Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) was adopted as a priority area during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 and has since become one of the main vehicles for targeting international sustainability policy. Sustainable consumption focuses on formulating equitable strategies that foster the highest quality of life, the efficient use of natural resources, and the effective satisfaction of human needs while simultaneously promoting equitable social development, economic competitiveness, and technological innovation. But this is a complex topic and, as the challenges of sustainability grow larger, there is a need to re-imagine how SCP policies can be formulated, governed and implemented.

The EU-funded project ‘Sustainable Consumption Research Exchanges’ (SCORE!) consists of around 200 experts in the field of sustainable innovation and sustainable consumption. The SCORE! philosophy is that innovation in SCP policy can be achieved only if experts that understand business development, (sustainable) solution design, consumer behaviour and system innovation policy work together in shaping it. Sustainable technology design can be effective only if business can profitably make the products and consumers are attracted to them. To understand how this might effectively happen, the expertise of systems thinkers must be added to the mix.

System Innovation for Sustainability 1 is the first result of a unique positive confrontation between experts from all four communities. It examines what SCP is and what it could be, provides a state-of-the-art review on the governance of change in SCP policy and looks at the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches. The SCORE! experts are working with actors in industry, consumer groups and eco-labelling organisations in the key consumption areas of mobility, food and agriculture, and energy use and housing — responsible for 70% of the life-cycle environmental impacts of Western societies — with the aim of stimulating, fostering or forcing change to SCP theory in practice. The ‘System Innovation for Sustainability’ series will continue with three further volumes of comprehensive case studies in each of these three critical consumption areas.

Each chapter of this book examines problems and suggests solutions from a business, design, consumer and system innovation perspective. It primarily examines the differing solutions necessary in the consumer economies of the West, but also comments on the differing needs in rapidly emerging economies such as China, as well as base-of-the-pyramid economies.

The ‘System Innovation for Sustainability’ series is the fruit of the only major international research network on SCP and will set the standard in this field for some years to come. It will be required reading for all involved in the policy debate on sustainable production and consumption from government, business, academia and NGOs for designers, scientists, businesses and system innovators.

This book is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge about sustainable consumption and production. It is the first publication to emerge in a series from the European Union-funded SCORE! project, one of the most successful attempts to build a network of academics and practitioners in the field. The first phase of SCORE! focused on disciplinary approaches, and this book consists of papers presented and discussed at the launch meeting in Copenhagen in 2006. SCORE!’s second phase focused on three consumption domains: transportation, housing, and nutrition. Each of these domains will be covered in a separate book; the first, on transportation, has just appeared (Geerken and Borup 2009).

Sustainability is an elusive concept, but it gains focus when it is structured along the production?consumption axis. After all, we are all consumers, and by consuming we influence the supply chain. The book approaches this issue from the disciplinary angles of business, design, and consumer and public-policy studies, under the umbrella of a systemic change concept. The business perspective focuses on ‘greening the business,’ including the supply chain, eco-marketing, and efforts to get green products on retail shelves. Rolf Wüstenhagen and Jasper Boehnke present alternative business models for energy, and Peter Wells does so for the automotive industry. Marcus Wagner discusses innovation and the Porter hypothesis, and Frank-Martin Belz contributes a very interesting chapter on sustainable marketing.

The design perspective focuses on designing sustainable products, services, and systems, including a lot of creativity and stakeholder involvement. Ursula Tischner writes about social sustainability and radical change and offers results from a sustainable office project. François Jégou describes the Emerging Demand for Sustainable Solutions (EMUDE) project, which looked, together with stakeholders, to innovative solutions for daily problems. Chris Ryan describes eco-innovative cities in Australia, and Benny Leong discusses the question of whether a radical systemic shift toward sustainability is possible in China. The answer is that there are glimmers of hope and that the next 15 years will be crucial.

In the section on consumer perspectives, Gerd Scholl focuses on product-service systems and on the symbolic meaning conveyed by consumption and embedded in lifestyles and in everyday life. Dario Padovan uses the well-established notion of social capital to describe lifestyles and consumption patterns in the Italian city of Padova, and Irmgard Schultz and Immanuel Stieß address the same issues through a social?ecological approach. Lifestyle differences are important for understanding different consumption patterns, as illustrated in a chapter by Edina Vadovics, from Hungary.

The section of the book devoted to policy perspectives focuses on technological innovation (especially system innovations and transition management) and the innovation system approach. Matthias Weber, Klaus Kubeczo, and Harald Rohracher write about system innovations in innovation systems, and René Kemp describes transition management and policies in the Netherlands. The chapter by Oksana Mont and Tareq Emtirah describes product-service systems in the context of systemic changes.

Each of these four parts consists of individual studies and an overarching review chapter written by the theme’s editors that reflects on the drivers, the state of the art, the opportunities, the models of change, and the limitations. A final chapter, authored by Arnold Tukker, summarizes the entire book and offers guidance to change processes and keys to success.

This highly structured approach offers a great deal in terms of presenting cutting-edge research, conceptualizations from various perspectives, strategies for change, and policy development. The book even offers perspectives from diverse countries, such as Hungary and China.
The question remains, however, how far the notion conveyed by the subtitle (Perspectives on Radical Changes) has been pushed. To effectively tackle climate change, countries need to make deep reductions in both greenhouse gas emissions and global poverty, and the necessary transformations will entail radical changes. This book, however, offers a rather incremental approach that does not critique the prevailing economic growth paradigm or the widespread notion of consumer sovereignty. There is little consideration of life satisfaction and well-being, and the book does not examine the deeper driving forces of boundless consumption. Institutional change and deep learning receive little attention. The policy perspectives of change toward more sustainable systems of consumption and production are somewhat underdeveloped. Social movements are hardly described.

Nevertheless, this edited collection offers an excellent state of the art in sustainable consumption and production research. It is an emerging interdisciplinary field of study, and much more remains to be done. The book inspires and calls for a great deal more action and research. Indeed, one offspring is already established — the North American SCORAI network just convened its first workshop (http://www.scorai.org). Motivated by SCORE! but with a different approach, it tackles some of the same issues.
Philip J. Vergragt, Tellus Institute, Boston, MA, in Journal of Industrial Ecology 14.1

A global overview of research, experiments, strategies and metrics at all levels of societies. This volume is Part 1 of a series on perspectives on achieving changes toward more sustainable consumption and production societies — calling for radical system-wide innovation. Most of those initiatives are from Europe, Japan, Australia and some from Brazil and other industrialising countries — with few from the USA. This is due to the greater effort and government support in the European Union for sustainability initiatives. One would expect in the next volume more focus on progress in correcting GDP and integrating available indicators on health, education, poverty gaps and the environment (see www.beyond-gdp.eu) and the rapid development of renewable energy which occurred worldwide in 2007 since this Part 1 went to press. This series will become a classic in the growing field of sustainability literature. We will recommend this volume and the forthcoming series as required reading for our Ethical Markets Sustainability Research Group.
Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy; President, Ethical Markets Media, LLC

Part 1: The context of this book

Part 2: Business perspective

Part 3: Design perspective

Part 4: Consumer perspective

Part 5: System innovation policy perspective

Part 6: Conclusions and integration

Dr Arnold Tukker joined TNO in 1990 after some time working for the Dutch Environment Ministry. Over time, his focus shifted from life-cycle assessment, material flow analysis and risk assessment to interactive policy-making and sustainable system innovation and transition management. In 1998 he published a book on societal disputes on toxic substances, for which he was awarded a PhD from Tilburg University. He has published about 40 peer-reviewed papers, 5 books, 10 book chapters and 150 other publications, and is frequently asked as invited speaker worldwide. In his career, he has been awarded over €15 million in mainly international research grants. He currently manages the research programme on Transitions and System Innovation within TNO Built Environment and Geosciences, Business Unit Innovation and Environment. This programme was evaluated as one of TNO’s top-ranking programmes during the 2006 scientific assessment exercise. Arnold is the initiator and manager of the SCORE! network.

Martin Charter is the Director and Visiting Professor of Sustainable Product Design at The Centre for Sustainable Design at the University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester, UK. Since 1988, he has worked at director level in ‘business and environment’ issues in consultancy, leisure, publishing, training, events and research. He is the author, editor and joint editor of various books and publications including Greener Marketing (Greenleaf Publishing, 1992 and 1999), The Green Management Gurus [e-book] (1996), Managing Eco-design (Centre for Sustainable Design, 1997) and Sustainable Solutions (Greenleaf Publishing, 2001). Martin has an MBA from Aston Business School in the UK, and has interests in sustainable product design, green(er) marketing, and creativity and innovation.

For 15 years Carlo Vezzoli has been researching and teaching design scenarios, strategies, methods and tools for products, services and systems for sustainability. At the Faculty of Design of the Politecnico di Milano he is a professor of Product Design for Environmental Sustainability and of System Design for Sustainability, and director of the Research Unit Design and System Innovation for Sustainability (DIS, INDACO) department. Among other projects, he is coordinator of the international Learning Network on Sustainability (LENS), of curricula development on Design for Sustainability focused on product-service system innovation, funded by the Asia Link Programme, European Commission. 

Eivind Stø is the Director of Research at the National Institute for Consumer Research (SIFO), Norway. He gained a Mag.art. in political science from the University of Oslo in 1972. He was an assistant at the Norwegian Election Programme from 1972 to 1976; and from 1976 to 1998 he worked for the Norwegian Fund for Market and Distribution Research. Since 1989, he has been a researcher at SIFO, as Head of Research from 1990, and Director of Research from 1998. He has initiated, participated and coordinated several European projects. His research interests include consumer complaints, consumer policy, sustainable consumption, energy use and nanotechnology.

Maj Munch Andersen is a senior scientist at DTU, Denmark, the Danish Technical University.  Her work focuses on innovation studies, particularly within eco-innovation processes and nanotechnology, both at the firm, inter-firm, technology and innovation system level. She has a special interest in the analysis of environmental and innovation policy and the relationship between the two. She has previously worked at the Copenhagen Business School as well as spending four years on innovation policy within the Danish Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Danish Ministry of Science where she was responsible for developing a green innovation strategy.