Sustainability and the boardroom/consumer disconnect
There’s a conversation happening in boardrooms across the world about sustainability. It’s technical, and comprehensive. Companies are measuring Scope 3 emissions, publishing CSRD-compliant reports, and setting science-based targets for 2040. Meanwhile, consumers are in the supermarket aisle choosing the cheaper coffee or they’re buying the car with the bigger screen, not the better carbon footprint.
This isn’t because consumers don’t care. Survey after survey shows they do, but when it comes to actual purchasing decisions, there is a disconnect. The problem isn’t consumer apathy. The problem is that corporate sustainability has become a language consumers don’t speak. It addresses concerns they don’t prioritize and in a world that’s rapidly moving in a different direction. In behavioural terms this is often referred to as the Say-Do gap and it is real. But why is it happening?
Existing Metrics: Technically Perfect, Emotionally Distant
Corporate Social Responsibility has evolved into a sophisticated discipline. It has frameworks, methodologies, reporting standards, and acronyms – ESG. CSRD. TCFD. SBTi. These aren’t just internal tools; they’ve become the vocabulary through which companies communicate their values to the world.
This technical approach serves corporate needs well. It provides legal protection, satisfies investor requirements, and demonstrates regulatory compliance. Most geographies now have regulations that require companies to publish detailed sustainability reports.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: none of this was designed to inspire consumer action. It was designed to satisfy stakeholders, mostly regulators and investors. The consumer was an afterthought. They were expected to recognise and reward corporate responsibility from the sidelines. Instead, consumers have largely ignored it.
For most people, sustainability isn’t a purchasing priority, it’s a luxury consideration. When inflation is squeezing household budgets and the cost of living feels overwhelming, sustainability loses out.
This is a case of a simple hierarchy of needs. Consumers aren’t rejecting sustainability because they don’t believe in it. They’re rejecting the premium they’re asked to pay for it or the effort they’re asked to invest in understanding it. When sustainability is made a moral choice rather than a practical benefit it delivers less immediate value. It loses to convenience and price almost every time.
What’s happening behind the scenes?
Energy companies, despite record heat and increasingly urgent climate warnings, are expanding fossil fuel production rather than reducing it. BP, Shell and others have all significantly reduced their renewable energy investment targets in recent years while increasing oil and gas production goals. Automotive companies are lobbying hard for a dilution of their current net-zero commitments. But these categories are far from the only ones. The pattern is consistent when sustainability commitments conflict with short-term profitability or political pressure, it becomes a victim of corporate circumstance.
These rollbacks aren’t announced with fanfare. There are no press releases celebrating the abandonment of net-zero targets. Companies simply remove the language from their websites, reassign personnel, and redirect capital. While some studies suggest 85% of companies are maintaining their commitments, many are engaging in “greenhushing”, continuing some efforts while deliberately muting their messaging to avoid backlash.
Corporations assume that there is no cost to these actions. They assume that if they keep quiet, the consumer will not notice. But they frequently do. In the interconnected world we live in, this news leaks out. Patterns emerge and cynicism sets in. What does this tell consumers? That when the pressure mounted values were negotiable. This isn’t just a retreat from commitments; it’s a destruction of trust that will take considerable effort – and much marketing communications investment – to rebuild.
The real problem isn’t that consumers don’t understand sustainability. They absolutely recognise the gap between corporate promises and corporate actions. But they see sustainability frequently positioned as their responsibility. Too often they see themselves having to ‘pay the price’ in value, convenience or comfort terms.
They’ve learned that “sustainable” often means “more expensive” without delivering tangible benefits they can see or feel. Sustainability is not currently consumer-centric, and it is failing as a result.
The Emerging World Demands a New Frame
We’re entering a period where the old CSR playbook works less and less well. But here is the crux, consumers haven’t rejected sustainability. They’ve rejected the way it’s been presented to them: as an additional burden or as a charge for doing the right thing.
The companies that will succeed aren’t those with the most comprehensive CSR reports or the most ambitious net-zero targets. They’ll be the ones who reframe sustainability entirely—not as a moral choice consumers must make, but as an embedded benefit they receive. Not as a premium for the conscious consumer, but as a standard that should have been there all along. And this matters because whilst the current approach is sub-optimal (and the whole area experiencing a loss of momentum) – this will not last. Scarcity of resources is not going away. Climate change will remain on our radar. Being seen as a good corporate with a larger world view, who places emphasis on people, planet and profit will remain a key imperative. Our research shows that many of the most successful category disruptors across the world have a more explicit – and consumer centric – focus on sustainability. It shows that you can indeed win in this space.
But for the majority, it is the top down, technical, academic approach to CSR that dominates corporate thinking and it is failing to connect with the lived reality of consumer decision-making. The careful frameworks and detailed disclosures are addressing stakeholder requirements, not consumer needs. And the quiet retreat from commitments is destroying whatever credibility remained.
Until companies are willing to acknowledge this disconnect between what they measure and what matters or between their technical sophistication and their emotional failure, the majority of their investments in this space will continue to go to waste.
