Five-Star Sustainability

Abstract

Abstract The $45 trillion-dollar consumer market—60 percent of global GDP—is the largest driver of human practices impacting sustainability. However, an insignificant number of products offer any insight into product sustainability. Labels like Fair Trade, though useful, have minimal market penetration. In the absence of sustainability information, consumers make purchases based on traditional indicators of product value like price, color, and brand but have no product-specific information on broader human values for issues like child labor, greenhouse gases, worker safety, or endangered species. A straightforward 1-to-5 star sustainability rating (coupled with an in-depth sustainability profile) on each consumer product would harness the power of the market's invisible hand, efficiently steering manufacturing decisions toward sustainability precisely to the degree that global consumers are concerned about social and environmental issues. Sustainability ratings would tweak the global market with every pur...