Consumers say they want sustainability. So why don’t their wallets show it?

Jane Abernethy, chief sustainability officer at office furniture company Humanscale, thought she was onto a surefire winner. The company had been fielding a rising number of questions about a takeback program—customers wanted to know how they could sustainably dispose of products that had reached the end of their lives. So, reasonably enough, she launched a program.

They ran it for years and yet only received one call from a customer asking them to take back products. Abernethy was disappointed by the lack of interest in a sustainability offering that customers had said they wanted. She’s not alone: There’s a persistent gap between people’s stated enthusiasm for environmentally sustainable goods, and their actual purchasing behavior of those goods.

In a 2020 McKinsey U.S. consumer sentiment survey, more than 60% of respondents said they’d pay more for a product with sustainable packaging. A recent study by NielsenIQ found that 78% of U.S. consumers say a sustainable lifestyle is important to them. Yet, ask any CPG executive if this matches actual sales figures for these products and services. Few organizations are as publicly frank as Humanscale about their green failures, but, in private, many will admit that they’re perplexed by this gap between people’s stated beliefs and their actions. As a result, some companies are trying to help close this gap between what people say they want to do on climate and what they actually do.

Guilt and logic—the false prophets

Few organizations still rely on guilt to drive sustainable behavior change. People are, for the most part, aware of the immediate and growing impact of climate change. The problem is that few people are moved to action by guilt. The only thing guilt ever persuaded anyone to buy was a gym membership—and look how long they last.

Far too many organizations still rely on logic. They detail their latest technological innovations. They champion qualifications and pledges. They bombard people with statistics. They believe that if they make the case clearly and rationally enough people will act. They’re wrong. All of this logic matters in marketing as much as product claims do—it works in some categories and with some people, but generally they’re far less effective than emotional appeal.

Marketers have long known that emotion drives consumer action, but for some reason they’ve forgotten this when it comes to sustainability. A recent study by Accenture Song concluded that we need to stop asking how we can make humans more sustainable, and start asking how we make sustainability more human.

Making sustainability more human

There are many ways organizations can bring sustainability into people’s lives, and some leaders are already showing the path. Perhaps most famously, Patagonia told us not to buy its jacket. It was shocking, funny, and wildly successful.

But there are many more recent examples, too. According to climate action NGO WRAP, 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions can only be tackled by changing the way we make and consume products and food. Catherine David, director of Collaboration and Change at WRAP, notes that 4.5 million tonnes of food goes to waste in people’s homes each year. Much of this is due to incorrect fridge temperatures, which cause the food to spoil faster.

So, in conjunction with WRAP’s Food Waste Action Week, Hellmann’s created a ‘smart jar’ featuring thermochromic ink that changes color at the correct temperature. Crucially, the message was around the average cost of food waste to a family—£780 a year (about $950)—caused by having the fridge at the wrong temperature. With no paid media, the campaign reached 939 million people in 48 hours, with 80% of people reporting to Hellmann’s that they had changed their behavior as a result of having the jar in their fridges.

Or look at the work eBay is doing to reduce unnecessary production and consumption in the sneaker market. A growing number of sneakers are bought for investment rather than to be worn, with bots and resellers often landing the best deals. eBay’s Wear ‘Em Out Store was the first sneaker store to reward people with a lower price for wearing their shoes as soon as they purchased them, straight out of the store.

This isn’t marketers trying to yoke people to a sustainability agenda. It’s marketers finding clever ways to ally existing desires and actions with that agenda. Rather than telling people they can’t have what they want, and they need a green alternative, this is giving people what they want and sealing the deal by pointing out that it’s also a sustainable choice.

Marketing’s fresh mission

This is a fundamental rethink for many marketers. Yet it may prove to be the remaking of the profession. For its first 100 years, marketing existed to deliver increasing returns to shareholders. It was single-minded in its pursuit, and it became ruthlessly effective at it, creating campaigns that would make us laugh, cry, love, fear, and ultimately buy.

It still needs to evoke those emotions—but in service of a far greater goal than sales and share prices. Now it needs to engage people’s emotions in order to translate their green intentions into green purchases.

Jos Harrison is the Global Head of Brand Experience & Design at Reckitt.