Looking to Shop Online? Sustainable Guide for Conscious Consumers

UX Research mapping 115+ resources and digital products to search, shop, buy & sell today.

Francesco Stumpo

Published in

Bootcamp

9 min readJan 10, 2022

Problem

While online shopping is convenient and ubiquitous, consumers still find it challenging to shop sustainably. Where to start? What are the best offerings and products? What does that term mean? The list goes on.

First: Foundations

Building on the sustainability industry’s mission of transparency, advocacy, and education, let’s begin by detailing three categories that will help you understand some of the foundations of this vast landscape:

Evolution of the Shopping Business Model
Sustainable Clothing Terminologies
Garment Terminologies

Evolution of the Shopping Business Model

We can think of a “traditional shopping model” as the environment in which consumer goods & brands meet in a retail (physical) space. Since the end of the 20th century and with the advancement of internet access and technological changes, we entered a “hybrid shopping model” when the online marketplace was introduced and consumers like you began to purchase items in stores and online.

As of the last decade and since the beginning of the 2010s, with more rapid infrastructural and technological leaps and broader access to information worldwide across the internet, one could argue that the “shopping experience” has entered a new (and developing) third shopping model that we might call a “conscious model.”

In this environment, retail space exists but is less prevalent or central to the business operations. Here the online marketplace increases by taking larger and almost central importance, with businesses rapidly adopting alternative shipping models or even custom by order approach. Some companies like Unspun have transitioned to a made-to-order model where they don’t hold inventory and produce as needed to meet demand.

Sustainable Clothing Terminologies

In their search for goods, conscious consumers encounter sustainable clothing a multitude of new and old terms, yet they are still left guessing what these terms mean. Let’s start by defining five (5) main terminologies to set the foundation of our sustainability vocabulary:

Sustainable: Refers to the use of natural products (and energy) in a way that does not harm the environment and the planet. Sustainable standards were codified in the late 1980s, described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Ethical: Expands the notion of “sustainable” to include the practice of designing and/or manufacturing using methods that do not exploit people and animals, and not just the planet or the environment. Therefore an “ethical model” can focus “on the holistic process and impact of making a well-sourced and sustainable consumer good instead of just the direct environmental impact” as stated in the United Nations Environmental Protection (UNEP)’s Sustainable Consumption and Production: A Handbook for Policy Makers, Global Edition of 2015.
Transparent: A framework that strives for disclosure and visibility of regulations in the steps of completing a fair and equitable process. Deloitte’s “The path to supply chain transparency” study highlights “a four-step process to transparency starts with identifying and prioritizing risks, visualizing risks, using transparency levers to close information gaps and, finally managing and monitoring.
Recycling: The process of transforming waste material into something of roughly a similar value. Ecocult elaborates “Pure cotton, polyester, nylon, and wool can be turned into new cotton, polyester, nylon, and wool textiles.”
Upcycling: Refers to converting unwanted product waste into something of upper or higher value. “This practice is also based on the Cradle to Cradle approach, it’s a concept we’ve been hearing about more and more” explains Good On You on their “22 ethical and sustainable fashion terms you need to know” for example.

Garment Terminologies

Similar to the sustainability terms, consumers also face a second obstacle in better understanding garment terminologies. As terms and descriptions vary by market and country, it is important to recognize four (4) main options available when searching for sustainable goods.

Clothing: Understood as the fabrics or clothes humans wear on their bodies on a day-to-day basis, from labor to recreational, from service to comfort. Clothes are often considered essential for human comfort, societal standards, and reflection of cultural values across the world.
Apparel: Clothing in general, or just another word for what you wear. As described by Vocabulary “the noun apparel got its start from the Latin apparare, meaning to “prepare, make ready,” or ad-particulare, meaning “to put things together.
Fashion: Labeled as the influence clothes styles can have to shape a consumer’s culture and behaviors per season and trends. As described by Susan B. Kaiser’s “Fashion and Cultural Studies,” “fashion is a popular aesthetic expression at a particular period and place and in a specific context, especially in clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body proportions.”
Consumer Goods: Simply considered products purchased by consumers to satisfy personal use and needs. Investopedia describes “consumer goods as those items bought and used by consumers, rather than by manufacturers for producing other goods”

Mapping the sustainable product landscape

To empower and promote sustainable clothing choices and consumption, we can start by increasing awareness to build the world we urgently need.

Therefore, this guide looks to start a conversation for newcomers and experts alike to orient themselves, make their own choices, and provide some guardrails in the sustainable shopping trends amidst an ever-evolving sustainable landscape with four (4) different categories of how you can search, shop, sale and learn:

Search: Aggregators
Shop: Retail or Brand Websites
Buy & Sell: Resale Marketplaces
Learn: Third-Party Organizations

It is important to note this guide is not a finite resource, nor employs a top-down hierarchy of curated, recommended, or prescriptive interests. Moreover, its research encompasses a range of methodologies, across quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as consumer inputs. Due to the complexity of individual tools surveyed, it does not offer pros and cons for each product, and it can contain personal bias.

Search

Aggregators: You can see a multitude of products, brands, sources, centralized or curated.

Shop

Retail Websites: You can expect an online marketplace with sustainability filters.

Brand’s Direct Website: You can expect a brand’s online presence to showcase sustainable filters.

Buy & Sell

Resale Marketplace of New & Used Goods: You can expect to find new and/or returned & not used, slightly defective, used or worn in good conditions, or upcycled.

Second Hand Options / Social Commerce: You can expect a community-based marketplace.

Learn: Third-Party Organizations

Blogs & Independents: You can expect curated, recommended, or targeted content to be suggested or showcased.

Directories: You can expect a centralized source of information or knowledge, either crowdsourced or curated.

Certifiers: You can learn about each independent organization and its respective standards, procedures, and information about a product.

Takeaway: Where do we go from here?

After observing the extensive and complex landscape of online sustainable shopping, we are faced with an important question, where do we go from here?

It’s hard to say, while the internet has made sustainable and ethical shopping easier than ever, barriers still exist in lack of transparency, advocacy, and sometimes affordability across the process of sourcing, manufacturing, and selling of goods locally and worldwide.

It is my hope that with this brief guide you can start somewhere, share with a friend or invite others for a conversation; and from there, be a bit more informed to make your next search, purchase, or sell, so together, we move the needle to create, and support, the world we very much need.

As new, reusable, and trading marketplaces grow, it would be ideal that solutions that arise and grow address these barriers within, so eventually, sustainable shopping will be the only way to shop.

Sources

“What is ethical fashion? The ultimate guide by Ethical Made Easy. https://ethicalmadeeasy.com/what-is-ethical-fashion/
“Consumer sentiment and behavior continue to reflect the uncertainty of the COVID-19 crisis” by McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/a-global-view-of-how-consumer-behavior-is-changing-amid-covid-19#
“CGS 2020 Retail and Fashion Sustainability Survey” by Computer Generated Solutions: https://www.cgsinc.com/en/resources/survey-reveals-sustainability-shopping-preferences
“COVID-19: How consumer behavior will be changed” by Accenture: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/consumer-goods-services/coronavirus-consumer-behavior-research
“Sustainability is a Long-Term Growth Opportunity with Consumers” by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation: https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/blog/post/sustainability-long-term-growth-opportunity-consumers
“Report shows a third of consumers prefer sustainable brands” by Unilever: https://www.unilever.com/news/press-releases/2017/report-shows-a-third-of-consumers-prefer-sustainable-brands.html
“Thesis: The Sustainability Insight System” by The Sustainability Consortium: https://www.sustainabilityconsortium.org/what-we-offer/thesis/
“The Evolution of the Sustainability Mindset” by Nielsen: https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/report/2018/the-education-of-the-sustainable-mindset/

Acknowledgments

This guide was co-written with Paul Mosca.

All illustrations were created by Lili Bustos specifically for this guide.

Thanks to Jesse Germinario for proofreading this article.

Disclaimers

This post contains affiliate links. None of the aforementioned organizations, companies, and technologies have sponsored nor supported this article.

All opinions are derived from personal views and observations of a limited landscape of available technologies, products and organizations, unless otherwise noted.

References

Organizations like Trove are helping redefine circular shopping with major brands like REI, Patagonia, Eileen Fisher, and more.

Traditional Product and Brand Aggregator can include online platforms like Lyst, Shopstyle, and SSense.

Traditional Shopping Search Engine for Consumer Goods can include platforms like Google Shopping, PriceGrabber, Yahoo Shopping, BizRate, Best-price.

Remarks

Thanks for reading if you made it all the way here.! I’m open to hearing any feedback or thoughts you have about this guide or answering any questions. Please feel free to leave a response below or shoot me an email directly to francescostumpog@gmail.com or visit francescostumpo.com for more.