The role of brands in driving more sustainable choices
What incentives do consumers require?
While macro-economic factors shape overall engagement, translating good intentions into FMCG purchasing means brands need to create compelling options that make sustainable choices easy and attractive.
The bad news is that distrust in companies remains high. Most people (60%) feel that companies only care about profits and use eco-messages as another marketing tool. Only 20% globally strongly believe they can make a difference through the actions and choices they make.
Governments, retailers and brands directly influence plastic reduction through their product offerings and incentives. Government-imposed fees on single-use bags, for example, have successfully encouraged more people to bring reusable totes – though the surge in tote ownership now creates waste concerns of its own.
Similarly, brands have promoted reusable water containers, with adoption driven not only by cost savings but also by their emergence as lifestyle symbols, with brands like Chilly’s and Stanley turning them into sought-after items. As a result, common actions like bringing reusable bags (74%) and refillable bottles (62%) – both of which save money – remained stable this year.
The encouraging news is that most people are willing to show some flexibility when it comes to greener choices. Globally, only 11% won’t accept any trade-offs in their products or habits – rising to 27% in the US – while the vast majority, 89%, are more willing to be flexible.
This flexibility, however, is not uniform, and consumers are least flexible when it comes to price – just 10% would accept a higher price. The big challenge for brands is to disrupt and change aspects of their products, packaging or distribution that resonate with consumers, in a scenario where there is little consensus on the accepted trade-offs.
The most common area of agreement globally was around bringing your own packaging (49%), a habit that many have already acquired in places where people are encouraged to bring their own bags to stores. Another example is paying a small paying a deposit, a small amount paid when buying a drink in a can or bottle (28%), refunded when it’s returned, to cut litter and boost recycling. European consumers boosted this alternative in countries where it is already well established. This shows an interesting connection between convenience and money saving. The implication is that brands should be looking for the win-win for sustainability, but also in bringing savings or making life easier.
When we look at a zero-waste activity, such as drinking tap water, the primary drivers for doing that were convenience (53.8%) and price (48.6%). Excess packaging was also a significant factor for rejecting bottled water for nearly four in 10 respondents (39.5%). Better taste was the top driver for choosing bottled water (39%).
The downside for brands is that paying a higher price – often the preferred option for manufacturers facing increased costs for more sustainable materials and ingredients – was the option least acceptable to consumers. When doing so, brands need to justify and prove to consumers the value add not only with the sustainable claims, but with attributes that resonate in the product category.
Luckily, there are plenty of good examples of brands doing so:
Wagh Bakri Tea shows that sustainability in India’s tea industry goes beyond certifications by focusing on meaningful benefits for people and the environment through inclusive programs and responsible sourcing.
It uses the Trustea programme to support more than 500,000 tea workers and 40,000 smallholders across 300,000 hectares in India, enhancing sustainable supply chain partnerships with government and industry to ensure ethical sourcing and environmental care. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives support women tea pluckers by promoting empowerment, education, and healthcare, positively impacting local communities.
The sustainability story has helped shape the brand’s image as being local and supportive of Indian people, creating affinity for the brand while also showing quality that differentiates the product and justifies a price premium. And this has translated into sales: with value growth up 13% year on year, 28% ahead of the category and 45% ahead of total FMCG. Eco-Actives account for 40% of its sales, compared with an average of 32% for the total tea market.
Where we found behaviour with positive green impacts, the drivers were convenience and price first. This underlines the need for brands to offer a clear product story that goes beyond just being good for the planet.
Plant milk is a category where we have seen niche products develop into mass category. In China and across most markets we studied, the milk category is either stagnant or losing value, with plant-based alternatives growing and stealing share.
What’s helped brands such as Alpro and Oatly grow are three factors: widespread availability, the frictionless nature of the switch, as well as the fact that they also demonstrate reduced environmental impact as a rewarding and encouraging extra to consumers.
Life cycle assessments for Oatly, for example, show that it is 44-80% less damaging to the climate than dairy milk. Plant-based milks appeal to Eco-Actives with 10% higher penetration on average but it’s also growing share in other groups too. In most markets it is also growing with Eco-Considerers, and in half of markets it’s also growing with Eco-Dismissers, where it’s viewed as a health choice.
Interestingly, this year we saw a higher percentage of people saying they would never look for vegan products (41% up from 35% in 2024) or meat and dairy alternatives (32% up from 24%) with a particular impact in countries such as UK and Ireland, Spain, South Africa and France. The fact the plant milk category is still in growth despite a political backlash shows you can continue to build a base and not every single person needs to be converted to grow.
Our evidence suggests that rejection of the sector is driven more by political views than by health concerns, since the rejecting group is less likely to avoid ultra-processed foods. This group is also much more likely to cite causes such as migration and fake news as top concerns. Using the US and UK as an example, those who say they never plan to try vegan products or meat/ dairy alternatives are twice as likely to list migration as a top concern. This peaks at 14.4% for the UK’s ‘never plan to’ group.
