Blink:

In my last post I outlined the impact of climate overshoot if humanity surpasses the global threshold goal 1.5° Celsius established by the Paris climate agreement within this century to prevent irreversible climate damage. Thanks to research I have become extremely concerned whether the average Joe truly gets it.

Read On:

Several LinkedIn articles I aggregated prompted my concern whether the average Joe was walking the sustainability talk. Deloitte UK’s fourth The Sustainable Consumer Report       provided some detailed insight. They summarized their survey findings by concluding consumers continue to become more environmentally conscious, but affordability was the leading barrier to their full adoption of sustainable lifestyles. Briefly three Deloitte metrics which piqued my interest:

• 62% claimed they did not adopt behavior to a more sustainable lifestyle because it was too expensive.
• 58% of this group’s respondents indicated a lack of interest.
• 50% of this group indicated they did not have enough information.

Note: My company specializes in food marketing. Earlier in the year I reviewed the findings of The International Food Information Council’s 2023 Food & Health Survey which is an excellent source for understanding consumer behavior as it relates to food purchasing decisions/drivers. When it comes to the environment their findings were comparable to Deloitte UK’s. Surprisingly, only a third of Americans (34%) revealed sustainability and 35% responded climate friendliness was highly impactful on their decisions to buy foods and beverages. A deeper analysis to potentially understand the reason environmental sustainability continues to trail other decision-making factors were IFIC’s survey findings indicating three in four Americans (76%) say price is highly impactful on their decision to buy foods and beverages. Affordability, affordability, affordability!

Back to average Joe. As a food futurist I was recently researching 2024 food & beverage trends. The list of trends which receives the most posts on LinkedIn is Whole Foods (the ninth year releasing their forecasted trends). The specialty grocer has earned the reputation as a retailer with a keen understanding of emerging sustainable product trends. One new forward-thinking trend will be the emergence of lifestyle brands, food and water-conscious products like dry shampoos, shampoo bars, laundry detergent sheets, and even household cleaners. These brands across all aisles promote water stewardship and regenerative agriculture practices which ultimately conserve water. Does the average Joe know what water stewardship and regenerative agriculture means? I doubt it mainly because the average Joe is not your average sustainable WF shopper which according to the analytics firm Numerator in a survey conducted for Business Insider: a West Coast millennial woman between the ages of 25 to 34years old (including minorities) with typically a graduate degree earning $80K plus.

So how do we help average Joe make more sustainable lifestyle choices? There is no one short-term solution, but to me a good starting point would be consumer education. To build their brand’s trust, business sector leaders must make readily available (a.k.a. transparent) the environmentally, and socially responsible guidelines they practice throughout their entire organization’s operations. Their communications need to be concise and written in simple language. They need to avoid buzz words utilized by the small percentage of informed population who already understand, thus have adopted to a fully sustainable lifestyle; terms like ESG, “circular-low-waste living,” carbon offsetting, “blue economy,” etc. In addition, over the long-haul it is essential sector leaders make the final products and services they deliver commonly assessable and affordable.    

Happy Thanksgiving!