Performing zero waste: lifestyle movement, consumer culture, and promotion strategies of social media influencers

ABSTRACT

Zero waste movement has been gaining popularity in the recent decade and social media influencers’ promotion is central to movement growth. How do influencers popularize zero waste lifestyle practices that counter the dominant consumption norms? Are their strategies successful? This article examines influencers’ lifestyle advocacy as social performance, focusing on their scripts and visual presentations to social media audience. Based on content analysis of 250 Instagram posts, this article uses a cultural sociology lens to analyze zero waste influencers’ strategies and the audience responses. Problematization of wasteful consumption norms and legitimization of zero waste alternatives through demonstrating its feasibility, attractiveness, and integration with socio-political concerns are four prominent strategies. Zero waste influencers employ performance elements such as textual and visual scripts, means of symbolic production, and mise-en-scene to enhance authenticity and mobilize zero waste practices. Meanwhile, insufficient accountability of corporate waste culprits, limited representativeness of the privileged influencers, and contradictory embeddedness in consumer culture still threaten the legitimacy of their performance. This article centers the analysis of sustainable lifestyle movement leaders and their social media presentation, which have been little discussed but increasingly important. It also provides practical strategies for promoting sustainable lifestyle on social media.

KEYWORDS:

• zero waste
• lifestyle movement
• sustainable lifestyle
• consumer culture
• social performance
• social media influencer
• consumption

Acknowledgement

I express deep gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their detailed and insightful comments. I want to thank Dr. Philip Smith, Dr. Jeffrey Alexander, and all cultural sociology colleagues at Yale who have given valuable advice and supported me greatly during the publishing of this article. I am grateful for the zero waste community and practitioners who inspire me.dgments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Pictures from: trashisfortossers instagram page, book cover of zero waste: Simple Life Hacks to Drastically Reduce Your Trash, johnson.html’ title=“Ctrl+Click to follow link” element-type=“link” ref-type=“DOI” aid=“1s45y2i0x763v8a” icoretag=“uri” ia_version=’0”>https://zerowastemegan.weebly.com/bea-johnson.html, https://money.com/savings-eliminating-plastic-money-tips/

2. Other terms including environmental/green/eco-friendly lifestyle refer to the same construct that I try to capture here, which is a lifestyle that intends to reduce environmental impact. Sustainable lifestyle entails subcategories including pro-environmental behaviors, sustainable consumption,anti-consumption, voluntary simplicity, vegetarianism, veganism etc.

3. https://www.zerowaste.com/blog/the-top-ten-zero-waste-influencers-in-the-world-today/

4. https://www.trvst.world/sustainable-living/eco-friendly/zero-waste-influencers/

5. https://www.ecomasteryproject.com/zero-waste-influencers/

6. Zerowastehome stopped posting after June 2020, so posts were not available for analysis after that. Comments under the most recent post show that Bea Johnson had taken a hiatus from all social media since then. I will include this phenomenon in my discussion as well.

7. The google search results claim that Anamarie Shreeves is the founder of Instagram account zerowastehabesha, but on the Instagram page Freweyni Asress appears to be the current account runner.

8. The author was present at a public talk that Rob Greenfield gave at Yale University Farm during the time of writing (October 2022).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danning Lu

Danning Lu is an environmental social science researcher from China. She holds MSc in environmental science from Yale University, BA in sociology and BS in environmental science from Wheaton College (IL). Her work focuses on the why and how of social change toward environmental sustainability, with particular interests in grassroots environmentalism, sustainable practices of citizen-consumers, and corresponding system change. Lu has researched community gardens in urban China, zero waste lifestyle movement, and climate change public perception as well as policy support. She aims to conduct research long-term on topics of consumption waste reduction, environmental justice, climate communication, and Chinese society.