Networked sustainable lifestyle activism: growth and limits of zero waste movement in urban China

Abstract

ABSTRACT How do citizens express environmentalism and lead sustainable change in an authoritarian country like China, where contentious political civic actions have limited saliency? Can we re-imagine what forms of citizen action build ’environmental movement’ in this socio-political context? Based on 41 in-depth interviews and seven months of participant observations in China’s zero waste community, this article proposes networked sustainable lifestyle activism as an important form of environmental movement in China’s socio-political context. Drawing on lifestyle movement (Haenfler et al. 2012) and sustainable materialism (Schlosberg 2019) theories, I analyze the growth, characteristics, and limitations of the zero waste movement in China. It consists of sustainable lifestyle activism that adopts lifestyle change for broader sustainability, pursues anti-consumerism authentic identity and well-being as a site of change, and grows through social media and informal networks. Meanwhile, the movement goes beyond individual lifestyle change as networks of secondhand material flow and collective, non-contentious environmental actions. Difficulties to promote widespread, thorough sustainable lifestyle change and constrained political engagement are important factors that limit the movement’s effects. My research contributes to the literature on new environmental movements, theoretical discussion of environmental movements in China, and empirical understanding of civic environmental actions in this socio-political context.