I am a loyal Trader Joe’s customer. But when I stopped in today, my local branch was proudly displaying one of my least favorite words: “Sustainable,” a word documented to exclude or puzzle many (if not most) of our fellow citizens.
Why would Trader Joe’s do this? Because according to Scarborough Research, the typical Trader Joe’s shopper is:
…a college-educated, white homeowner with a median age of 44 and a median household income of $64,000. Almost evenly divided among married people and singles, females and males, two-thirds have no kids at home.
So flouting snobby vocabulary is OK for Trader Joe’s. If you appreciate that term, you probably have the income and tastes for what Trader Joe’s sells. Trader Joe’s doesn’t cater to people with junior college or high school educations, or to people who punch time cards and wear hard hats or uniforms to work. For people like this, puzzling signs on the wall send a subtle signal that they might get more respect down the street at Safeway.
And when nature protection and pollution control organizations flout elite vocabulary like “sustainable,” “watershed,” and “hydrograph” in our public-facing communiations, we’re effectively doing the same thing — sending well-meaning but less priveledged people down the street to the humane society, the homeless shelter, and the neighborhood watch – where people speak their language and everybody feels welcome and important.
Is what’s right for Trader Joe’s right for us?
Comments
What is sustainable agriculture? What is sustainable growth? What is sustainable consumption of natural resources? Mostly it is a misuse of the word “sustainable.”
I disagree on most counts. “Sustainable” is a convenient term that as yet has few synonyms and I believe is more readily understood term than words one might use in its place. We can’t dumb down all marketing materials.
Eric, what would you suggest instead? What words mean sustainable and don’t puzzle our fellows?
On a related note, I did see an announcement for a lecture recently on organic food, which was framed as a response to the “problem” that mainstream retailers (eg Wal-Mart, apparently) are starting to carry organic produce and other products, but that these organic products did not involve other aspects of “organic” such as humane animal husbandry or the like “that we’ve come to expect.” ???
I thought this was really interesting for several reasons:
1) isn’t it a GOOD thing that mainstream retailers are responding to market disinterest in pesticides?
2) to me, “organic” has always meant simply “pesticide- and pesticide-residue free,” not “sustainable.”
Clearly, for this person, “organic” = all sorts of things.
The fact that there is so much confusion about these terms to me is a failure on the part of the educational system. Until we fix that, though, how can we reduce the confusion?
I don’t think it’s fair to have to abandon our most descriptive terminology…
This is from Wikipedia but I like the definition. I don’t know how to use the word sustainable so I stay away from it. I like the idea that you change the way you do something now that insures something for future generations.
“One of the first and most oft-cited definitions of sustainability, and almost certainly the one that will survive for posterity, is the one created by the Brundtland Commission, led by the former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The Commission defined sustainable development as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”[1] The Brundtland definition thus implicitly argues for the rights of future generations to raw materials and vital ecosystem services to be taken into account in decision making.”
The sign does beg a lot of questions. Personally, I think it might prompt someone to, say, go up to the customer service desk and ask: what do you mean by sustainable? Doesn’t the presence of this sign make this conversation more likely? Is there a way to word the sign that would include the answer without making it a mile long?
Sustain seems to mean the same as maintain or protect. How about this:
Our Organic Milk comes from Family Farms, Owned and Maintained for Generations.
Well, your posters have a point, that more education is needed around the word, at least until more synonyms are added to the general population’s awareness.
I’m a bit worried about ‘ye olde backlash’; ie what will happen when mainstream America decides it’s tired of the Sustainability movement. I think you may be worried about that too, and it’s underlying your argument above. It’s not so much that TJ is saying to Joe / Jane Sixpack “Head on down the line to safeway”, really.
IMHO it’s more the case that anyone who is likely to be using terms like Sustainable and Organic just needs to be more aware of the climate and audience they are operating within. For some of us it often feels like years of seed-sowing is finally starting to pay off, but often the reality is that big chunks of the population are only at the soil-preparation stage. (ok, it’s not that great a metaphor, but I haven’t had my Organic moo juice yet today).
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: don’t sweat the terms too much, but do try to balance your messages to your audiences. That way we’re most likely to keep this trend going, long enough that it’ll actually become accepted culture in itself, (rather than just the 21st century equivalent of Disco).
So I’ll give TJ an A for effort, and a C for execution.
