No costly sacrifices: consumers want ‘easy’ sustainability actions
Paying higher taxes for the green transition is least preferable. Read More
- People want sustainability to be easy, with nearly 9 in 10 people willing to recycle or avoid plastic.
- Only one-third of people are willing to pay higher taxes for the green transition, signaling costly sacrifices aren’t popular.
- The imperative for businesses: make sustainability as frictionless as possible.
Which feels easier: taking an empty milk jug to the recycling bin or forking over tax dollars in the name of sustainability?
If you chose the former, you’re not alone. According to new insights from Trellis data partner GlobeScan about how societies are responding to the sustainability transition, convenience is king. When asked how willing they are to make specific changes, people are most willing to make changes when they’re low-cost, familiar or relatively easy to do. More transformative changes that require financial sacrifice or lifestyle overhaul face greater resistance. People are most willing to take everyday, tangible actions that feel manageable such as:
- Recycling (89 percent)
- Avoiding plastic packaging (88 percent)
- Reducing energy use (85 percent)
Support drops significantly for more costly or disruptive actions such as minimizing living space (54 percent) or paying higher taxes (33 percent).
What this means
GlobeScan’s research shows that while people broadly support the green transition, their willingness to make hard personal sacrifices, especially financial ones, is limited. Instead, people prefer actions that feel familiar and relatively effortless. This signals a clear imperative: make sustainability frictionless. To accelerate the transition, governments and businesses must embed low-effort, high-impact actions into everyday life and design systems that reward sustainable choices without demanding sacrifice.
Based on a survey of 31,960 people across more than 30 countries conducted July-August 2025.
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