#votocolportfolio. ConsumAtors’ purchasing choices influence the supply of sustainable products that come from ethical supply chains. And it is information, widespread awareness that triggers such a virtuous path. This is confirmed by the results of the Ethical Cash Mob organized by Coop, presented in Rome on 12.6.19 together with economists Leonardo Becchetti – co-founder of NeXt (New Economy for All) – and Enrico Giovannini, spokesperson for ASviS (Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development). Two organizations at the forefront of promoting theSustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in UN Agenda 2030.
Coop’s Cash Mob
The Cash Mob initiative – mass buying aimed, in this case toward responsible consumption – was organized for two days (17,18.5.19) as part of ASviS’ Festival of Sustainable Development.
10,000 people were involved in 37 outlets, operated by 6 different consumer cooperatives. An information desk on Sustainable Development issues was also set up in 22 Coop stores, alongside displays and signage designed to distinguish products that conform to the sustainability principles called out in Agenda 2030. A basket of organic, fair trade and anti-mafia food products from the lines:
– ‘Live Green,’ Coop-branded organic,
– ‘Solidal‘, the Coop-branded fair trade line,
– ‘Libera Terra,’ products obtained from land liberated from the Mafia and distributed mostly (63%) by Coop. Which also organizes volunteer and training camps in Libera companies.
Purchases of products included in the ethical basket, at the end of the Cash Mob day, recorded a 17.6 percent increase in sales. Especially solidarity (+25.2 percent) and organic (+16.2 percent). The figure was consolidated in the following week, confirming the maturation of purchase decisions. Which resulted in the choice of ethical products to replace similar products but lacking the highlighted sustainability requirements.
Consumption styles
More than 2 thousand consumers filled out a questionnaire on lifestyles and consumption. Stating that they mostly shop weekly (58.4%) or daily (37.2%) and choose products by reading the label (33.5%), by habit (28.7%) and by brand (20%). Only residually according to price (17.8 percent).
Useful pointers for food producers and distributors are emerging on the sustainability front. More than one in two consumers (54.4 percent) say they are willing to pay more if informed about the added value of products that comes from the sustainability of their respective supply chains.
The propensity to recognize the actual value of goods increases to 59.1 percent if the sustainability requirements include the protection of human rights, to 57.5 percent if the food is made only from Italian raw materials, and to 55.9 percent if the producing company is based in the territory.
However, the stimulus toward responsible purchasing still faces some obstacles. The first is the pursuit of savings (53 percent), a priority need for many low-income households. Next are two elements that are easier to work on. Unawareness (14%) and superficiality (18.4%).
Information on the added value of sustainable products is therefore central. And it can also be accomplished through initiatives such as the Cash Mob. Sharing essential to the achievement of Goal 12.8 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, which sets the goal of ensuring relevant information and awareness about sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature for all citizens of the planet within the next two decades.
Saturdays for Future at the supermarket
Proposals made on the sidelines of the Coop initiative include creating the bottom-up ‘Ethical Cash Mob‘ brand, testing what information to report in the label proposed by NeXt, and increasingly expanding the basket of ethical products that meet the shared criteria.
Establishing a Saturdays for Future – along the lines of Swedish Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future – is the ambitious, and feasible, proposal put forward by Enrico Giovannini based on two considerations. Fifty-eight percent of people shop for groceries once a week, and Coop’s Cash Mob was a big success on Saturday.
The multiplier effect of a weekly appointment can therefore have a significant impact in orienting consumption in a sustainable way. ‘Wallet voting is a political act, an instrument of active citizenship. This is a utopia; if everyone did this, 90% of the problems would be solved. Imagine the effects if the millions of young people who took to the streets to demand action against climate change acted by exercising this power‘, Leonardo Becchetti states lucidly.
Coop’s sustainability
The presentation of the results of the Cash Mob of Coop was also an opportunity to review the long experience of consumer cooperatives on the various fronts of sustainable development. ‘A character engraved in the genetic code of Coop‘ – explains Albino Russo, Ancc-Coop director – recalling some of the many exemplary, sometimes very onerous, steps taken over time.
We mention only a few, such as theelimination of palm oil in the aftermath of EFSA’s toxicity opinion, the ‘Let’s raise health‘ campaign to phase out antibiotics from meat, aquaculture fish and eggs. The ban on sexing (systematic killing of male chicks of laying hens) and glyphosate. Also, the reduction of plastic in packaging. Not forgetting the more than 20-year adoption of the SA 8000 international social sustainability standard and the ‘Good and Fair’ campaign against the exploitation of workers in agriculture.
Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".
