Sustainability Isn’t Dying - Consumers Are Calling It Something Else

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The sustainability story has changed and the food industry may be looking for it in the wrong place.

A major new Bain & Company study (download below) finds global concern about environmental sustainability has actually risen to 85% of consumers, from 79% last year. But something more significant is happening beneath that headline: consumers increasingly aren't describing the choices they make as “sustainable”. They are choosing products because they appear healthier, cleaner, more natural, more affordable or more locally resilient - with sustainability increasingly becoming a consequence of the purchase rather than its primary motivation.

Bain calls it a consumer “do-say gap.” Eighty-three percent of respondents now practice at least three sustainable lifestyle behaviours, up from 73% in 2023. Even among consumers who say they don't care about sustainability, almost half now practice three or more. Health, meanwhile, remains the leading purchasing criterion, ahead of environmental sustainability, price and brand.

For food companies, the commercial signal is particularly strong. Consumers told Bain they would pay an average 18% premium for a product offering sustainability benefits - rising to 24% when that product also delivers a health benefit. And the definition of health itself is shifting toward characteristics consumers associate with sustainability: “natural”, “clean”, organic and fewer unwanted additives or chemicals.

At the same time, more than half of consumers report shopping locally more than previously, driven not simply by environmental concerns but by support for local businesses and security of supply. Bain argues “local” increasingly bundles freshness, safety, economic solidarity and supply-chain independence into a single proposition.

And herein lies perhaps the biggest opportunity for the global food industry: stop trying to sell sustainability by itself.

TRENOS SiGINT

SIGNAL - The Food Transition Has a Capital Problem

There is an extraordinary disconnect between where the sustainability challenge lies and where investment has gone.

Around $17 trillion has been invested globally in sustainable technologies over the past decade - roughly $4 trillion more than anticipated in 2015. But almost 90% went into green energy, buildings and mobility. Agriculture, land use, manufacturing and materials - collectively responsible for roughly 37% of global greenhouse-gas emissions - received less than 10%.

Bain's conclusion is significant for PFN: investment in the food transition is rapidly becoming not simply an environmental imperative but a food-security issue.

That creates an interesting contradiction. Consumers are moving toward behaviours supporting a more sustainable food system at precisely the moment capital investment in agriculture and food transition remains disproportionately low.

HUMAN FACTOR — Don't Sell the Planet. Sell the Benefit.

This may be the most important finding in the Bain work.

Consumers haven't necessarily rejected sustainability. They have internalised parts of it into other purchasing priorities.

Health. Naturalness. Fewer unwanted ingredients. Affordability. Local production. Supply security.

Bain's advice to companies is essentially to “sell the AND”: create products satisfing immediate consumer needs and deliver sustainability benefits. For food businesses, regenerative agriculture is one example where environmental action can simultaneously strengthen perceptions around health and resilience.

This changes the marketing proposition substantially.

Instead of:

“Buy this because it is sustainable.”

The emerging proposition becomes:

“Buy this because it is better for you, performs better, strengthens resilience and happens to be better for the planet.”

METRICS SNAPSHOT

$17 trillion - sustainable-technology investment globally over the past decade.

<10% - share flowing into agriculture/land use and manufacturing/materials despite those areas representing about 37% of global emissions.

85% - consumers concerned about environmental sustainability, up from 79%.

83% - consumers practicing three or more sustainable behaviours, versus 73% in 2023.

18% → 24% - stated willingness-to-pay premium for sustainability alone versus sustainability combined with health benefits.

68% - consumers who cannot correctly identify the lower-carbon choice between paired food and packaging alternatives.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE SIGNAL - Alternative Protein

Bain also provides a useful reality check for the alternative-protein industry.

It includes alternative proteins among sustainability investments having so far generated minimal or negative returns. More pointedly, Bain argues their problem is one of the three “gates” required for sustainable technologies to scale - consumer behaviour.

Its diagnosis is familiar: alternative proteins haven't yet achieved the combination of taste, texture and price necessary to attract sufficient numbers of consumers.

That reinforces an increasingly clear PFN signal. The first generation of plant-based food attempted to persuade consumers to make a sustainability trade-off.

The next generation cannot.

It has to win on the food.

LONG PLAY — Sustainability May Disappear From the Label

There is another structural change buried in Bain's research that food brands should pay attention to.

Consumers increasingly have an intermediary standing between themselves and the product: AI.

Bain says 43% of consumers using AI use it to identify healthier products, while 38% use it for environmentally preferable recommendations. Product-information apps are already being used by 41% of consumers surveyed, and 79% of those users say the apps have changed what they purchase.

That means tomorrow's food package isn't communicating only with the person standing in the supermarket aisle. It is also communicating with the machine in their hand.

Ingredients, processing, nutritional characteristics, sourcing, additives, environmental claims and provenance increasingly need to be discoverable and interpretable by AI systems. Bain explicitly argues product information must become legible to humans and machines.

And that could ultimately produce a much more profound change than another generation of green labels.

For the industry, Bain's message is therefore remarkably simple:

Don't ask consumers to choose between themselves and the planet. Build food where choosing one delivers the other.

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