A report on the trend of sustainability among young professionals was published by Bottledream, a social enterprise and a B corporation. The research team used a qualitative method, looking at more than 1,000 people who they engaged with over the past eight years and hoping to tease out the drive behind the increasing awareness of sustainability among these young people.
The research team found that the views these people hold regarding sustainability seem to be a collection of ideas, including “care for durable quality”, “perspectives from system-thinking”, “genuine pursuit of the public interest” and “daily actions rather than lofty concepts”. It was found that three/fourths of this population is male, and most of them live in key cities, especially Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The report categorizes the population into five groups: the “best-out-of-waste-type”, the “community type”, the “geeky type”, the “share-economy type”, and the “less-but-better type”.
The research team discovered that the drive toward sustainable living comes from a sense of dissatisfaction toward the rapid-paced and unhealthy modern lifestyle. The trend towards such a pursuit is self-motivated within these individuals, and thus bottom-up within the society.
