Q: I sometimes kick myself for buying certain things and come home from the shop filled with regret and the realisation that I’ve only added waste to my home. Any tips for practicing some willpower when I’m shopping?

A: How many times have we been wooed by the deals: Buy two packs of strawberries for €5, when one is €2.99? Seems an attractive offer, but what good is it if the second sits in the fridge and rots? We are faced with these temptations all the time and your question is a great one: How much agency do we have when we’re bombarded with messages about what to buy, even if we don’t need it? Advertising works, so how do we resist?

Dr. Mary McCarthy, Professor of Marketing at the Cork University Business School UCC, explains that shops know what they’re doing, which can be a good or a bad thing.

“When we enter a retail store, they are very well laid out and visually stimulating,” says McCarthy, the set-up “used as mechanisms to guide us through the store and purchase things.” We might not have wanted that green shirt, but it was displayed just so, triggers that “can assist us but equally they can cause us to buy things we have no plan to consume.”

McCarthy notes there is a “dynamic” between you and the offer, different people encountering offers with different perspectives: “Two people could see something on special offer, one could buy on planned impulse and integrate it in, another on pure impulse, and waste it,” says McCarthy, and “waste is an environmental cost.”

At the same time, “Retail can act as a good mechanism for supporting local, seasonal produce and supporting the environment in ways that we’re not aware of,” explains McCarthy. Small changes, like reducing the size of packaging and offering more plant-based options, are examples of suppliers and retailers responding to customers’ concerns.

The relationship goes two ways and McCarthy says that retailers and supply chain members are taking action all the time to be more sustainable.

“If I were to be very generous, in a sense the individual has some responsibility, but retailers, suppliers, and manufacturers have a bigger responsibility.”

Even the advertising industry itself, which has its own initiative to reduce its carbon footprint, Ad Net Zero, has some responsibility.

PLANNING & FLEXIBILITY
There is another layer of complexity to the story: in essence, we consumers are spoiled rotten. There are certain things we want and expect in our everyday life at the moment, explains McCarthy, and retailers adapt and adjust products to our desires. We have come to expect wide and constant availability, McCarthy says, “we are over-provisioning,” and we get annoyed if things aren’t available. “That’s how our model, with regard to individual satisfaction, has developed and evolved. But the reality of nature is, there is no consistency in quality or availability.”

One of the first tricks to overcoming the sway of marketing is planning, says McCarthy. Have a shopping list, an idea of what you’ll be using and when, and consider how soon items might go off.

“Planning prevents unplanned purchases and makes you more immune to external influences from the environment.”

With planning, you also might, ironically, have more room to be impulsive, knowing exactly how you can use something that’s on offer.

Being conscious of your surroundings, the context of the environment, and your own habits is also key. “The more aware we are of our environment and triggers around us, the more control we have of our purchases,” says McCarthy. An awareness of your own purchasing habits and patterns, of what you need and what fits with your life, can lead to “good decisions for ourselves, in relation to the value of money, in relation to health, and in relation to sustainability.” Those two packs of strawberries for €5, if gone uneaten, are “not a financial savings and have a negative impact on the environment.”

Also helpful is a dose of flexibility, a willingness to be creative around what to do with food. You might know you’re making vegetable soup, but are open-minded about which vegetables to make it with.

Of course, lifestyles vary. “Consumers and citizens are at different life stages in the amount of time and effort they want to put into being sustainable,” McCarthy says. The very time-conscious and busy might not care, but those who are very concerned about the environment will be able to take other steps. For consumers at any stage, McCarthy suggests online shopping as “a good way to avoid impulse buying.”

As for your willpower, “Unless those environments change, we will continue to be influenced in ways we’re not even aware of,” says McCarthy. “If it’s not there, you can’t buy it. If it is, you can.”

In the meantime, we can take steps to shop wisely and resist the waste-generating temptations.