Consumer Aesthetics and Environmental Ethics: Problems and Possibilities

Abstract

It is generally agreed that the prime mover of contemporary consumerism is aesthetics. However, today's consumer aesthetics often leads to decisions and actions that have negative environmental consequences. By taking apparel industry, represented by fast fashion, as a quintessential example of this problem, I argue that aesthetics can no longer claim immunity from environmental considerations—there needs to be a paradigm shift for consumer aesthetics. A proposed new environmentally minded consumer aesthetics promotes a paradoxical role for material ephemerality in enhancing an object's longevity, and it places importance on the personal connection with an object's story, as well as our engagement with the material world more generally.