point. Quite similarly, our article understands the observed presentations and justifications of sustainable consumables as a new way of countering critique. In this case: ecologic critique towards industrial capitalism with its waste-producing standard products (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2020, p. 41). Ecologic critique that has emerged as a challenge to capitalism appears to be incorporated into capitalist logics as we observe in the sector of consumables. The forms of enrichment at the product level, as described by Boltanski and Esquerre (2020) for the value of cultural and luxury goods, such as art collections, historical objects, the trade in rare cars or the commodification of local history, help to understand this incorporation.

The central figures are narrative and analytic enrichment, which is well suited to explaining the value attribution in sustainable alternatives to everyday consumables. With our focus on consumables, we are aiming to expand the scope of the original theoretical approach of ‘enrichment’. As Boltanski and Esquerre (2020) deal mainly with luxury goods, we see the surplus potential of their theory of valuations when it comes to the enrichment of everyday consumables.

The analytic form of presentation refers to information about the thing that can be ‘fixed in a minimal form that is easily storable, reproducible, and transmissible, one that facilitates comparisons’ (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2020, p. 112). These are objectifiable data, often numerical, for example, CO2 amounts or kilometers shipped. Analytic presentation usually does not require sensory, direct perception and is ‘particularly well adapted to external commerce’ (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2020, pp. 112–113) which makes it important for sustainable consumables that are sold via online shops or platforms.

Narrative presentations, however, comprehensively link the thing-in-itself with the history of the situations of its invention, production, circulation and cultural and social embedding. It mobilizes, for example, vulnerable minorities such as farmers in the Global South or the personal story of a founder’s journey from an idea to a (sustainable) new product. Narrative presentations sometimes distance themselves from the thing-in-itself and its physical—as opposed to the analytical—form of presentation. Here, people and events are important bearers of narratives (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2020, p. 113). Overall, narrative presentations are less objectifiable and can be much broader in scope than analytic ones.

With mobilizing narrative and analytic presentations, the sellers of sustainable alternatives to standard consumables usually charge higher prices than their standard competitors. Enrichments must therefore be able to affect the price actually paid for a good in a situation of commodity exchange. The sole concept of price, however, does not adequately grasp the contingent nature of different enrichments.

‘In a commercial transaction, the price is never anything but a sign associated with a thing. From this perspective, the price is not interpreted as a sign of the relative social positions of persons; it is not the symbol of a social distinction’ (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2020, p. 83).

To take everything into account that is important for defining and calling a price, we draw on Boltanski and Esquerre’s concept of the metaprice.

‘Metaprices are not real prices but benchmarks for actors to evaluate the adequacy of requested prices as already paid prices for the same goods (as paid elsewhere by others) or estimates of value’ (Diaz-Bone 2023, p. 6).

Metaprices are therefore tools for relationalization and ‘reflection’ (Susen 2018, p. 17) that can be used to justify both price and value. The metaprice does not occur in a sale but ‘refers to the operations during which prices are set’ (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2020, p. 86). These operations are partially performed in presenting a good. A narrative underpinning of a product through a specific story or an analytically alleged value can drive up the metaprice and thus achieve a higher actual price compared to the metaprice of a product in its standard form (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2020, pp. 102–103).

Using these heuristics, it is now possible to explain how even at the granular product level the standard form comes under pressure, and high-priced, green alternatives appear to gain momentum.

4. Methodical approach

This study, which was conducted in a joint research project of researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Weizenbaum Institute, is based on a comparative and contrastive case study design (Yin, 2018). The product presentation of 26 start-ups whose offer is flagged as ecologically sustainable (so-called ecopreneurships) was investigated (see Table1). The primary data sources are documents of the external presentation of the start-ups studied. These were analyzed using the document analysis method (Bowen, 2009).

The selection of cases followed the principle of Theoretical Sampling (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2014; Morse and Clark, 2019). This strategy does not involve a chronological sequence of case selection, analysis, and theory building; rather, these phases are closely linked and alternate in a circular process multiple times until theoretical saturation is achieved. The case selection, therefore, occurred in three consecutive phases. In the initial phase, no theoretically generated concepts from empirical data were available, so the sampling was open. The concept of ecological enrichment, derived from Boltanski’s and Esquerre’s work (see Section 3), loosely served as a sensitizing concept (Gilgun, 2019). Since this initial phase aimed to develop as many potentially relevant perspectives as possible from the material, initially all cases of profit-oriented companies offering ecological products or services were considered. However, the case selection focused on the German context in this phase. Nine cases were gathered in this phase. The analysis of these initial cases revealed that providers of sustainable consumables employ various forms of analytic and narrative presentation of their products (see Section 5.1). Also, in some instances, we encountered the justification of product prices based on the discursive concept of ‘true price’ (see Section 5.2), which was similar across several cases. These findings needed to be verified by collecting some additional cases using the minimal contrasts mode. Therefore, in the second phase, primarily similar cases were collected, and the findings from the first phase were consolidated. In this phase, the existing sample was supplemented with four more cases. As the sample at this point mainly comprised German cases as well as small and younger startups, a third data collection phase was initiated aiming for maximal contrast, in which 13 additional cases from primarily international and larger providers of sustainable products were collected. These cases originated in the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, France and Denmark. The analysis of these cases—and the re-analysis of the previous cases in light of the new findings—facilitated the development of theoretical concepts presented in Section 5. This study claims to have achieved theoretical saturation since additional material and further analyses did not yield any new properties of the category nor contribute to any relevant refinement of knowledge about this category (Small, 2009; Flick, 2019, p. 126).

Since our study focuses on the presentation of sustainable products—that is, on public discourse—the main source of data analyzed in all the cases presented were various external presentation documents related to the start-ups studied. These included the websites and online shops as well as the social media profiles of the companies and—if available—crowdfunding campaigns and video clips of the founders.

The collection and evaluation of online documents were based on the methods of internet ethnography (Kozinets, 2015) and content-analytical document analysis (Bowen, 2009; Mayring, 2014). During the study, all available online documents (see above) were examined with regard to communicative practices in terms of

• the self-representation and the (publicly told) founding story of the company,

• product presentations,

• understandings of sustainability,

• criticism of other companies and/or actors,

• certain corporate practices that are considered sustainable and/or progressive, such as compensation strategies, production, the use of sustainable materials, etc.,

• disclosure of what is actually internal company information such as supply chains, price determination or reinvestment of profits and the price composition.

Based on this data, case studies were created in each case about the start-ups and their products. The practices found in the individual cases were then compared and synthesized into the types of practices presented in Section 5.

Although most of the start-ups observed for this research rely exclusively on the online distribution of their products, in cases where a physical shop exists, ethnographic field visits (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019) to these shops were additionally conducted. The field notes also inform the case studies.

Whereas the research interest lies in the publicly communicated characteristics and narratives of the consumables studied, problem-focused interviews (Brinkmann, 2020) were conducted with the founders of the start-ups in some selected cases in order to deepen the findings of the document analysis. Since the founders themselves, together with their biographies and subjective dispositions, are not the object of analysis in this study, but rather exclusively their specific expertise with regard to the presentation and valuation of their products, the interviews were not analyzed reconstructively, but rather with regard to the manifest content. The data analysis methods are oriented towards qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2014) as well as the formulating interpretation step of the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2013).

The 26 cases were collected between 2019 and 2023. The names of the companies we studied, and their founders mentioned below are pseudonyms to ensure the anonymity of the cases.

5. The ecologic enrichment of everyday products

The products we researched are characterized as more sustainable alternatives to everyday products intended to compete with their conventional equivalents by being offered on mainstream markets. In this way, green entrepreneurs want to put the respective conventional, environmentally harmful standard product of their market segment under market pressure, displace it and contribute to a more sustainable consumption overall. The fashion label ‘AllMost Fashion’, for example, writes on its homepage, that it wants to change the way in which society thinks about fashion. The company promotes fair production conditions and uses textile waste to create their pieces. By doing so, it wants to raise awareness of both the exploitation of workers in the textile industry and ecological pollution through the waste of the fast fashion industry.

Since these are mostly (still) smaller suppliers, the green products usually cannot yet be produced at a similar scale as the conventional equivalents, and the ecologically and often also socially sustainable production increases costs. Although intended to compete with standard products, the products are therefore usually offered at somewhat higher prices.

So how are sustainable products advertised on the market, how are they valorized and—despite the higher price—justified as legitimate alternatives to cheaper standard products? To answer this question, we identify five different forms of ecologic enrichment of standard products (5.1). We find that the value of green standard products is presented on both the analytical and narrative dimensions. We then turn to the question of how suppliers determine and justify the price of their environmentally sustainable products (5.2). In doing so, we draw on the notion of metaprice and show how green suppliers try to challenge society’s consciousness regarding its way of consumption.

5.1. Sustainable goods: analytic and narrative enrichments

To shed light on the strategies by which environmental sustainability is mobilized as a product criterion to ascribe value to consumables, we focus on the analytic and narrative modes of product presentation used to valorize consumables advertised as environmentally sustainable. In doing so, we identify five different forms of ecological enrichment, situated on both the analytic and narrative dimension. We will see that sustainability (as a product criterion/mode of enrichment) can be expressed in analytic terms and product features such as emissions and resources used in the production process as well as in narratives about the ‘history’ of the latter. Moreover, some forms of ecological enrichment are non-binary configurations of analytic and narrative presentations. The following sections show these forms and illustrate them with empirical examples.

5.1.1. Transparency and sustainability as additional product features

The first form of ecological enrichment refers to the analytic dimension of product presentation. It includes partial information about the product that can be ‘fixed in a minimal, easily storable, reproducible, and transportable form, which makes it easier to compare’ (Boltanski and Esquerre, 2020, p. 112). This primarily involves data that can be objectified, often numerically. In the case of sustainable consumables, the analytic level of presentation is complemented by additional dimensions that reflect different sustainability criteria.

Firstly, in the public presentation, for example, on homepages of the companies linked to the online store, the value and supply chains are disclosed. With the help of visual aids such as photos and videos as well as descriptive texts, (potential) buyers can trace the entire life cycle of their product, from raw material extraction and processing to transport, delivery routes and packaging materials.

Secondly, characteristic values are integrated into the analytic presentation of the products, which can relate to both the production process and the consumption of the respective product. The most common metrics are CO2 emissions, water consumption and/or plastic waste generated by the product. Such values are then stated during the product presentation in terms of weight or water quantities and/or as percentages. The specification of these values is made in differentiation to the conventional versions of the respective standard product and indirectly justifies the higher price. For example, the start-up ‘GryllGood’, which sells a meat substitute made from insect protein, advertises on its homepage that its products require ‘10× less feed, 2000× less water, 200× less space’ and emitting ‘100× less CO2’ and ‘without hormones, antibiotics and animal suffering’.

Conventional standard products, whose non-sustainability is primarily characterized by the fact that they are thrown away after one-time or infrequent use, are often countered by ‘green’ suppliers with sustainable alternatives that are suitable for reuse. In this case, the longevity or reusability of the respective product over that of the disposable product is emphasized, since in this way (supposedly) fewer resources are also consumed and returned to the so-called cycle. The price is usually significantly higher than that of the disposable version and is justified by the fact that the conventional product no longer must be bought over and over again. The provider ‘Tamp-NON’, which offers feminine hygiene products, for example, advertises a menstrual cup as being ‘great for the environment’, because in comparison to the disposable equivalent, it does not cause waste over and over again.

Another form of analytical presentation are the numerous certificates that are meant to ratify environmental sustainability and make it tangible, such as the organic seal or, for textiles, the GOTS seal. The analytic formalization, for example, through publicly comprehensible test catalogs and a certain number of necessary conditions for awarding the seal, generates an externalization of quality testing here. It is no longer only buyers and sellers who evaluate and justify the sustainable quality of the goods, but a testing institution with its own non-partisan reputation. The external-analytical nature of such seals can thus be seen as a mutual relief of the parties involved in the exchange, despite all the criticism that repeatedly arises against them.

5.1.2. Compensations as strategies of ex-post legitimation

Compensation strategies are a form of ecologic enrichment that can take place on both the analytic and narrative dimension—or hybridly on both dimensions. In this case, products are advertised as ‘compensating’ for the emissions generated in the production process by the company investing a certain amount in corresponding compensation projects. At the analytic level, figures are presented showing the extent to which the emissions generated by the production and sale of the products are offset elsewhere. The start-up Hygge by Nature, for example, has had its whole supply chain calculated by a specialized sustainability auditor. The CO2 emissions, as well as the used resources like energy and water are then compensated by the start-up supporting environmental projects such as wind farms and water treatment projects. The products of the start-up are marketed as ‘climate and resource positive’.

The analytic dimension of compensation is in some cases complemented by a narrative level. A typical example of this is so-called ‘tree planting projects’. Here, the respective companies cooperate with external providers who plant trees and thus finance reforestation projects through their own profits. While on the analytic level figures are presented on how much CO2 can be bound by planting the trees, on the narrative level the product is associated with nature and environmental protection by telling stories about the respective forests and showing photographs of them.

The enrichment via compensation projects represents a direct justification for the price of the product because the costs are passed on to the customer. For this purpose, suppliers usually specify exactly which and how many compensation services are included in the purchase of the product, for example, two trees are planted for each product sold. This gives buyers the feeling that by buying the product they are ‘co-booking’ or supporting the planting of these trees. In addition, a sense of belonging is created in that some suppliers regularly report on the progress of the compensation projects and, for example, quantify in their own blogs how many trees have been planted so far through the totality of all transactions. Buyers can thus perceive themselves as having made a measurable success in saving the world. In this way, products are linked to a sense of direct influence.

5.1.3. Upcycling as a narrative of uniqueness

Another hybrid form of ecologic enrichment is found in the practice of upcycling. Here, former standard products or their remnants, which would normally enter the waste cycle, are used as components of new products. In comparison to recycling, which involves the reuse of processed waste products (e.g. waste paper), upcycling involves the upgrading of waste products into supposedly more valuable products. The resulting products are usually promoted in a special way, for example, as unique items due to the necessities and limitations resulting from the use of waste products. This requires the creativity of the creators, who are also woven into the narrative of enhancing the products. Unlike other suppliers, they possess the necessary abilities to create a trendy product out of waste. The creators of these products are thus often staged as designers, whose creations are automatically design pieces or even art and thus more expensive. The history of the production of these products is thus actively exploited to increase the value of the object and thus also to justify a higher price.

For example, two cases in our sample, ‘AllMost Fashion’ and ‘Ne Pas Là’, produce pieces from textile waste. Since these are textile scraps and rejects, which are thus always in limited supply, the companies can only produce limited pieces from the fabrics available. In their online stores, the various garments are then actively advertised as unique items. Despite the aspect of sustainability, the two to three times higher prices, compared to fast fashion equivalents, are justified by the uniqueness of the pieces. Another example in our sample is the small start-up ‘CupNote’. They use paper from thrown away coffee to go cups as a raw material for their so-called ‘unique’ notebooks.

So, in these cases, there is a double enrichment compared to non-sustainable standard and trend products. The upcycled products are said to be better for the environment, but their consumer value for the buyers is also higher compared to the standardized and same-old products ‘off the rack’, as unique pieces give the owner individuality and express their elevated taste. In analytic terms, weight is usually used to measure how much waste the particular product saves from entering the environment.

A different kind of narrative enrichment of upcycled products is the rediscovery and remarketing of formerly standard products. Formerly everyday commodities that have been replaced by disposable items in recent decades are taken over by ‘green’ suppliers, reinterpreted in a contemporary way, and placed on the market as an ecologically sustainable alternative. Examples can be found primarily in the area of personal care, such as washcloths for the face. These have been replaced by single-use cosmetic wipes or cotton pads, which have recently been deemed unsustainable and replaced again by washcloths, which are now marketed as so-called microfiber pads, for example, by ‘Hygge by Nature’. In contrast to the previously mentioned case, the context of origin of these products is usually deliberately obscured. Thus, they are deliberately not named as things that have existed before, but are presented as innovations by means of new product names and new designs. The enrichment in this case thus consists in the concealment of historicity and in the emphasis of supposed innovativeness.

5.1.4. Marginalized people as popularized personalities

We refer to a form of ecologic enrichment, which is primarily to be located on a narrative level, as a form of double exploitation of marginalized people. Here, marginalized groups of people, such as small farmers from the global south or people with disabilities, are included in the value creation of the products. Typically, they grow raw materials of the product or process them into the source materials. In the presentation of the product, consumers are then given a personal connection to these people. They are introduced with photos and sometimes with names, small profiles on the product or the product’s homepage or even videos. In longer texts, the consumer is informed about how the company supports these people. Not only are these marginalized producers exploited by skimming off added value from their work—regardless of whether they earn a ‘fair’ income or not—but also in a narrative dimension.

There are several examples of this form of enrichment in our sample, with ‘Silver Frutti’, ‘Turtle Call’, ‘Clean Mind’ and ‘BetterTee’ in particular. ‘Silver Frutti’, for example, uses a raw material that is harvested from a forest area in the global south by local farmers. By buying this raw material from the farmers, the start-up helps to preserve the forest area, as it makes harvesting the material more profitable for the farmers than cutting down the trees. At the same time, it provides the farmers with a stable income. The homepage, which also includes an online store, features photos and videos of the company founder together with the farmers. This gives them a face, and the direct proximity to the (white) founder means that the (white) buyers can also identify with them better. Similar to upcycling, this form of narrative enrichment refers to the production context and also sells consumers the feeling of doing something good for these people. By buying the products, customers are enabled to fight global injustices such as the relocation of production processes to low-wage countries and the exploitation of marginalized people from poor countries. The higher costs for fair wages and cooperation networks are passed on to the consumer and thus also serve to justify the higher price.

5.1.5. Educating customers for the sake of justification

In some cases, in our sample, the providers offer free educational formats beyond the actual product, which are linked to the product. Empirically, we can identify different manifestations corresponding to the type of start-up. In those cases that have a physical store where they sell their products, namely AllMost Fashion and Wasteless Wonderworld, this store is sometimes used as a space to provide customers with product-related information. Their shops are equipped with sustainability-related information material such as displays, charts and exhibits, where shoppers can learn about various ecological problems and their sustainable solutions, and the founders organize workshops and events like classes for plant-based cooking. Other companies in our sample that sell their products and services primarily over the Internet, such as ‘HappyTooth’, ‘Granny Swish’, ‘Everyday Wasteless’ and ‘Green Soil Heroes’, produce blog posts, podcasts and/or videos in which they educate the public about various sustainability topics and provide practical tips for using their products in everyday life, as well as less product-related consumption habits.

Compared to the previously mentioned forms of sustainable narrative enrichment, educational offerings are more detached from the actual product and thus also have a less discernible connection for buyers to the market exchange they are making. The educational offer does not (only) inform about the product itself, but about a generally ‘right’ or ‘better’ consumption behavior, which can then be directly put into practice by buying the respective product. The enrichment, then, consists firstly in the fact that the product is framed here rather as an offer to realize a more comprehensive consumption practice. In a sense, then, the logic of market exchange is reversed: the presentation no longer informs about the product, but the product manifests the presentation.

Secondarily, this form of narrative enrichment also removes the profanity of market exchange. In milieus with an affinity for sustainability, capitalist actions and consumption are generally viewed particularly critically (Chiapello, 2013, p. 75), so that sustainable companies are also under permanent pressure to justify themselves. If the sale and consumption of products itself becomes the object of criticism, educational offers serve to sublimate the act of market exchange. In this way, companies elevate themselves from mere capitalist actors interested in profit to political activists who appear worthy of support even to buyers critical of consumption.

Thirdly, some—not all—educational presentations immediately disqualify the conventional products with which the sustainable (and usually more expensive) products compete. For example, companies can use analytic presentations within their educational offerings to explain the extent to which the conventional products are responsible for ecological problems, and in the same breath promote their own product as the right and good alternative.

5.2. The metaprice of ecologically sustainable products

As shown, ecologically sustainable products are analytically and narratively enriched in several ways. In addition to publicizing one's own product and differentiating it from the competition, the aim of these enrichments is always to justify the price of the product. Usually, the products that are part of the present investigation are more expensive than the standard products they are supposed to substitute or compete with.

Two of the companies studied attempt to exert a regulatory influence on the metaprice common to their respective product lines. This not only serves the function of justifying the price of their own product. In this way, the eco suppliers are also pursuing educational goals. They want to actively influence social awareness of certain consumer goods, such as clothing and coffee in our examples. In this way, they aim to influence the social mode of consumption and promote more conscious everyday consumption.

To accomplish this, the companies link their product presentations first with graphics that make the composition of the respective product price transparent, and second with explanations in text form. Typically, a direct comparison is also made with an equivalent product from (unspecified) ‘other conventional, non-sustainable manufacturers’. For example, ‘BeyondBeans’ publishes a pie chart and a layer chart on their homepage. There, it is shown how the price for a kilogram of the coffee offered is composed. In addition to items incurred by the company itself, such as the purchase price of the coffee beans, taxes, processing, logistics, distribution, marketing and revenue, it also breaks down additional cost items that the company pays on top, namely for offset projects and fair wages for coffee farmers. One text then states that companies should pay the price for the consequences of coffee cultivation, such as health damage and ecological damage, and offer coffee farmers a beyond fair wage.

Thus, speaking with our heuristic, two metaprices are put into relation. The previously valid metaprice for a product line comprises the average, commercially available price for the conventional, non-sustainable product. This metaprice is now to be overwritten by the ‘true price’, that is, a new metaprice. The eco-provider justifies this ‘true’ metaprice in the context of the product presentation. The rhetoric of justification is structurally the same across the different cases: the previous metaprice, arrived at by conventional suppliers, is set too low because certain production costs are outsourced to external entities. Accordingly, the production of coffee or textile fashion first causes environmental damage through resource exploitation and emissions. This environmental damage then causes both monetary and non-monetary costs in the present and in the future, which, however, have to be paid by the ecological environment—by biotopes, animals and people who depend on an intact ecological environment—referring both to concrete, globally marginalized population groups and abstractly to the whole of humanity. A second item is the wage for the producers, who are mostly located in the Global South. Here, too, conventional suppliers externalize costs in order to depress the price of their product by ‘deducting’ them from the producers’ wages. What is meant is not that a real wage exists from which these costs are then actually deducted; here, the justifications of the eco-providers rather document an understanding of a ‘meta wage’ that can be understood analogously to the metaprice. The difference between ‘meta wages’ and real wages then corresponds to the externalized costs. The costs that are saved by the end consumers are, abstractly speaking, borne by nature and/or the human community.

It is precisely these externalized costs that the eco-providers now want to bring back into the price determination. In terms of wages for producers, this is relatively straightforward; in terms of environmental costs, various practices are possible. ‘BeyondBeans’ works with compensation payments and supports various environmental and cultural projects to offset costs incurred in production; environmental damage and associated costs are thus not prevented in advance, but ‘compensated’ after the fact. However, environmental costs can also be reduced from the outset, for example by using alternative raw materials and/or manufacturing and processing locations. The company ‘AllMost Fashion’, for example, sources materials only from its own location and also produces only within its own country, so that very few emissions are generated compared to conventional fashion items. In all cases, however, the company incurs higher production costs—either through the alternative production itself or through the compensation payments made. These additional costs are included in the product price and passed on to customers. This practice, in turn, is framed as a regulatory influence on the metaprice of the particular product type as a whole—customers are expected to develop an awareness of the ‘true’ price of that product when they purchase it, that is, the price that all products of that type should actually cost. This is the way eco-providers try to influence metaprices. What is not mentioned is the fact that companies must make a certain amount of profit from the product. Therefore, the surcharge for including externalized costs should be paid by consumers, not by companies.

On the other hand, the ‘sustainable metaprice’ that the providers of our cases want to establish is not simply made up of the conventional costs plus the externalized costs, but also has to be balanced out to determine which surcharge is still acceptable to buyers compared with the conventional standard product, as we also see in our empirical cases. The ‘sustainable metaprice’ is therefore the result of a complex calculation between the various demands of suppliers and buyers. On the one hand, it should be high enough to cover all costs of the product, including hidden or externalized costs; on the other hand, it should be low enough to still be able to compete with non-sustainable standard products. Only in this way can it have a regulatory impact on mainstream markets and the commodity structure. If, however, the metaprice of sustainable products is set too high, they run the risk of being located in niche markets. And these are not relevant for the general commodity structure and the awareness of legitimate commodity prices.

6. A sustainable shift in the commodity structure?

Based on the numerous empirical findings that have shown the ways in which various everyday products, such as textile fashion, coffee or hygiene products, are refined and marketed with the value of ecological sustainability, we finally turn to the question of whether and to what extent a change in the commodity structure can be stated.

Based on the studies of Chiapello (2013) and Boltanski and Esquerre (2020), two economic and sociocultural dynamics can be identified, which are the starting points for our thesis that the commodity structure of standard products is undergoing change and that this change can be explained by ecologic enrichment.

First, capitalism as an economic system is increasingly coming under pressure from ecologic critique. This also applies to standard products and their mass consumption, which are increasingly criticized as central causes of ecological problems in post-industrial capitalism because of the emissions and the exploitation of ecological resources they cause. The increasing availability of ecologically sustainable standard products can thus be understood as a reaction to this criticism. If standard products are in danger of losing their justification basis because responsibility for ecological crisis phenomena is attributed to them, they can be legitimized against this very criticism by adding the characteristic of sustainability to them.

Second, capitalism must continually monetize new domains that were previously beyond the reach of capitalist exploitation, or even organized as a counterculture, to ensure its continued growth. Analogous to Boltanski’s and Esquerre’s (2020) it can also be stated that ecological sustainability was initially located in the sphere of counterculture and anti-capitalism (O’Connor, 1988; Brand, 2002; Rome, 2003) and is now increasingly mobilized as a feature of mass-produced standard and trend products in order to valorize them and reach a broader consumer base or to open up previously unreachable markets. The cultural interpretation of standard products has thus changed, and the market must counteract these developments. For it must stabilize itself against ecological criticism of capitalism, react to possible declining sales figures and ensure continued growth by tapping new sources of value creation. Ecologic enrichment can be understood as the mechanism by which the (mainstream) market counters these developments.

Both of these developments ultimately serve as an explanation for the fact that the product feature of ecological sustainability is gaining in importance as an evaluation criterion for goods, and that even conventional products that have not previously been measured in terms of sustainability are increasingly being put to the test in terms of ecology. Goods experience ecologic enrichments in that they are equipped with various product features, which sometimes find expression on the analytical and sometimes on the narrative level of presentations.

It was thus possible to show that a change in norms can certainly be observed at the level of the commodity structure. The standard form is coming under pressure because ecologically sustainable alternatives on the market are changing the way in which goods are generally assessed and justified.

7. Conclusion

Our study focused on environmental sustainability as an added value of consumables. Guided by the omnipresence of sustainable products, we investigated to what extent conventional standard products come under pressure from sustainable alternatives that are being placed on the market through various strategies of enrichment.

To this end, we first analyzed five strategies of ecological enrichment of consumables. In doing so, we contribute to the explanation of how ecological sustainability is mobilized as a product feature to enrich new everyday products and endow them with additional values, which then also make it possible to justify higher prices. We have shown that environmentally sustainable alternatives on the market are changing the way in which goods are generally evaluated and justified. Sustainability is becoming an increasingly important criterion in the evaluation of goods, and even conventional products that were not previously measured against sustainability are increasingly being assessed in terms of their environmental credentials. In this way, the standard form is subjected to new kinds of enrichment strategies. It comes under pressure—a pressure necessary to adapt mass consumption, which has long since come under (ecologic) criticism—to the cultural, social and economic demands of a new, ‘green’ spirit of capitalism. In addition, the relevance of human actors and their conscious actions on the metaprice of goods could be clarified. Thus, through their strategies of justifications, concrete entrepreneurs can influence how the quality and the price of their everyday products can be judged, and thus have the power to influence social modes of consumption.

Additionally, this study provides a theoretical impetus for convention theory by extending the scope of enrichment not only to the sphere of sustainable products, but also to the general area of everyday consumption. While Boltanski and Esquerre's research primarily concentrates on the luxury sector and the sphere of art and high culture, we broaden the scope to include the current dynamics of mainstream markets. Our findings reveal that narratives of historical significance and renowned personalities are not the sole means of enriching goods with special value. In our analysis, the narrative shifts towards a future-oriented perspective of saving the world, contrasting an emphasis on the past. At the same time, however, we were also able to identify strategies of enrichment that deal intensively with the context of the production of the respective product and foreground personalities who do not provide the ‘material’ for stories through their prominence, but rather through their marginality.

These findings are also relevant beyond the theoretical context in which this work was originally conceived, to a more general understanding of how products, markets and value are changing in the context of ecological change. In general, we have been able to show that manufacturers of consumer goods are responding in a variety of ways to the criticism of an environmentally destructive economy and the associated demand for products that counteract this problem. These findings also suggest that the interaction between the market and consumption is more than just advertising. It is deeply embedded in the understanding of products and stabilized by various social institutions and notions of rightness. It shows that products are endowed with inherent values that derive from social and cultural dynamics, such as the growing criticism of the global exploitation and destruction of nature by capitalist production regimes. Even long-established manufacturers must respond to such zeitgeist phenomena in order to maintain their market share.

However, the current omnipresence and universality of sustainability contribute to the fact that there is hardly any clear line as to what exactly is understood by ecological sustainability and how it should be implemented both economically and in private consumption. Products, product categories and their seals as well as the respective use of terms such as ‘climate neutral’, ‘fair’ and ‘sustainable’ can only be reconstructed with great effort and make a comprehensive investigation of objective sustainability criteria difficult. Are emissions prevented or only compensated? What distances are hidden behind terms such as ‘regional’ or ‘local’? And under what conditions can a source material such as cotton actually be described as ‘sustainable’?

In this context, further research needs to be done on the real impact that private consumption has and can have on sustainable transitions (Feola, 2020; Feola et al., 2021). Whether and to what extent the green transformation of the private consumption sector can contribute to averting an impending climate catastrophe, however, remains unanswered. Additionally, the observed proliferation of sustainability claims may well be addressed to legislators. A coherent regulation of the use of these terms, seals and claims is advisable not only from the point of view of environmental protection, but also consumer protection.

Last but not least, delivering on the promise of a green economy should not rest solely on the shoulders of private consumers. This is also reflected in the fact that the largest share of global greenhouse gas emissions is emitted by (industrial) companies. In 2015, the fossil fuel industry and its products were responsible for 91 percent of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions and thus accounted for around 70 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (Griffin, 2017, p. 10). Only 100 companies, the so-called ‘carbon majors’—mainly oil, gas and coal companies that are either state-owned or privately financed—account for 71 percent of industrial greenhouse gas emissions (Griffin, 2017, p. 10). Regulatory intervention would hold companies more accountable and support environmentally conscious actors in critical and enlightened actions.

References

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.