The Business Council on Climate Change presented a program last week on how games are inspiring ways to get people on board with sustainable behavior change. The presenters, from Blue Shield, Sabre Holdings, SunPower and RideSpring, all had great stories to tell about how their interactive contests are inspiring people to increase their environmental efforts, get healthier, carpool more, or boost their store of knowledge about solar power.

Goals for these programs vary: improve employee and customer health (Blue Shield), boost employees’ sustainability behavior and knowledge (Sabre), increase market awareness and sales (SunPower), and expand knowledge and use of alternative transit and ridesharing among commuters (RideShare). (More info and links to programs are at the BC3 site.)

The experiences of all four reinforce what research has been telling us all along about getting people to act more responsibly in all kinds of arenas.

Make it relevant. Sabre’s Leilani Latimer noted that employees didn’t care about environmental actions at home—they wanted to know what they could do at work. Blue Shield’s Bryce Williams had similar experiences with his program.

Don’t chastise. Admonishing people for bad behavior or not fulfilling a goal almost never gets results, at least in the long term.

Go team. Competition gets intense in the Sabre and Blue Shield programs, in which participant teams compete by performing environmentally friendly or healthy behaviors. The actions are recorded and tracked online.

Peer pressure works, even if you’re not in high school. Team members pulled their own weight, and everyone reported that knowing what everyone else was doing meant people weren’t likely to cheat. Several people noted that fame—for instance, seeing your name in a company e-mail announcing winners—is a motivator.

Prizes work (if they’re coveted). Paul McGrath of RideSpring swore by regular prizes (his programs provide them via random drawings), as long as they’re good ones.

Prizes don’t work (if they’re eh). Sabre’s program offers prizes to workgroups, but they’re so small that they’re not the main motivator, said Latimer.

Make it easy. No one will do anything if it’s too complicated, time consuming or difficult. All these programs feature easy online access and simple steps.

More evidence that “save the planet” is bad messaging: Suzanne Shelton of the Shelton Group reports that her firm’s recent national survey of people identified as green buyers found six myths about green “consumers,” including that their top concern is the environment and that their main motivation when reducing energy use is to “save the planet.” The stat there: “When asked the most important reason to reduce energy consumption, 73 percent chose ‘to reduce my bills/control costs’ and only 26 percent chose ‘to lessen my impact on the environment.’”

This shouldn’t really be surprising. A growing body of research suggests that we’re hardwired to focus on the immediate and undervalue future benefits. Marketing gurus have been hammering home for decades the need to answer the key buyer question, “What’s in it for me?” And really, how would you expect people who are treated and see themselves as “consumers” to behave? (A topic I ranted on recently.)

Yet “save the planet” and its variations continue to appear in marketing and advertising by sophisticated companies and nonprofits. Either they believe there are more treehuggers out there than there are; they’re committed environmentalists themselves who can’t believe that everyone else won’t see the light when it’s pointed out to them (the classic error of mistaking yourself for your market); or they just want to paint themselves as green by communicating that they think saving the planet is a good idea. Regardless, it’s time for a new pitch.

I like to work myself into a good froth before posting one of an occasional series of rants on words and phrases that make me want to spit nails. And I’m finally there on consumer, used to identify a person or people (as opposed to business jargon for a market sector).

In fact, I’ve stewed over this one so long others have beat me to it (see Joseph Romm in Grist). But consumer deserves a pile-on. As in, “Consumers value convenience above all else.”

Well yes, consumers would. But would citizens? Parents? Community members? Patriots? Environmentalists/sports fans/gardeners/name your identity here? The use of the word “consumers” to identify people at all times in all contexts encourages us to think of ourselves—and each other—as nothing more than engines of consumption. It frames our view on problems and solutions in a way that narrows the perspective to purely personal concerns (often amounting to unexamined habits) and positions us as passive recipients of whatever’s out there—we can accept or reject, but not direct.

A sentence like “Consumers care more about perceived effectiveness and than about exposing their household to hazardous chemicals” will be accepted as a truism. Yeah, consumers are like that. Would the sentence “Parents care more about perceived effectiveness and than about exposing their household to hazardous chemicals” seem quite as commonsensical? I’m going to say no.

I’m also going to take a vow: I will never again use the word consumer to refer to a person or people. (I admit it, I’ve done it.) And at the risk of sounding preachy, I think everyone who writes or talks about sustainability issues should do the same. The words we use to describe things affect how we see them. And even when we’re shopping—perhaps especially when we’re shopping—we need to stop seeing ourselves as simply creatures who buy things.