State of Sustainability Podcast

Solo Episode: The Sustainable Consumer in 2026

SAIF: Welcome back to another episode of the State of Sustainability. I'm your host Saif Hamid, founder and CEO of Altruistiq.

Today we are revisiting a topic we used to discuss frequently on this show but have not returned to this year: the sustainable consumer. I think it remains one of the most important lenses through which to view corporate sustainability. More than ever, sustainability strategy needs to be consumer-driven. If you are a brand, you need to understand what consumers actually want, what they value, and how sustainability fits into that.

The Data Problem

Let me start by being honest about the evidence base. There is not great data on the sustainable consumer. The surveys that exist — Nielsen, Bain, Deloitte, PwC — are not directly comparable. They measure different things, use different sample populations, and cover different geographies. What they do agree on can be summarised in two sentences: generally, people care about sustainability; generally, they won't pay for it. That is not a very interesting finding.

What follows is my attempt to synthesise what the data actually shows, filtered through what I observe working with companies in this space, and where I think this is heading.

What's Actually Changed

Concern is rising, and the geography of concern is surprising. Most data sets show that consumers are more concerned about sustainability in 2026 than they were previously. Younger consumers are disproportionately concerned — that is not new. What is new, and counterintuitive, is that consumers in emerging markets tend to express higher levels of concern than those in developed markets.

The reason makes sense once you examine it. In developed markets, sustainability concern tends to be driven by media exposure, perceived global risk, and a kind of diffuse existential anxiety about the state of the planet. In emerging markets, the concern tends to be local and immediate — floods, droughts, heat waves, crop failures. Things that are happening in your country, to people you know, affecting your quality of life right now. Growing up in Pakistan, I did not think much about global catastrophe in the abstract. I thought about drought, about heat, about the very concrete things affecting the people around me. That kind of proximity creates a different, more visceral form of concern.

Pakistan is a useful illustration. When I was young, raising money for environmental causes there was seen as slightly quaint — a first-world concern. Flash forward eight years: the country has been hit by year after year of floods, extreme heat events, droughts, and locust plagues. No one today would question why environmental catastrophe is a serious concern for Pakistan. The same shift is playing out across South Africa, Southeast Asia, and most of the emerging world.

Behavior is moving in the right direction, but consumers do not label it as sustainability. Looking across most markets, sustainable behaviors are increasing. People are buying more organic, more natural, more recyclable, and more recycled-content products. They are recycling more. These trends are broadly upward.

The interesting wrinkle is that most consumers do not connect these behaviors to sustainability as they would define it. They are making these choices because of health, quality, or a sense of wellbeing, not because of a primary concern about environmental impact. In emerging markets especially, credentials associated with sustainability — organic, natural — are associated first with quality, and quality is associated with what you bring home for your family. That is a more powerful and more durable motivator than environmental virtue.

The Monetisation Question

The green premium is not a reliable pricing lever. Four or five years ago, there was a lot of talk about the sustainability premium. Then came talk of a green discount. The truth is that the data is inconclusive on whether environmental sustainability carries any direct pricing power in most categories. There is robust evidence that consumers — especially for staples — are highly price-sensitive. A major retailer told me that a two-penny increase in the price of bananas produced a double-digit drop in demand. In that environment, a green premium is difficult to sustain across the mass market.

There are exceptions, and they all point to the same underlying dynamic. Products like those from B Corp brands, Lush Cosmetics, or Tony's Chocolonely are sold to a specific consumer who has already decided to invest in a certain lifestyle — what is sometimes called a lifestyle of health and sustainability. That consumer may pay more for the product, but they are not consciously paying for sustainability credentials. They are paying for an identity alignment. The product resonates with how they see themselves. Sustainability is part of that picture, but it is not the headline.

Indirect monetisation is real but hard to quantify. Someone at Nestlé described a useful mental model to me. Most Kit Kat purchases happen at the checkout counter — an impulse decision made in seconds. In that moment, there is an internal negotiation: "Chocolate, yes, but also sugar, probably no." If the product carries a credential that neutralises the guilt — regenerative cocoa, rewilding-based, sustainable sourcing — the guilt-free purchase is more likely to happen. The consumer did not pay more. But they were less likely to override the impulse. That is indirect monetisation from sustainability, and while it is difficult to measure, it is real.

The paper straw problem is also real. Leo Wang, founder of Buffy, shared a striking counterpoint on an earlier episode of this podcast. Buffy is an inherently sustainable product — made from eucalyptus pulp fibre rather than cotton, significantly less water-intensive. His original hypothesis was that sustainability positioning would be a competitive advantage, particularly in urban markets like New York and San Francisco. He was wrong on both counts.

Consumers, when interviewed, worried that a product marketed as sustainable would underperform on its core function — the paper straw problem. A paper straw might be environmentally sound, but if it dissolves before you finish your drink, it has failed at the one thing a straw needs to do. Buffy's customers feared the same: that sustainability branding was a cover for a product that did not perform. Leo found this in customer interviews, and he found it confirmed in his own website analytics. The sustainability content block, tracked by where consumers actually focused their attention, drifted progressively to the bottom of the page over time. Eventually he stopped talking about sustainability altogether. Sales improved. His customer distribution, meanwhile, was not concentrated in progressive coastal markets — it was a near-perfect map of where Americans actually live.

The lesson is not that sustainability does not matter. It is that environmental credentials, communicated badly or as the primary value proposition, can actively work against you.

Identity Matching and the Role of AI in Discovery

The direction I find most interesting is the shift toward identity-based marketing, accelerated by AI-powered discovery.

A growing share of product discovery is now happening through tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Consumers ask what the best product is for their needs and receive a recommendation. As these tools accumulate more personal context on each user, those recommendations will become increasingly tailored.

The implication for brands is significant. Targeting sustainability ratings, certification logos, or B Corp status — in the hope that an AI recommendation engine will surface your product on those grounds — is probably under-leveraging the context these tools have on the individual. What may work better is identity alignment: understanding the specific consumer you are trying to reach, understanding how they see themselves, and then making sure the ideology your product projects matches that self-image precisely.

For some consumers, that identity is about health and safety for their family — "I always bring the best home." For others, it is about being an ethical buyer, or a supporter of fair wages, or a person who makes conscious choices. Environmental sustainability may be part of that identity picture, but it is rarely the whole picture and rarely the primary entry point.

When the match is right — when the product's ideology and the consumer's self-identity are aligned — you get something more valuable than a single purchase. You get lifetime value, loyalty, cross-sell potential, price tolerance, and duration. That compounding effect is where brand value actually gets built.

Summary

To recap the key points. Consumer concern about sustainability is rising, with the counterintuitive finding that emerging-market consumers tend to express higher concern than those in developed markets, driven by proximity to real climate impacts. Sustainable behaviors are increasing across markets, but consumers attribute them to health, quality, and wellbeing rather than to environmental motivation. Direct monetisation of sustainability credentials is limited and unreliable across the mass market; indirect monetisation, through guilt-free purchase dynamics, is real but hard to measure. Sustainability positioning can actively hurt a product when it signals performance risk rather than quality. And the emerging opportunity is in identity-based targeting, especially as AI-powered discovery tools become the primary route through which consumers find products — and those tools gain increasing personal context on individual buyers.

If you enjoyed this episode, please hit follow so you never miss a new episode. Sharing this with a friend and leaving a review are also very much appreciated. And if you would like to meet in person, the next State of Sustainability Summit is in London on October 14th — details in the show notes.

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