Consumer education : a meaningful approach to creating environmental awareness and social responsibility towards a sustainable lifestyle
1997
Thilla Chelliah
Recognising the importance and need for information and awareness in environmental issues, attempts are made by many organisations, both governmental and non governmental to initiate programs in environmental education for various target groups. Implemented in a variety of ways these programs are designed to suite the needs and interest of the participants. However one of the weakness of the environmental education activities has been its difficulty to convince relevance, to illustrate meaningfully how the environmental knowledge relates to the lives and consumption patterns of the participants. Difficulty in comprehending the relevance of environmental information has created problems in understanding the need to observe sustainable lifestyle. A meaningful approach to realise the relationship between environmental concerns and sustainable lifestyle is through consumer education. Basically consumers use goods and services which are obtained from environmental resources. Therefore the wise use of environmental resources will ensure the availability of goods and services at an affordable and sustained rate. Secondly one of the eight rights of a consumer which is accepted internationally is the `Right to healthy and clean environment. Knowing that this is their basic right, consumer can be encouraged to participate in programs to ensure a healthy and clean environment sustainable use. Based on these guiding principles the consumer association has initiated programs for both youth and adults. This paper will discuss in detail the inter relationship between environmental issues, consumption patterns and the consumer and highlight some of programs that has been successfully implemented to address these issues.
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