ABSTRACT
Marketing claims often comfort us with noumenal, technological evidence that assures us how ‘safe’, ‘responsible’ and ‘eco-friendly’ we are, as intelligent consumers. The commercially driven rhetoric of eco-rationalism therefore tends to shield us from our individual responsibilities, and has often been rather mischievous in its claims. We are assured, for example, that our disposable tissues are 100 per cent recyclable, our electric water heater has a 100 per cent conversion rate, and our fluorescent ‘eco-lamp’ uses only 15 per cent of the energy of an incandescent bulb.20 The appeal to ‘green consumerism’ has too often been applied as a protection against declining sales figures, or even as a way to increase sales.
