transactions. And most companies, for their part, have recoiled from labelling of any sort as a limitation on their managerial prerogativesas demonstrated in recent struggles over the labelling of genetically-modified foods. There are a number of factors involved herewhich would be too much to explore exhaustively in this paper. But a very basic one, which has great relevance to creating new forms of green consumerism for building materials, is the central role of ignorance in the modern consumer (or waste) economy. This is a topic discussed in my previous book and by writers such as Robin Murray (1993), who argues that the postwar Fordist economy depended as much on the de-skilling of consumers as on its wellrecognized de-skilling of mass production workers. The structural crisis of effective demand which was at the heart of the Great Depression has shaped the cultural, educational and media environments of late capitalism, prioritizing economic growth and undifferentiated consumption above everything else. Advertising has penetrated almost every area of culture, and most uses of information in popular culture are in some way connected to selling. In spite of its positive potential, even the Internet has become a means of distributing ignorance and half-truths, encouraging and confusing consumers more than ever. There have been a number of narrow academic studies in the past decade examining why consumers have not embraced green consumption in a bigger way. Almost all of these studies psychologize consumers, oblivious to the powerful institutional forces encouraging blind consumption and deliberately distributing misinformation. They miss the fact that, in many respects, consumer cynicism is an understandable reaction to an economy of manipulation and mindlessness.