Consumers remain eager to live sustainably despite systemic barriers
Consumers haven’t given up on sustainability. In fact, 70% of respondents across markets want to live more sustainably, according to Bain’s 2025 ESG Survey. What that means for businesses is simple: there’s massive, untapped demand. The challenge isn’t motivation. It’s friction, barriers like cost, poor product access, and unclear value. Despite economic pressure, 32% of consumers already practice six or more sustainable habits daily. We’re seeing consistent behavior here. People are actively looking for options that reduce waste, improve efficiency, and align with their values.
What matters now is how companies respond. In fast-growing markets like China, Indonesia, and Brazil, consumers are especially motivated. These markets are not fringe outliers; they’re increasingly influencing global consumption trends. The opportunity is both global and scalable.
Here’s the reality, consumers are not asking for perfection. They’re asking for simplicity, transparency, and meaningful value alignment. You don’t have to guess what people want; you already have the signal, loud and clear. If your product lineup or business model doesn’t reduce friction for sustainable adoption, you’re leaving both revenue and long-term relevance on the table.
C-suite leaders need to tackle this head-on. Design your offerings around clear incentives: affordable cost, trustworthy performance, and straightforward sustainability. Consumers want to choose responsibly. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.
Older generations, particularly baby boomers, are unexpectedly leading the adoption of sustainable habits
Sustainability isn’t only Gen Z’s domain. In fact, baby boomers are outpacing their younger counterparts when it comes to adopting new sustainable habits. Over the last three years, boomers, people typically seen as set in their ways, have shown the biggest growth in green lifestyle changes. That includes big-ticket changes like installing solar panels at home.
Why? It comes down to capacity. They usually have more financial flexibility. They’re at a life stage where they can make more deliberate, longer-term investments. They aren’t chasing short-term gains, they’re optimizing life quality and asset value.
This isn’t anecdotal. It’s backed by data from Bain’s multiyear survey across 14,000+ global respondents. Baby boomers have added more sustainable behaviors than Gen Z, consistently. C-suite executives should stop focusing only on the youth demographic and start paying attention to the purpose-driven purchasing power of older generations.
There’s unrealized value here. Don’t write off older consumers as late adopters, they’re proving they can lead. Now’s the time to develop sustainability solutions that are premium in experience but grounded in practicality. Build tools, services, and messages that respect their experience and meet their standards. Ignore this group, and you’ll miss one of the most capable segments driving durable market growth in sustainability.
High costs and limited accessibility are the primary obstacles for consumers adopting sustainable products
Cost is the ceiling for sustainability adoption right now. Nearly half of all global consumers, 47%, according to Bain’s 2025 ESG Survey, say sustainable living is just too expensive. That’s a clear and measurable problem. The demand exists, but it’s locked behind a price wall. And it’s not just about price, it’s also about availability. Forty-two percent of consumers say they’d buy more sustainable products if they were offered locally. This isn’t a debate over intention. It’s logistics and economics.
In developed markets like the U.S., U.K., and Italy, cost pressures are especially noticeable. People are being asked to pay more for a product that may not perform better, may not be available where they shop, and often lacks clear labeling. That’s a burden, and it leads to drop-offs in purchasing behavior, even among those who want to do the right thing.
Decision-makers should internalize this: solving for sustainability isn’t just an ESG checkbox, it’s a market design problem. Consumers shouldn’t have to choose between affordability and responsibility. They’re expecting product ecosystems that meet both demands. That means optimizing your supply chain, improving last-mile access, and enhancing the economics at scale, without downgrading product quality.
If price and access are not addressed from the business side, the conversation around consumer responsibility becomes noise. Consumers are ready to follow through, they’re not looking for excuses. It’s now up to companies to eliminate what’s holding them back.
Consumer behavior is evolving towards sustainability, but companies are lagging in meeting these expectations
Consumers have already moved. They’re buying fewer disposable goods, eating less meat and dairy, and purchasing more secondhand items. This behavior isn’t marginal, it’s backed by hard data. Bain’s 2025 ESG Survey found that 38% of consumers are buying fewer disposable products, 21% are cutting back on meat and dairy, and nearly 1 in 5 is shifting toward secondhand purchases. These are not fad behaviors. They’re deliberate and measured responses to friction in the market.
Meanwhile, companies are still operating with outdated assumptions, chief among them that consumers won’t pay more for sustainability. That assumption is wrong. In the U.S., consumers are willing to pay up to a 13% premium for sustainable products. Unfortunately, the average market premium is sitting closer to 28%, according to New York University’s research. That’s a signal of poor product-market fit, driven by internal inertia, not consumer apathy.
If you continue waiting for “perfect consumer readiness,” you’ll be outpaced by those who stopped blaming their customers and started redesigning their models. Your job as a leader is to remove the lag between consumer behavior and market offerings. That means launching products that hit the acceptable price-performance threshold and investing in systemic changes, not band-aid campaigns.
Consumer evolution doesn’t wait for quarterly planning cycles. It’s already happening in real time. Now is your window to align operations with what the market has already embraced. Don’t waste it.
Innovation must clarify and eliminate trade-offs between price, performance, and sustainability
Consumers are done making unnecessary compromises. They want sustainable products that work well, look good, and don’t cost more than they should. That’s a fair ask, and frankly, entirely achievable. Yet in many sectors, companies are still offering products that force trade-offs. They’re asking people to choose between price and performance if they want something more sustainable. That model isn’t sustainable, economically or ethically.
According to Bain’s 2025 ESG Survey, 63% of consumers say they’d buy more sustainable products if those products were more affordable. Add to that: nearly half of all respondents feel sustainable living costs more. That perception used to vary by country, but now it’s consistent across the board. Consumers aren’t rejecting sustainability, they’re rejecting the friction it creates when it’s poorly integrated with value.
The answer isn’t minor adjustments. Incremental updates won’t hit the cost-performance trifecta people are expecting. Breakthrough innovation is what’s required. The kind that eliminates trade-offs entirely, not just blurs them. Look at what’s happening with battery electric vehicles (BEVs). They’re not niche anymore. Forty-eight percent of Chinese consumers now say BEVs are their preferred option. For millennials and Gen Z globally, 39% and 34% respectively see BEVs as viable replacements for diesel and petrol-powered cars.
This is what innovation at real scale looks like. And it’s replicable. We’ve seen it in other categories, LED lighting, refillable packaging, plant-based milks. These shifts happen when products deliver on all key dimensions without needing a justification. Executives should be prioritizing R&D with clear objectives: no compromise on cost, performance, or experience.
Get your teams aligned on this. If you’re still treating sustainability as a nice-to-have, you’re already behind. Consumers expect fully integrated solutions, and the companies delivering them first will own loyalty, margins, and category relevance.
Leveraging technology is key to overcoming consumer confusion about sustainable options
Consumers want to make smart, sustainable choices. But they’re blocked by a flood of inconsistent labels, confusing score systems, and partial truths. This barrier has become one of the biggest frustrations for well-intentioned consumers. According to Bain’s 2025 data, 44% of respondents now view confusing or contradictory sustainability information as a bigger problem than even price, surpassing it for the first time.
This is the gap that tech can close. Over 60% of people feel confident identifying sustainable options, but when you dig deeper, most struggle to assess something as fundamental as the carbon impact of daily activities. And that’s where generative AI has started to shift the calculus. More than half of users are now tapping tools like ChatGPT to guide them in making more sustainable choices. Not just for curiosity, but for actionable guidance.
This is especially evident in fast-growing markets such as Indonesia (82%), the UAE (74%), and China (65%)—where adoption of AI for environmental decision-making is highest. Consumers are turning to algorithms because brands are still unreliable narrators. And when AI platforms decide what gets recommended, transparency and data quality become serious business priorities.
Executives should take this seriously. If your product data isn’t accurate, accessible, and clearly verified, you’re not just losing consumer trust, you’re falling out of machine recommendation cycles. AI feeds on clarity, not vague marketing claims. Your sustainability credentials need to be hard-coded into your customer touchpoints. That means transparency at the label level, certification at the backend, and frictionless access to information across platforms.
You win by being trusted, by humans and algorithms. And trust is built on visible, verifiable product logic, not on broad claims. Get your data sorted. Your customers, and the machines advising them, are already watching.
Cross-functional collaboration within companies is essential for breakthrough sustainability initiatives
Right now, most sustainability efforts are fragmented. Teams work in silos, marketing pushing one message, product teams solving different problems, supply chain operating on outdated assumptions. That kind of model doesn’t scale. It creates internal bottlenecks that prevent innovation from reaching the market at the speed and relevance sustainability demands.
Consumers have made it clear they’re not waiting. Bain’s 2025 ESG Survey shows that 38% are already buying fewer disposable goods, 21% are actively reducing meat and dairy consumption, and nearly 20% are purchasing secondhand items. This behavior signals a growing shift from passive optimism to active disillusionment. Consumers aren’t just hoping companies figure it out, they’re changing their own behavior, even if that means buying less.
If you’re leading an organization, this should register as a wake-up call. Meeting these expectations requires real coordination. Product innovation can’t happen without marketing alignment. Supply chain decisions must be informed by sustainability targets and customer insights. And tech needs to drive both data integrity and real-time feedback loops. Compliance and ESG reporting don’t solve this. Cross-functional execution does.
What C-suite leaders must do is instigate structural change. That means empowering integrated teams with shared goals around affordability, performance, and sustainability. Governance needs to shift from occasional sustainability reviews to embedded KPIs across departments. Without this operational integration, most companies will underdeliver, while customers move toward competitors who took the challenge seriously.
Don’t think in campaigns. Think in systems, and act across departments with precision. This is where lasting differentiation begins.
Government policy support is crucial to scaling sustainable solutions across markets
Corporate action can go far. But governments shape the terrain. Policy sets the speed limits and defines what’s economically viable at scale. Without policy alignment, many sustainable innovations stall out before they can reach mainstream adoption. And consumers are already aware of this dynamic. Bain’s 2025 ESG Survey shows that 42% of respondents believe stronger regulations are needed to support sustainable progress, while 37% say subsidies would directly influence their purchasing ability.
Business leaders can’t afford to ignore this. If your operating environment penalizes sustainability economically, or lacks basic regulatory support, the business case becomes weaker, even if consumer demand is high. That’s where public-private collaboration becomes essential. Not for PR purposes, but for enabling real cost parity. The regulatory framework can make or break the economics of innovation.
Examples already exist. The U.K.’s plastic packaging tax reshaped packaging investment. Japan’s infrastructure supporting refill systems has helped L’Oréal bring high-margin sustainable cosmetics to market without sacrificing profitability. These aren’t isolated case studies, they’re proof that policy-backed ecosystems accelerate business transformation.
If you want scale, you need alignment. Boards and executives should actively advocate smarter regulation, not just to avoid penalties, but to crowd in investment, improve product economics, and de-risk innovation timelines. Fighting for subsidies, infrastructure, and science-based categorization isn’t political, it’s strategic.
Smart companies don’t just adapt to regulation. They help shape it. If sustainability is core to your business objectives, policy engagement needs to become core to your business strategy.
Recap
Consumers have already moved. They’re making changes. They’re cutting back on waste, choosing smarter alternatives, and expecting businesses to do the same, without excuses. The old belief that people won’t pay, won’t change, or don’t care is outdated. The problem isn’t interest or intention. It’s friction, and that’s something you can control.
If affordability, access, and clarity are the barriers, then it’s on leadership to remove them. That happens through integrated innovation, smarter use of technology, and stronger alignment with policy. It doesn’t happen through siloed initiatives or incremental tweaks.
There’s a clear competitive edge here, win the trust of a fast-growing, motivated market, and you’ll create long-term brand loyalty, resilience, and relevance. Sit still, and you risk watching that loyalty shift elsewhere.
As an executive, your opportunity is real and measurable. The only question is whether your organization is structured and bold enough to act on it.
