For my final semester in the Master of Sustainable Practice at RMIT, I'm looking into if and how the fashion and mainstream press help communicate the message of sustainable consumption.Much of my work involves looking at reasons why or why not "the system" will support or encourage us to move to more sustainable models of consumption. The media has been the point of a great deal of investigation, as it seems to be an almost insurmountable obstacle to us truly understanding the impacts of our current levels of consumption.

In a recent discussion with my class mates, I raised the issue of just how at odds the message of sustainable consumption (ie, consume less) is with the mainstream media business model that is driven my advertising revenue, which is dependent on sales.

This has come up in conversations many times of late, and we've seen the emergence of new media models like The Conversation, which is not driven by advertising sales, and is instead funded by a group of universities.

I anticipate that I will post much more on this in the coming weeks as I finalise my article for assessment. In the meantime though, I'd love to hear of any example of the mainstream press and fashion media spreading the sustainable consumption message.

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