Ranked: Research reveals which European country has the most eco-conscious shoppers
2022-12-07
From mending your old clothes to buying local produce, there are plenty of ways to shop sustainably.
Doing so is an environmental imperative – the fashion industry is responsible for more than 10 per cent of carbon emissions and consumes approximately 100 million tonnes of oil every year. Around a third of the world’s food ends up rotting in landfill before it can be eaten.
Thankfully, consumption habits are shifting.
A new study has ranked Europe’s 30 most populous countries on their environmental shopping habits.
“Once viewed as an option for hipsters, [sustainable shopping] is now a viable and environmentally-friendly way to shop for people of all ages and income brackets,” the report – by online fundraising platform Savoo – reads.
Which European country has the most sustainable shoppers?
To calculate an overall ‘sustainability score,’ researchers ranked countries on a number of different metrics.
They included recycling rates and consumption footprint – the size of the area needed to produce the materials a country consumes, combined with the area needed to absorb its subsequent waste.
The number of ‘flea markets and antique stores’ also factored in, as did the amount of textile waste and per capita household waste.
Finally, the analysts considered a country’s sustainable development goals (SDG) ranking, a United Nations-issued score analysing national performance on development goals like climate action and renewable energy promotion.
Overall, they ranked Finland in the top spot. This is largely because of its excellent SDG score, at the top of all 193 UN member states.
The Scandinavian country also reduced its consumption footprint by more than a fifth between 2010 and 2020.
On the other end of the spectrum, Malta ranked as the worst country for sustainable shopping.
The small island nation had the lowest SDG score of any country on the list, and increased its consumption footprint by 10.5 per cent between 2010 and 2020.
Euronews.green, 07-12-22
; https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/12/07/ranked-research-reveals-which-european-country-has-the-most-eco-conscious-shoppers