The good news is that industrialized nations are recycling more. The bad news is that they are wasting more as well. In most places, recycling can't keep up with higher and higher consumption rates. The problem is that capitalism creates hardened consumers, so even if many buy green, they still buy too much.

The situation is seen as unsustainable by many economists. If everyone in the world consumed like North Americans, for example, we would need the collective resources of five planet Earths, according to a World Wildlife Fund assessment.

Improving recycling will help, but we need to work out pretty rapidly how to do more with less and how to use resources in general far more efficiently than we are at present,"

eattie and Ben Shaw of the Policy Studies Institute looked at over-consumption and effective ways to reduce it. Peattie's seemingly heretical solution is to use marketing—the Pied Piper of capitalism—to get people to stop buying.