Gaining insights into wider concerns helps businesses to understand consumer priorities to then create effective sustainability solutions. Let’s see what’s concerning the global population.
Understanding consumer concerns is a good starting point for manufacturers at the early stages of the sustainability journey with their brand.
Gaining insights into these wider concerns helps businesses to hone in on consumer priorities, to create effective sustainability practices that address their biggest worries, and benefit the environment as a whole.
Our research found that globally, climate change is the biggest concern for consumers. Water pollution is the second biggest concern, followed by plastic waste, air pollution and deforestation rounding out the top 5.
Manufacturers need to consider that different issues affect different regions, and even within a given region, there can be significant differences between markets.
In Europe, there is a concentration around climate change and plastic waste (plastic waste is driven more by Eastern Europe). A more significant proportion of the population – almost half – rank climate change within their top three.
In Latin America, issues like water pollution are more commonplace, making it the top priority. Air pollution has moved from the sixth to the third most important, jumping up nine percentage points since last year.
In the Chinese Mainland, shoppers rated air pollution as a top three issue with 46% of the population (up 10 percentage points on last year). No doubt the visual impact of images from the start of 2020 had an impact. Plastic waste has moved four percentage points downwards, in contrast.
As referenced in the introduction, the IPCC has just published the Climate Change report. They report that ‘limiting global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century is still within reach but requires transformational change’.
How much of that change is for people to action?
We asked which actions people intended to do more of next year, many of which are related to reducing their carbon footprint. Less than one in three shoppers plan to wash more at low temperatures, limit water use in baths more regularly, shop more locally, use the car less or eat less meat. Even with the Eco Actives, less than 45% intend to take more of these actions.
Instead, the top two issues consumers are most likely to do are packaging-related, buying more sustainable packaging and using refillable or reusable products.
Again, there are some regional differences. Latin American shoppers are more likely to shop locally, use DIY alternatives, eat less meat, and use the car less. In Europe, people are more likely to buy sustainable packaging, save electricity at home and wash clothes at low temperatures.
