Five reasons to feel optimistic about sustainability (and how to get us unstuck)

I’m fresh off of the annual Sustainable Brands conference, where I facilitated two different market insights sessions. This included nine different decks that came at the same general questions in different ways: 

• Do consumers and business buyers still care about sustainability and expect the companies they buy from to deliver it? 
• What do we need to say to get them to buy more sustainable products? 
• Will they pay more for greener products? 
• Are greener products actually selling? 
• What about the broader cultural context … how is that driving or diminishing the interest in buying greener products? 
• What’s in the way of companies doing more in sustainability? 

The top five lessons I learned from my experience at SB’26 double as reasons to feel optimistic about sustainability: 

1. Sustainability has not fallen off a cliff.  

• Our ongoing Pulse data says 31% of people in America can name a brand they have purchased — or not purchased — because of the environmental or social record of the manufacturer. That’s a 7% increase since 2012. 
• Globescan’s global data reveals that 56% of people claim they have purchased a sustainable product in the last 30 days, up from 50% the year before. Their data also shows that health is the current unlock (we’ve seen this in our data, too): 65% of people are interested in becoming healthier and more sustainable, while only 14% just want to become healthier and only 7% just want to become more sustainable.

2. Greenhushing is still not a good strategy. 

• Globescan’s Healthy & Sustainable Living study clearly shows that the number of consumers who recall hearing from brands about sustainability has declined over the last three years. Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation data does as well, showing that only 26% of people agree they’ve heard from brands about their positive environmental impact. And 50% of people assume brands are hiding something when they DON’T communicate about sustainability. 

3. You must communicate in a non-polarizing way. 

• REVOLT shared testing that revealed in almost every case across demographics and countries, language that uses values-centric framing outperforms language that uses activist framing. For example, “All workers receiving a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” outperforms “A fair minimum wage of $15/hour across America.” Words like “family, love, safe” and “belonging” are better received than words like “justice, green, fighting” and “planet.” 

4. Sustainability can absolutely command a higher price point and is driving market share (but it varies by category). 

• EcoFocus’ research found that a sustainable cup of coffee is still acceptable at a 13% price premium for 31% of the population; but only 21% are willing to pay a 20% price premium for a more sustainable pair of jeans. 
• NYU Stern’s Center for Sustainable Business has been tracking market share for products marketed as sustainable. In 2013, sustainability-marketed products claimed 14.6% market share in the 36 categories studied; in 2025, that number clocked in at 25.4%. Further, products marketed as more sustainable have grown five times faster than conventionally-marketed products and have driven nearly half of market growth since 2013. Despite the research saying that consumers will pay more, price is the stated barrier for even more growth of products marketed as more sustainable. 

5. This is all playing out in a shifting cultural context. 

• According to SB’s Good Life research, conducted this year by FIIN Partners, Americans are increasingly prioritizing stability over status and 79% believe that achieving the “Good Life” is achievable. Further, 74% are looking to brands to help them learn how to live lives that are better for themselves and the planet. 

Together, these research decks make a hell of a business case for sustainability. So why aren’t companies doing more? Why aren’t they using sustainability as the basis for all product innovation, shifting entire product portfolios and building brands with sustainability as a key piece of the value proposition? 

In ERM MCA’s B2B Pulse research we learned that buyers believe suppliers with a strong sustainability platform are better run companies, they have broken a tie between two suppliers based on sustainability and have paid more for the more sustainable option. Kantar’s research says 88% of CEOs agree the business case for sustainability is stronger today than it was five years ago, and they agree that sustainability is a source of innovation and competitive advantage. 

So, again, why aren’t we seeing more wholesale change and transformation in the way companies do things and in the products we buy? 

According to Kantar, we don’t need more ambition, we need more integration. Sustainability is often siloed inside companies, and marketing and sustainability aren’t on the same page — only 54% of marketers see sustainability as a driver of brand reputation and, worse, only 38% see it as a driver of revenue growth. Kantar’s advice is to spread the sustainability functions across all a company’s functions, embedding people to create shared ownership among departments. 

According to Pam Alabaster’s latest research into the shifting role of the CSO, people in this role need to develop more commercial fluency and a deeper understanding of systems thinking. The role of the CSO needs to be redesigned. 

The next time you hear someone in your organization say, “consumers don’t really care about sustainability,” take that as a cue to work on a redesign of sustainability in your organization. And share the piles of research I’ve referenced here to prove them wrong.