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| | | | |  | | By Jordan Wolman | | | | | 
Sphera, Consumer Landscape: The State of Ethical Consumerism report, 2022 | Businesses beware: Enthusiasm for sustainable consumption is giving way to skepticism. That’s not to say corporate progress on environmental, social and governance performance isn't important to consumers. Nearly three-quarters say sustainability is a factor in their product choices, according to a survey released Thursday by Sphera, a Stuttgart-based ESG and risk management software company. But the glut of opaque information combined with the price premium for green products and services may be combining to produce despair. The survey "offers powerful support for previous studies indicating that the high cost of green products and services combined with a lack of trustworthy and accessible sustainability data is breeding public apathy and cynicism and deterring sustainable consumption," Sphera said.
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Sphera, Consumer Landscape: The State of Ethical Consumerism report, 2022 | Sustainable consumption is competing with the soaring cost of living, and the fact that consumers increasingly distrust corporate climate commitments. Around one-third of consumers cite cost as the biggest barrier to sustainable behavior change, but access to reliable data is the next-biggest obstacle. “Public distrust in corporate claims and pessimism over corporate climate targets is breeding a sense of powerlessness among Western consumers, leading to less environmentally engaged consumers,” the report said. The survey of 1,200 consumers across the U.S., the U.K. and Germany found that most people occupy the middle ground: Fifty-six percent are “somewhat committed” to sustainable behavior change. That also reflects the moderate stance reflected in other categories across markets and age groups, where majorities report they are somewhat concerned about climate change and somewhat committed to sustainable behavior change. “This would suggest an opportunity for business to build social pressure for change by driving sustainable trends, markets and innovations and leading by example in operationalizing their own environmental commitments,” the report said.
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Sphera, Consumer Landscape: The State of Ethical Consumerism report, 2022 | Whether consumers would trust such an effort is an open question. Just 3 percent of respondents said they trust global business to deliver on net-zero targets. Forty-eight percent said they somewhat distrust or completely distrust “businesses’ high-profile sustainability or net-zero promises and commitments,” compared with 41 percent who trust them a great deal or somewhat. Companies that want customers to trust them on their climate commitments should prioritize data transparency and accessibility, the survey found. That could include annual audits and product labeling. But it's a "major challenge," due to the complexity of measuring indirect corporate emissions and the lack of standardized methodologies for measuring environmental performance. Marrying corporate climate action with business success — and turning all those ESG reports and net-zero targets into profit — depends on whether consumers’ skepticism can be turned around. And consumer resistance to the costs of sustainability “may also be compounded by the poorly planned rush to renewable energy sources before they can provide sufficiently scalable and flexible power.”
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| | | — The Arctic is becoming wetter and stormier, the New York Times reports. — BlackRock went all in on ESG — and ended up in the middle of a political no-win situation, Bloomberg reports. — ProPublica explores decades of regulatory flaws in the U.S. chemical regulation apparatus.
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