Sustainable and Just? Access to Sustainable Goods and Environmental Justice
摘要
Promoted as a solution to environmental challenges, sustainable consumer goods can be inaccessible to many consumers because of their high price points compared to similar products. In this work, we implement a concept analysis that explores the lack of access to these products as an environmental justice issue. As a final step of this analysis, we present the results of a focus group-style interview study as empirical referents to our proposed concept. Throughout these sessions, we heard from participants who were concerned about the environment and aware of products that were promoted as solutions but found many of these to be inaccessible. We also heard these participants describe their situation in terms of commercial entities, placing on them the burden of answering environmental challenges and unjustly profiting from doing so. Overall, we argue that there is value in considering inaccessible sustainable goods as an environmental justice issue.