This presentation is seeking to contribute to the debates on the implications of an ageing population on the environment through an understanding of the everyday, but largely invisible and embedded, consumption practices of grocery shopping by ‘baby boomers’ as they move into and through retirement.

1. Consumption in retirement: implications for environmental
sustainability
Susan Venn and Kate Burningham
Centre for Environmental Strategy
University of Surrey
Guildford
GU2 7XH
www.somnia.surrey.ac.uk

2. Outline
 ELiCiT project: Exploring lifestyle changes in transition
 Current and competing discourses on consumption in
later life – ‘baby boomers’
 Explored through grocery shopping practices
 Thrift/frugality
 Caring roles and identities
 Potential environmental implications
 Conclusions

3. ELiCiT: Exploring lifestyle changes
in transition
 ‘Moments of change’ hypothesis
 Explore aspects of continuity and change through
lifecourse transitions
 Becoming a first-time parent
 Retiring
 Explore expectations of changes to lifestyles
 Do considerations of sustainability inform any
changes
 Delineate assumptions about normal and
appropriate retirement (and parenting)

4. Sample:
 80 people recruited from four locations
 London boroughs
 Accessible rural Scotland (Fife)
 Kent
 Lancashire towns (Morecambe and Lancaster)
 10 about to retire and 10 about to start a family in each location
 Different SEG/gender
Interviews:
 Three semi-structured interviews
 Approximately 8 months between interviews.
 Exploring recent and current lifestyle, changes that take place, and
reflections on aspects of change
Methods

5.  Final interview - reflect on what they understand by ‘a sustainable
lifestyle’
 Degree to which their lifestyles can be considered sustainable
 What are the influences on how they live and consume
Daily journals
 following each interview, 7 day reflective journal
 sent to respondent prior to follow up interviews to use as discussion point
Questionnaires
 following first and final interview, lifestyle and values questionnaire
Methods

6. The ‘Boomers’ – competing discourses
 ‘Boomers’ (born 1946-1964)
 Cohort reaching retirement are unique
 Active in a ‘cultural field’ shaped by
 Austerity of parents’ generation
 Exposure to consumerism of 1960/70s
 Increased job security and access to wealth
 Agentic and active ‘third age’ characterised by increasing
consumption
“Over 60s plan to ‘spend, spend, spend’ during retirement – finds
survey by McCarthy & Stone Money” April 2013

7.  Without reference or deference to future
generations
 Offering a niche market (grey consumers, silver
surfers)
 Housing wealth
 Consumer orientated, individualistic and less family
orientated
 Implications for the environment largely ignored
 Large carbon footprint (global travel/leisure
activities)
The ‘Boomers’ – current rhetoric and
competing discourses

8.  Politically, environmentally and culturally active
 Also known as the ‘Sandwich generation’
 Caring - elderly relatives, children/grandchildren
 Largely unpaid
 Evidence for declining consumption in retirement
 Changes to shopping practices
 Refocusing of consumption to ‘others’
 Engagement with community
 Criticisms ignore heterogeneity, and create
intergenerational conflict
 20% under 25 and over 65 in poverty
The ‘Boomers’ – current rhetoric and
competing discourses

9.  ‘Boomers’:
 Spending in retirement
 Avoiding consumption
Competing discourses
 Two time bombs
 ‘Agequake’
 Climate change
 Explore through grocery shopping practices
Ageing and Environmental issues rarely intersect
 ‘boomers’ have highest carbon footprint
 Vulnerable/at risk to extreme weather conditions

10.  Time as a resource
 Before retirement
 Shopping more ad hoc, en route, time constrained
 Following retirement
 Shopping for bargains
 Carefully, judiciously and thriftily
Changing practices
 Shopping practices reveal enactment of
 Thrift = spending to save and saving to spend
 Frugality = ‘careful consumption and the avoidance of waste’ (Evans
2009)
Mr Average – me – will do what’s convenient, so I do the shopping either on the way back
from golf with my list or I’ll do it on the way back from school.’ Derek

11.  Requires skills and knowledge about shopping and cooking
 Bargain hunting within shop
 BOGOF, reduced goods section
 Bargain hunting across shops
 Potentially leading to over buying/hoarding
 Enabling re-acquaintance with local shops and area
Thrift – consuming more
“I once had a cupboard full of toilet rolls because they were on a very good
offer (laughter).” Theresa
‘I’ve gone to the Co-Op, and because the Co-Op’s got a flyer, Utterly Butterly for a £1,
Heinz tomato sauce is a £1, I’ve gone in there, spent about 3 or 4 quid. Then I’ve taken
the dogs to the park on the way from the Co-Op on the way home, and then I’ve gone
off to Lidl’s and I bought sugar, bacon, because they’re on the offers, and I’ve come
back, so today I spent about £9 but I got bag loads.’ Adrian

12.  Growing own vegetables
 Batch baking and freezing (of bulk purchases)
 Using everything up, avoiding waste
 Recycling waste
Frugality – avoiding waste
‘we don’t waste stuff.. that’s the way we are’ Derek

13.  Choices rooted in and explained through parental upbringing and
values
 Not necessarily based on financial status
Thrift/frugality – parental values
“I think that post-war era, being post-war babies – that had a lot of
influence on our parents and how they brought us up. You know, waste
not, want not, was the main sort of phrase in our household really you
know” Sally

14.  ‘Boomers’ situate themselves
 Between austerity and thrift/frugality of parents and
 ‘Time for me’, ‘spend’ now
 Is revealed in narratives
 But largely found parental values remain strongest even in
face of transitions and competing demands
Bridging identities (Leach et al)
‘Kids are terrible consumers, they think nothing of spending money like
[having] cake and coffee out’ Kenneth
‘Save energy when you can – all the time. Try not to waste food – all the
time. Got my dad’s habit there, always leave an empty plate”’ Andrew

15.  Shopping embedded within household context and relationships
 Encompasses aspects of care
 Shopping as act of love (Miller 1998)
 Sentient activity (Mason 1996)
 Caring invokes competing moral rules (Finch and Mason 1993)
 Largely undertaken by women
 In terms of shopping is manifest in form of ‘treating’
 ‘Moment’ of treat overrides desire to be thrifty
Caring roles and identities
“Morality in everyday life is constantly negotiated in relation to particular
situations, social conditions, the specific history of social relationships and
in the context of other often competing moral claims and social norms”

16. Caring roles and identities - treat
 Influenced by changing household composition
 Treating
 Healthier food options OR unhealthy options
 Treats for other family members (returning children/grandchildren)
 Also treats for self (reward)
 At shops normally out of usual ‘repertoire’ , M&S, Waitrose
‘We have got a Londis, they are quite cheap. But if I really fancy something
nice to eat then I go up to Marks and Spencer’s’. (Grace)

17. Caring roles and identities - Gender
 Changing of traditional gendered roles following retirement
 Men became more engaged with shopping and cooking
 To demonstrate skills of bargain awareness and prices
 Treating
 Depends on power balance within couples
 Largely reflecting shifting domains of power within
household – reasserting ‘work role’ since giving up working
‘I suppose to a degree we’re saving a little bit because I'm getting bargains,
but then I see something that I think “oh [wife] would like that”, so I buy that
which I wouldn’t normally do or we wouldn’t normally have done.’ Jerry

18.  Difficult to assess influence of thrift/frugality/caring in
sustainability terms
 Saving money to continue spending on global travel
 Saving money to pass to children (generativity)
 Bargain shopping over and above needs - hoarding
 More time means longer distances travelled to find a bargain
 Shopping less overall, reduced meat consumption
 Shopping less overall at local shops
 Buying from local shops
 (Re)engagement with home baking and cooking (but includes unusual
and non-seasonal produce)
Contradictions and environmental
implications

19. Multiple cascading transitions
 Moving home
 Fluctuating retirement status
 Changing relationships
 Partners
 Broader family and friendship relations
 Health issues
 Seasonality of interviews
 Recession
 All of which potentially ‘disrupt’ and influence everyday
practices

20.  Shopping and cooking practices (mostly) change through transition to
retirement
 Narratives reveal tensions between parental upbringing and aspirations to
spend/travel , but practices largely reflect upbringing
 Shopping takes place within a household context where caring
responsibilities significantly influence consumption choices
 Changes have both positive and negative environmental implications
 Changes also influenced by multiple transitions
 Questions single ‘moments of change’ hypothesis
 Retirement itself is a fluid and long lasting transition
 Given that, sustainability of any positive changes are unclear….
Conclusions

21. Acknowledgements
This research is supported by :
Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs)
The Scottish Government
The ESRC (Economics and Social Research Council)
July 2010 - August 2013
s.venn@surrey.ac.uk