Symbolic DIY environmentalism between sustainability statements and green pressure

Abstract

This article argues that environmental sustainability statements do not constitute a one-dimensional service but encapsulate a reciprocal power relation between producers and consumers’ expectations for continuously improving sustainability standards. Drawing on Bowen's investigation of post-greenwashing assessments of corporate environmentalism, I will frame these expectations as ‘green pressure’. As there is currently no substantial research on the complex connection between Do-it-yourself (DIY) cultural production, environmentalism and green pressure, the primary concern of this article is to demonstrate the necessity for an analytical framework that grasps the symbolic characteristics of environmental practices in DIY-based alternative leisure and production circuits.

Introduction

Environmental sustainability statements are a common feature in the current online presentations of Do-it-yourself (DIY) fashion designers, artist collectives and music labels. At first sight, their content provides transparency for customers by informing them about the origin and composition of materials as well as the employed production processes. However, when considering the growing prevalence and diversity of sustainability statements across different cultural sectors, it becomes apparent that there are more complex reciprocal mechanisms at work here than the notion of a mere service for customers can convey.

In this article, I argue that environmental sustainability statements do not constitute a one-dimensional service but encapsulate a reciprocal power relation between producers and consumers’ expectations for continuously improving sustainability standards. Drawing on Bowen's (2014) investigation of post-greenwashing assessments of corporate environmentalism, I will frame these expectations as ‘green pressure’. As there is currently no substantial research on the complex connection between DIY cultural production, environmentalism and green pressure, the primary concern of this article is to demonstrate the necessity for an analytical framework that grasps the symbolic characteristics of environmental practices in DIY-based alternative leisure and production circuits. The need for such a framework especially becomes apparent when considering that DIY cultures have the potential to substantially contribute to the innovation of new strategies for dealing with challenges such as waste management and plastic pollution on a macro societal scale. By applying Bowen's (2014) concept of ‘symbolic corporate environmentalism’ within the context of DIY cultures, I will argue that future investigations of DIY practices must consider cultural and economic push-pull dynamics between green pressure and what I will frame as ‘symbolic DIY environmentalism’. This is not only necessary to understand the benefits of DIY-based symbolic environmentalism but also to identify the dangers of ‘greenwashing’, that is, a distorted public depiction between the presentation and actual impact of sustainability measures. Up to now, academic investigations of greenwashing have predominantly focused on large-scale corporate production and marketing circuits that maintain a clear-cut boundary between producers and consumers (see Bowen, 2014). DIY cultures as well as cultural industries (Power and Scott, 2004), however, do not display such an unambiguous division as many individuals simultaneously perform the role of producer, consumer, promoter and distributor. Due to this fact, the rendering of cultural and economic circuits tied to symbolic DIY environmentalism is more complex than in mainstream industries of mass production, and therefore, requires a distinct analytical framework. For this purpose, I will utilise Toffler's (1981) notion of the ‘prosumer’ to accommodate the complex production and consumption circuits in DIY cultures and further focus on the analytical framework for symbolic DIY environmentalism.

After discussing Bowen's (2014) concept of symbolic corporate environmentalism, the ensuing section will provide an overview of definitions of DIY cultures. I will then introduce my definition of ‘green pressure’ to contrast Bowen's (2014) use of ‘institutional pressure’ in the context of symbolic corporate environmentalism. This is followed by an application of the analytical symbolic DIY environmentalism lens to three case studies, namely the artist collective Volim in Western Australia, the fashion designer Alice Nightingale in Meanjin ¹ (Brisbane), Australia and the Germany-based company Victim that specialises in repurposing used skateboard decks into jewellery, phone cases and electric guitars. Initial research for potential projects drew on digital ethnography methods (Underberg and Zorn, 2021). In particular, hashtags used on social media platforms such as #upcycling, #recycledskateboards and #recycledfashion functioned as initial information sources for finding DIY upcycling and repurposing projects. From here, a snowballing technique through related hashtags and AI recommendations was used to find similar pages. The resulting selection of Alice Nightingale, Volim and Victim is primarily based on their location. Living in Meanjin (Brisbane) since 2017, I was able to visit Nightingale's shop and experience her workshop and the quality of her products in person. Having visited Boorloo (Perth) in Western Australia in 2019, I am furthermore familiar with the area's DIY music and skateboarding scene, its geographic isolation and the resulting challenges of shipping products nationally and internationally as well as sourcing raw materials for DIY projects. I grew up in Germany and am familiar with both the country's DIY music and skateboarding scenes as well as its waste management and recycling policies. For analysing the discussed websites, I will critically evaluate Walker and Wan's (2012) methodology of analysing environmentalist statements on company websites and adjust it for the context of DIY enterprises. Finally, the conclusion will reiterate the need for research that investigates whether symbolic DIY environmentalism gives credibility to measures for rendering grassroots-based cultural production more sustainable or merely represents greenwashing that is ‘disconnected from the underlying environmental impacts of corporate activities’ (Bowen, 2014: 5).

From greenwashing to symbolic corporate environmentalism

In her book After Greenwashing, Bowen (2014) critically evaluates academic literature on corporate greenwashing. In her analysis, she categorises definitions into two groups that each represent a ‘conventional perspective’ and ‘critical perspective’ on greenwashing (Bowen, 2014: 7). The conventional perspective investigates the phenomenon from a business administration standpoint meaning that scholars in this area are primarily interested in the benefits and costs of green capitalism (Hart, 1995; Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998). Following a simple cause-and-effect relationship, the conventional view argues that properly implemented environmentalism should solve problems of sustainability and environmental protection (Bowen, 2014: 40). The critical perspective on the contrary engages with greenwashing on a sociological basis informed by discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003), and therefore, views corporations as powerful discourse influencers that hold substantial responsibility for symbolically and practically addressing environmental challenges (Crane et al., 2008; Jermier et al., 2006). Through the question: ‘what does it mean to be green and who holds the power to decide that and how?’ (Bowen, 2014: 7) the critical perspective interprets neo-corporate environmentalism as an overtly rhetorical enterprise that only implements minor practical changes. According to its view environmentalist practices are symbolically performed by corporations with enough power to design them for their own standards while disregarding measurements demanded by governments and the public. For critical analysts, symbolic corporate environmentalism thus simply upholds the existing distribution of social structure and power relationships through a rhetoric of illusionary corporate accountability (Bowen, 2014: 53). To illustrate, Maxwell and Miller (2012: 110) criticise bureaucratic mechanisms in consumer electronics production as detaining the development of sustainable media technologies. Furthermore, the overtly symbolic implementation of environmentalism causes uniformisation that thwarts sustainable invention and governance; the critical view assesses in this context the ‘function of voluntary green solutions as evading public demands for stronger government regulation and control’ (Bowen, 2014; see also Jiang and Bansal, 2003).

In response to the conventional and critical view primarily focusing their analysis of corporate environmentalism through the lens of greenwashing, Bowen argues that environmentalism cannot be reduced to the phenomenon of greenwashing as it takes shape within wider societal, economic and policy discourses that negotiate the general efficiency of environmentalist practice (see Boiral, 2007). Moreover, she points out that the trajectory of greenwashing's academic definitions displays an increasingly narrow and confined analytical scope. To contrast this, she uses the Oxford English Dictionary definition of greenwashing as ‘disinformation disseminated by an organisation so as to present an environmentally responsible public image’ (Bowen, 2014: 21). In comparison, the most rigid academic definition of greenwashing is provided by Lyon and Maxwell (2011: 5) which states that the phenomenon is the ‘selective disclosure of positive information about a company's environmental or social performance, without full disclosure of negative information on these dimensions, so as to create an overly positive corporate image’. According to Bowen, this trend towards specificity acts to the concept's analytical detriment as most of the later academic definitions of greenwashing ‘relate explicitly to a firm's choice about whether and what to disclose – not a choice about the form and substance of a firm's environmental actions in the first place’ (Bowen, 2014: 23). A key concern of Bowen's work is to maintain that all environmental practices feature a symbolic dimension. Because of this factor they necessitate an appropriate analytical approach that can differentiate between ‘socially wasteful distractions’ and ‘initial attempts to promote green solutions so desperately needed to mitigate society's impact on the natural world’ (Bowen, 2014: 3). To expand the discursive interpretation of corporate environmental practices, she uses the concept of ‘symbolic corporate environmentalism’ understood as the ‘shared meanings and representations surrounding changes made by managers within firms that they describe as primarily for environmental reasons’ (Bowen, 2014: 26). For this framework, Bowen combines key aspects of the conventional and critical view on greenwashing by evaluating the boundaries of corporate environmentalism and analysing the distribution of control over rhetoric and resources (Bowen, 2014: 73). Bowen's concept is innovative as it does not reduce environmentalist practices to greenwashing but treats greenwashing as a subset within the broader scape of symbolic corporate environmentalism. Previous academic investigations on the contrary are limited to analysing deliberate corporate information disclosure decisions that in her eyes are then portrayed in an abbreviated fashion as beneficial for firms and detrimental to society (Bowen, 2014: 26 ff.). Her theory contrasts this with a framework that takes potential societal advantages of environmental symbolism such as education and motivation into consideration to provide a more complex explanation of the underlying symbolism in corporate environmentalism (Bowen, 2014: 30–32).

For Bowen (2014: 40), every form of environmentalism creates an impact on a material and symbolic level, for example, through the use of eco-labels (see Prieto-Sandoval et al., 2016; Schnell, 2020), recycling schemes, environmental management standards and employee training. It is necessary to differentiate between signals and symbols in this context especially since greenwashing is commonly viewed in academic investigations as deliberate. Drawing on Connelly et al. (2011), Bowen (2014: 62) treats signals as intentional dissemination of information about an otherwise unobservable factor to convey positive characteristics of a company, for example, a company painting their headquarters green to raise public awareness of their environmentalism. Symbols, in contrast, are images that refer to common and shared belief systems held by observers; for example, the shared understanding that the colour green represents the environment (Posner, 2002). The symbolic performance of environmentalist practices is then the degree to which the publicly portrayed work of corporations in generating sustainable solutions is positively or negatively sanctioned by stakeholders, consumers and policy makers (Bowen, 2014: 57; Heugens and Lander, 2009). A comprehensive analysis of symbolic environmentalism in the corporate sphere thus must appropriately distinguish and investigate the relationship between symbolic activities and deliberate signalling. Emphasising the relevance of public discourses, Bowen (2014: 56) points out that although companies invest in their environmentalist public relations schemes, it is in the hands of stakeholders to sanction these as substantive or just symbolic strategies.

Despite these sanctions being in place, symbolic corporate environmentalism is nonetheless detrimental to society when it only achieves a symbolic effect that is not linked to an overall substantial environmental performance. Bowen (2014: 33, 55) calls this form of corporate environmentalism ‘merely symbolic’ as it does not lead to any positive substantial impact, in particular when related to the nine ecological system boundaries conceptualised by Rockström et al. (2009) and Whiteman et al. (2013) that include factors such as climate change, rate of biodiversity loss and chemical pollution. Greenwashing is then to be understood as a distinctive example of merely symbolic environmentalism in which corporations purposefully curate their environmentalist schemes as a front for their problematic business practices. More specifically, a key problem in symbolic corporate environmentalism is a ‘symbolic gap’ (Bowen, 2014: 63) that is constituted through an interplay between a company's public symbolic performance, its social reception as well the implementation of substantive environmental improvements within the corporate structure. Although many academic concepts of greenwashing narrow their focus on deliberate communication from the corporate perspective, symbolic gaps are identified through the evaluation of stakeholders and the public eye. Evaluating environmentalism via its symbolic performance thus leaves enough analytical flexibility to assess whether symbolic gaps arise because of deliberate or unintended decision-making. As symbolic gaps can be the unintended result of profit-orientated investments in green solutions, corporate inertia due to rigid corporate structures and managerial cognitive bias, the identification of symbolic gaps is primarily based on social evaluations by the public and only partially due to a company's practices (Bowen, 2014: 63–66). Furthermore, the pressure of potentially falling behind greener competitors (see Schnell, 2020) can lead companies to pre-emptively state a planned implementation of environmentalist strategies that eventually remain merely symbolic and do not lead to actual environmental improvements: ‘Adopting a green solution is more likely to be symbolic when there is poor transparency, low penalties for lack of substantive adoption and weak monitoring’ (Bowen, 2014: 52).

Since the publication of After Greenwashing multiple scholars have drawn on Bowen's critique of greenwashing for their work. These applications range from recent studies of greenwashing in the context of voluntary carbon disclosure (Mateo-Márquez et al., 2022) to investigations of corporate social responsibility (Wickert et al., 2016). Furthermore, Lyon and Montgomery's (2015) discussion of greenwashing provides a brief and affirmative review of Bowen's work that maintains a reach of greenwashing that goes beyond mere information disclosure. Although Lyon and Montgomery (2015: 225, 244) agree with Bowen that greenwashing ranges from minor exaggeration to complete fabrication they argue that further research is necessary to illuminate the risks and benefits of the phenomenon for social welfare. Although Bowen's concept usefully expands the analytical scope of corporate environmentalism, it primarily focuses on established major global corporations. The corporate structures that Bowen investigates, however, are largely incomparable to DIY brands, labels and projects that are either run by individuals or small- to mid-sized enterprises. Nonetheless, the threat of producing symbolic gaps in environmental practices is applicable to this context as is the social evaluation of environmental symbols from peers and consumers in DIY scenes. Whether it is an international conglomerate or a one-person local enterprise distributing products through an online platform such as Etsy, the symbolic gap in environmentalist practices and the danger of acting in a merely symbolic fashion is nonetheless a framework that allows for a more specific analytical assessment of current DIY-based cultural production on a larger scale. Aligning with Bowen's approach, it is, therefore, necessary to move away from the concept of intentional greenwashing, especially when analysing symbolic environmentalism in DIY communities that function outside or in opposition to corporate market systems. Nonetheless, being part of an alternative culture does not prevent practitioners from encountering the symbolic gap and potential risk of working on a merely symbolic level. To address this issue, the next section will further contextualise Bowen's framework within the context of DIY circuits of cultural production and consumption. To accommodate the complex roles of producer, curator, distributor and consumer that single individuals perform within DIY scenes, I will incorporate Toffler's (1981) concept of the ‘prosumer’ within the framework of symbolic environmentalism. Furthermore, I will introduce the term ‘green pressure’ to explain the interplay between what Bowen (2014: 64) calls ‘stakeholder expectations’, ‘institutional pressure’ and managerial decisions that can lead to the creation of symbolic gaps within DIY cultural production.

DIY cultures between the precariat and the prosumer

The idea of DIY practice first emerged in the context of home improvement in the early twentieth century in relation to maintenance and home repairs carried out by a layperson without the direct involvement of an expert (Gelber, 1997). Although DIY was limited to this context for a few decades, the concept experienced a more substantial cultural adoption with the emergence of punk music in the 1970s (Bennett and Guerra, 2019; Hebdige, 1979). For punk's cultural agenda, DIY practices initially sprung from the practical necessity for community-based music production circuits, event management and information distribution networks that were later developed into a handmade aesthetic and ethical code set (McKay, 1998). These ethics of DIY dictate that community members must maintain as much control as possible over the recording, production, distribution and organisation of music, zines, audiovisual media, concerts, tours, festivals, exhibitions, film screenings, conferences, workshops and residency programs. DIY principles also find application within alternative living, squatting and trailer communities (Hemphill and Leskowitz, 2013). Equipped with shared strategies for building and landscaping, DIY practitioners appropriate urban wastelands by turning them into the so-called ‘guerrilla gardens’, playgrounds or skate parks. DIY skateparks, often built by skate communities without official permission and financed through members’ personal funds, are interpreted by Hollett and Vivoni (2021) as spaces of experimentation and learning that counteract the neoliberal standards of urban planning now common in many major cities across the globe.

An essential contribution that outlines the economic context DIY communities operate has been framed by Standing (2011, 2019). He introduces the new economic class of the ‘precariat’ characterised by its limited access to labour and social security and loss of citizenship rights. Due to the spread of casualisation the precariat must ongoingly manage the emotional burden of uncertainty in their everyday life which results in high levels of stress. Uncertainty differs here from contingency risks such as unemployment, maternity and illness, which are at least partially covered by social welfare and can be insured against. Uncertainty, however, cannot be insured against, as it is characterised by ‘unknown unknowns’ (Standing, 2019: 118). Standing differentiates between three distinct groups within the precariat: the first are called ‘Atavists’, who have slid from the proletariat to the precariat and display the tendency to blame this transition onto other groups thus making them susceptible to neo-fascist populism. The primary group that the Atavists accuse are the ‘Nostalgics’, who primarily consist of migrants and minorities who work hard for their survival while maintaining a low profile. Lastly, ‘Progressives’ are mostly young and educated individuals deprived of professional stability and security (Standing, 2019: 119).

Threadgold's (2018) research on DIY music scenes (see Straw, 1991) in Australia illustrates that DIY practitioners are commonly part of the precariat's group of Progressives. He demonstrates in this context how young people ‘investing themselves in DIY cultures have to negotiate the complex but now normalised nexus of study, employment, unemployment and underemployment to make ends meet while maintaining space in their lives to pursue their creative and artistic passions’ (Threadgold, 2018: 157). He argues that DIY practitioners ‘choose poverty’ through consciously pursuing a frugal lifestyle to allocate enough free time and mental space for their creative pursuits (Threadgold, 2018: ibid.). Their ideas of success are thus not expressed in material or monetary terms but through maintaining a life that allows for a sustainable investment in their interests and contributions to the scene (Threadgold, 2018: ibid.). The meaning of DIY is negotiated by practitioners in an ongoing discourse surrounding key aspects of DIY ethics such as belonging, authenticity and an active resistance against ‘selling out’ through, for example, accepting sponsorship by major corporations (Threadgold, 2018: 62 f.). Contrasting Bowen's analysis that primarily functions within the neoliberal context of market expansion, Threadgold's research demonstrates that the ambitions and motivations for cultural production in DIY music scenes are not based on economic growth at any cost. The symbolic aspects of environmentalism within DIY practices must, therefore, not only be evaluated according to capitalist market standards but also the ethics and principles of DIY. Although the participants in Threadgold's research actively express their aversion to participating in mainstream industries, they do nevertheless apply DIY strategies to the commodification of their products and work.

Bennett (2018) demonstrates in this context the increasingly vocational nature of adolescents’ hobbies and a general push in the Global North towards monetising aspects of people's everyday life that were previously regarded as mere leisure activities. Although DIY practitioners in Threadgold's research assume a clear distinction between the practices of DIY communities and the creative industries, the scope of DIY practices and ethics has been extended through the digital diversification of cultural production in the twenty-first century. According to Bennett (2018: 141), the application of DIY strategies such as self-promotion through social media increasingly facilitates professionalisation in the form of ‘self-made’ (Wierenga, 2009), or ‘DIY careers’ that function as active monetisation attempts to counteract current precarious market conditions (see Standing, 2011). Although Threadgold (2018) and McKay (1998) frame DIY practices primarily as forms of resistance against traditional vocational pathways, Bennett argues that the advent of digital technologies has extended the application of DIY practices into the realm of professionalisation. For him, DIY ‘now appears to encompass a far broader range of activities, often connected as much with the need to secure, or attempt to secure, a livelihood as with any necessarily radical ideology’ (Bennett, 2018: 146). Although DIY careers draw on strategies cultivated within Punk and its adjacent cultures, the DIY ethos is now ‘interwoven with a post-industrial understanding of the need to garner a sustainable lifestyle without the formerly taken-for-granted notions of a stable career and, more importantly, stable income’ (Bennett, 2018: 147). In the face of precarious working conditions, Bennett interprets DIY careers as resisting the dead-end prospects of casual labour and argues that a rigid differentiation between DIY and mainstream cultural production is obsolete as both fields of practice are increasingly overlapping (Bennett, 2018: 150). Indeed, McRobbie's (2016) work investigates independent fashion designers, who apply DIY ethics within the creative industries. A practice, that according to Scott (2012) frames them as ‘cultural entrepreneurs’. Similarly to how Threadgold (2018) and Bennett (2018) view the professional prospects of DIY practitioners, Scott confirms that cultural entrepreneurs establish their creative career paths based on undertaking paid side jobs. Navigating economic precarity is thus a central characteristic of DIY entrepreneurship and, regarding the symbolic environmentalism that many of these enterprises display, a key difference to the context that Bowen (2014) analyses in her work.

Following the increasing professionalisation of the leisure sphere in the Global North, the waning boundary between DIY cultures and the creative industries is also expressed through the pluralisation of single individuals’ roles and responsibilities within the creative and cultural sectors. Toffler (1981: 275) captured this pluralisation through the concept of the ‘prosumer’ to demonstrate that in the context of ‘self-help movements, DIY trends, or new production technologies, we find the same shift towards a much closer involvement of the consumer in production. In such a world, conventional distinctions between producer and consumer vanish’. Indeed, Toffler's (1981: 277) description of ‘smart’ sewing machines being fed with pattern programs and car enthusiasts building car parts rather than tinkering with existing ones is strikingly reminiscent of recent developments in consumer-grade AI automation processes and 3D printing (Hoskins, 2018). Although Toffler predominantly understands DIY as home improvement and maintenance, the concept of prosumerism is transferable to DIY ethics and creative industries: to become a member of a DIY community, it is necessary to participate in its cultural production. As DIY practitioners perform multiple roles, the expectations towards environmental sustainability are not as clear-cut into ‘institutional’ and ‘stakeholder’ pressures as Bowen defines it. The next section of the article will combine the previously discussed discourses of corporate symbolic environmentalism, DIY ethics and prosumerism to sketch out a framework for analysing the performativity of environmentalism within the context of DIY cultures and the creative industries. Furthermore, I will introduce the concept of green pressure to contextualise the framework with three selected examples of symbolic DIY environmentalism: the fashion designer Alice Nightingale, the fashion label Volim and the accessory brand Victim. Next to the introduced terminology of green pressure, prosumerism and symbolic DIY environmentalism, these examples will be investigated according to the concept of decoupling (Marquis and Toffel, 2012) and Walker and Wan's (2012) analysis of approximately 100 sustainability statements on high-performing Canadian companies’ websites within visibly polluting industries.

Green pressure and symbolic DIY environmentalism

Although assessing symbolic corporate environmentalism, Delmas and Burbano (2011) as well as Bowen (2014: 64) maintain that symbolic gaps in corporate environmentalism are more likely to arise under high pressure from market actors such as consumers, investors and competitors and non-market actors such as regulators and NGOs (Bowen, 2014: 53). Circuits of DIY-based alternative production and consumption, however, commonly function outside of or in opposition to institutionalised market systems, and therefore, feature different types of social and cultural pressures. It is, therefore, necessary to establish an appropriate analytical framework that can sufficiently assess these pressures and mitigate the risks of merely symbolic environmentalism and greenwashing within DIY cultures. Green pressure, understood as the sum of all expectations towards positive environmental impact that accompany all circuits of production, distribution and consumption in DIY cultures functions here as a broader term that conceptualises the multifaceted expectancies outside of institutional and major market dynamics. Notably, green pressure does not only encapsulate a one-directional expectation of environmentally sustainable practice from consumers towards producers but also self-expectation by practitioners onto themselves. This is particularly the case as DIY projects are based on the passion that embodies the operator's identity not only through their intellectual but also emotional investment. Green pressure as self-expectation thus expresses practitioners’ aspiration to control sustainability aspects in their passion projects to offset the fact that they are largely out of their control within other spheres of life such as groceries, housing, clothing and transportation.

Green pressure first appeared in late 2019 when various media outlets were predicting upcoming trends for the year 2020. The website Watching (2019), for example, framed green pressure based on the increasing diversity of sustainable options for consumption. According to their view, the concept does not designate a demand for consumers to actively choose sustainable products but rather is expressed through the negative sanctioning of consumers who do not opt-in for sustainable options. Although this description of green pressure is primarily assessed via negative consequences in consumer circuits, the German trend watch agency Zukunftsinstitut (2019) published a broader statement according to which green pressure was interpreted to become a key trending word in 2020 – a prediction that was quickly relativised with the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Nonetheless, Zukunftsinstitut's (2019) assessment provides several useful insights that demonstrate the impact of green pressure across various economic and cultural sectors. Their interpretation of the term views it through the general growing pressure towards environmentalist practice. In terms of who is creating the pressure, the website puts emphasis on Generation-Y as well as the emergence of a ‘we-culture’ that locates green pressure overall within the scope of neo-ecology (Zukunftsinstitut, 2019). The website frames green pressure as a phenomenon that transcends major societal dichotomies between generations, producer and consumer as well as politician and citizen. According to them, increasingly critical consumer groups as well as juridical frameworks for environmental preservation are creating a post-individualist we-culture that seeks to practically address contemporary environmental challenges (Zukunftsinstitut, 2019). Although loosely outlined within the affluent economic context of the Global North, the above description provides central indicators of how green pressure must be applied to DIY cultures. The fact that the term spans multiple societal and economic sectors demonstrates that it is more flexible than the comparatively narrowly framed understanding of ‘institutional’ and ‘stakeholder pressure’ in Bowen's (2014) analysis. In DIY cultures, green pressure functions within various overlapping settings, and therefore, needs to be divided into sub-categories.

First, pressure towards sustainable practices is put onto DIY project operators by themselves in the form of self-expectation – a phenomenon that I call green practitioner pressure. It is necessary to differentiate here between individuals who are running DIY projects on a hobby basis and practitioners who generate a portion of their regular income through DIY projects. For DIY hobbyists, experimenting with sustainable materials, production and distribution methods involves relatively low monetary risk if the project operates on a small scale. Although hobby-based DIY projects face sustainability expectations from their peers, their passion-based involvement in the project guarantees that they maintain the primary power to organise and structure their practices according to their own pace. The impact of green pressure, however, is more substantial for professionalised DIY projects that generate a significant amount of income for their operators. Contrasting a rigid division between DIY music scenes’ and corporate practices (Threadgold, 2018), the ways in which green pressure appears tied to an increasing vocational nature of DIY projects (Bennett, 2018) demonstrates that the distinction between DIY scenes and the creative industries (McRobbie, 2016) is fluid.

Second, green pressure becomes apparent in the relationship between DIY project operators and consumers who purchase their products. Green peer pressure describes in this context the expectations of consumers and peers within DIY cultures. Bowen (2014: 53) notes that major companies are more likely to have a gap between their symbolic and substantive environmental performances when faced with pressure from market and non-market actors such as consumers, investors, competitors and NGOs. Although the managerial and organisational dynamics of DIY projects differ fundamentally from the way major corporations operate, the portrayal of environmental practices in public relations function according to similar parameters, such as posts on social media platforms including Instagram and Tik Tok as well as the so-called ‘sustainability statements’ featured on websites.

Walker and Wan (2012) investigated these statements on corporate websites in visibly polluting industries. Their coding set includes ‘substantive action’ defined as ‘the extent to which a firm provides concrete actions […] to care for the natural environment’ (Walker and Wan, 2012: 233). Contrasting this variable, ‘symbolic action’ is then ‘the extent to which a firm discusses their commitment to the natural environment and their future plans’ (Walker and Wan, 2012: 234). Both variables allow for different combinations between ‘green talk’ (the mentioning of sustainability measures) and ‘green walk’ (implementation of sustainability measures), with green talk without the walk being equivalent to greenwashing (Walker and Wan, 2012: 227, 234). Furthermore, Walker and Wan (2012: 234) contrast greenwashing with ‘green-highlighting’ as the substantial implementation of both green talk and walk. Their analysis indicates that merely symbolic actions correlate with decreased financial performance; firms should, therefore, use their websites to present already implemented environmental practices rather than mentioning future intentions for commitment. Symbolic green talk about plans, however, ‘may be perceived as an attempt to make up for the lack of substantive actions’ and ‘to cover up the lack of substantive actions, or a means to falsely beef-up the “meager” substantive actions’ that may lead to negative financial consequences (Walker and Wan, 2012: 238, 239). In a nutshell, their framework labels backward-looking statements as substantive and forward-looking statements as symbolic. This leaves space for assessing how the current implementation of sustainability measures is worded on websites.

In the case of Nightingale (2022a), a Meanjin (Brisbane)-based fashion designer active since 2009, environmentalism materialises through the repurposing of second-hand fabrics and clothing for the majority of her creations. In some instances, the use of available fabric products entails drastically altering their cut, for example, through repurposing sleeping bags and their lining into a puffer jacket (Nightingale, 2022b) or reworking leftover fabric scraps into a backpack. Nightingale's DIY approach to her work also becomes clear in the prosumerist aspect of projects as she not only produces her products but also distributes and advertises them in cooperation with models and photographers. The ‘about’ section on her website states that ‘her designs are not only hand made to outlast fast fashion cycles but are also environmentally and socially sustainable’ (Nightingale, 2022a). No further explanation is given on how Nightingale's practice creates ‘socially sustainable’ products; however, the website does feature more information on the distribution of her products that are ‘packaged using recycled tissue paper and compostable bags’ (Nightingale, 2022a). Nightingale's website provides a mix of substantial and symbolic DIY environmentalism: she gives clear statements on how she structures her work through DIY sustainability methods such as appropriating used fabrics and using biodegradable packaging for her products. However, her description neither gives a clear indication of how fast-fashion cycles are defined nor how her work practically outlasts them. Furthermore, it does not feature details on how she performs a ‘socially sustainable’ practice – more information is necessary here to transcend mere green talk.

Contrasting Nightingale's strategy in self-marketing her take on symbolic DIY sustainability is Volim, a design collective run out of Boorloo (Perth) in Western Australia since 2014 that specialises in fashion, ceramics and floral arrangements. The clothing produced by Volim is made to order avoiding mass production methods while using linen fibres in their fabrics that are grown in the Netherlands ‘where the plant naturally flourishes and doesn’t need excessive water or degrade the soil’ (Volim, 2022). The fabrics for Volim's products are Oeko-Tex certified and manufactured in China, in mills that Volim's suppliers are said to have been in contact with for ‘many years and visit annually to ensure the mills meet standard of dye and work ethics’. Furthermore, Volim acknowledges that ‘unfortunately there is no alternative available to us for locally milled fabric in Australia’ (Volim, 2022). Furthermore, the website states that Volim favours linen and hemp fabrics as they:

are the least demanding fibres to grow in terms of water consumption, time and pesticides. We try to avoid synthetic and cotton fabrics as we are aware of the ethical concerns of their manufacturing; but we do offer them if it is in the customers [sic] preference. We use second hand or archived dress fabrics for all tests, toiles and costumes to avoid buying raw calico (a cheap cotton material commonly used for dressmaking and not suitable to wear). We use all of our off cut fabrics to create new scrap garments or to utilise as stuffing in our Beba's [sic] or costuming. We also collect salvaged scrap materials from other seamstresses and businesses in our area. We accept all fabric donations. All garments are made in Boorloo which reduces transportation energy/waste from packaging and shipping. Most of our garments are sold locally (Volim, 2022).

Interestingly, the website previously featured this information in a rubric titled ‘sustainability statement’. However, the website was redesigned in 2022 and now features this information in the section ‘INFO & FAQ’ (Volim, 2022). Volim's website nonetheless provides a comprehensive and largely transparent resource on substantive implementation of sustainable practices. Except for naming their supplier and Chinese manufacturer, Volim states implemented measures within their DIY practice. Contrasting Nightingale, who specialises in using scrap materials for her final products, Volim, however, primarily uses these materials for the creation of test patterns. Furthermore, it is unclear how Boorloo-based production reduces transportation and packaging waste, as this location is geographically isolated from the more densely populated Australian east coast.

Nightingale's and Volim's websites demonstrate an ongoing negotiation of green pressure in the presentation of symbolic DIY environmentalism. Although access to information on environmentalist measures has drastically increased within the past two decades, Bowen (2014: 97) critically points out that audiences of corporate environmental initiatives remain in a chronically poor informational state rendering it difficult to evaluate their practical impact. A possible solution that is primarily embraced by major corporations rather than DIY projects is the use of mandatory and voluntary eco-labels that are supposed to provide an objective certification of substantial environmental impact (Prieto-Sandoval et al., 2016). Nonetheless, the growing overabundance of these labels has watered down the initial reliability of the concept, posing a significant challenge for transparency when viewed through the effects of ‘decoupling’. Decoupling occurs when organisations merely ceremonially adopt environmentalism to meet social and institutional demands while not fully implementing measures to create a substantial environmental impact (Bowen, 2014: 63, 114). Marquis and Toffel (2012) add three facets to decoupling. ‘Social image bolstering’ features the adoption of sustainability practices to enhance the reputation and distract the attention from unsustainable activities. ‘Substitution’ poses the establishment of less impactful practices to replace actions demanded by stakeholders, institutions and consumers. ‘Selective Disclosure’ is the disproportional disclosure of positive information to create an image of environmental proactivity. Bowen (2014: 93) argues that consumers are willing to pay a premium for substantive environmental improvements including the reduction of waste in packaging or products made from renewable resources. Nonetheless, the symbolic aspect of environmentalism entails that when being presented with two identical products that only differ in one having a green label, consumers are ready to pay for the symbolically greener option. Since consumers are not in a position to sufficiently evaluate the substantive environmental performance of a product, they are likely to select symbolic performance as a substitute. Consumers are thus open to be emotionally soothed by green symbolism's promise that something is being done about environmental issues without the cost of limiting their consumption of natural resources. This is the point of interest where decoupling in the form of image bolstering takes place.

An example of this is Victim-Brand, a Germany-based ² start-up enterprise founded in 2014 by Wiktor Stec in the garage of his parents where he repurposes the wood of used skateboard decks to manufacture pendants (Victim, 2022). The brand currently specialises in phone cases while also producing custom orders and recently teamed up with the German guitar manufacturer Baguley to produce an electric guitar body made from repurposed skateboards (Instagram, 2021). Considering how the company implements sustainability in their practice beyond appropriating used skateboard decks, the website's wording remains vague while frequently using the metaphor of colourfulness. For example, the company's mission statement claims that their primary concern is to motivate sustainability through the repurposing of used skateboards while using lively materials filled with memories to counteract an increasingly grey world. Furthermore, it is stated that Victim continuously works on new and sustainable products and invests in research and development for sustainable production methods and their colourful energy to realise their motto: ‘make the world a little bit brighter’ (Victim, 2022). No further information on what this research entails or what specific sustainable production methods the company currently uses is mentioned. Several enterprises such as Woby Design (2023) have emerged within the past decade that utilise the repurposing of maple plywood from used skateboard decks and indeed, this appropriation constitutes a sustainable production method. Nonetheless, many of the resulting products that also include large and intricate furniture use comparatively large amounts of epoxy resin to permanently connect the wooden plies sourced from used skateboard decks. It is necessary for these companies to provide transparency regarding their used bonding agents as the toxic nature of many of them holds the potential to counteract the entire sustainability aspect of repurposing used wood. Furthermore, Victim's website utilises a substantial number of symbolic statements that leave the impression of functioning as social image bolstering. It is necessary for Victim-Brand as well as Nightingale's account on ‘social sustainability’ to specify how sustainability aspects are implemented in research and production methods to give a more substantial impression of their practices. DIY projects such as Victim and Alice Nightingale must provide evidence in the future that their practices are fulfilling their self-description and focus their communication practice on green highlighting rather than giving in to the green pressure of using symbolic environmentalism as social image bolstering (see Walker and Wan, 2012: 232).

Conclusion

In this article, I have argued for and introduced an analytical framework that targets symbolic and substantial environmentalism within DIY alternative production, distribution and consumption circuits. To address this need, I have drawn on the works of Bowen (2014), Walker and Wan (2012), Marquis and Toffel (2012) as well as Toffler (1981) to sketch out a framework of symbolic DIY environmentalism and green pressure that provides several starting points for future research that further investigates the intricacies of green practitioner and peer pressure. The prevalence of DIY projects’ online sustainability statements gives credit to the fact that green pressure is a constantly underlying factor within contemporary DIY practice. The growing environmental challenges of the present are thus affecting both large-scale production circuits and small-scale DIY projects alike. If anything, the prevalence of green pressure demonstrates that the increasing vocational nature of DIY cultures is not only characterised by the precarity-fuelled demands for professional diversification but also a constant need for the symbolic and substantial performance of sustainability. Symbolic DIY environmentalism is here to stay, and it is necessary to shed more light on its core discourses and practices to develop solutions for the pressing environmental challenges of our times.