Empower Sustainable Consumption

Digital tools can empower consumers to make and demand sustainable consumption choices and receive feedback on their behaviours. For example, digital applications embedded in e-commerce platforms such as product comparability, ethical nudging, gamification, carbon footprint calculators, positive feedback loops and green activations can support a shift in awareness and enable people to choose more environmentally sustainable products and services. Social media, gaming platforms and fintech can also help amplify proof of environmentally sustainable lifestyles.

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A range of digital marketplaces can also support the collaborative economy that enables giving, reselling, swapping, sharing and renting products and services directly between individuals. While strong privacy protection must be obligatory everywhere, digital innovations must be flexible enough to be adapted to the specific local, socio-economic, and geographic contexts on the basis of human-centered design and planetary boundaries. Digitalization also enables mass collaboration and mobilization of citizens through platforms enabling both citizen science and decentralized financing such as crowd funding. Opportunities to use digital technologies to empower sustainable lifestyles, behaviours and collaboration should be designed into digital platforms by default. They must become essential channels to influence sustainable consumption drivers at a planetary scale.