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ESG may be all the rage, but what about retail banking?

The deposits you make at your retail bank for personal and business accounts sustain the bank’s ability to make loans and investments. Loans and investment fuel growth. Put simply, a bank’s capital can flow towards fossil fuels or renewable energy, towards local business loans or financing environmentally damaging projects.

Imagine if all retail banks required environmental impact assessments for loan applications. Or committed a certain percentage of loans and investments for renewable energy projects.

Certainly, this is a vision all climate-concerned citizens can support, and the opportunity to influence banking as citizens is large. Most U.S. households (93 percent) have a checking or savings account while only 52 percent own stock …

To continue, read my guest blog on GreenBiz.

Most people’s wallets are slammed shut right now, and an unthinkable number of people face unemployment and loss of business. The coronavirus pandemic offers a painful and unique opportunity to re-envision the economy we want and how we get there.

Business is driven by consumer demand. When there is a great demand, business expands. When there is little demand, business contracts. Government policy aside, this is what shapes the economy.

The good news is that the majority of U.S. consumers want to buy purpose-driven brands that support sustainability. However, despite our intentions, the vast majority of us don’t consistently shop in a way aligned with our values or desires for a sustainable economy.

Here’s how to think about changing consumer demand: Imagine a rider on top of an elephant, trying to get the elephant to go down a specific path. Our mind, intellect and will power (the rider) and our emotional body (the elephant) need to be aligned to make any progress …

To continue, read my guest blog on Green Biz.

Right now, talking about shopping can seem trite.

Yet, to address systemic racism, we need a more just economy. An economy slanted towards white ownership plus discriminatory labor practices perpetuate systemic racism.

As discussed in earlier columns (here and here), consumer demand drives 70 percent of the economy. Consumers and citizens have significant influence over the shape of the economy because we — in aggregate — ultimately control almost 70 percent of it.

Read guest blog on GreenBiz.

Consumers are spooked.

Record unemployment, continued levels of lockdown in many places and general uncertainty have most of us startled and longing for certainty. No wonder that we’ve seen plunges in consumer spending and confidence around the world.

Once consumption resumes, will people make choices to support a more sustainable economy?

In conversations among fellow sustainability leaders, I often hear optimism that shoppers will make decisions based on how companies behaved during the coronavirus pandemic. There is hope that shoppers will remember which companies treated their employees well and stepped up to provide technical or financial support during the pandemic.

Read guest blog at Green Biz.

By Diane Osgood & Daniel Aronson

Most sustainability practitioners believe customers will reward a company for doing the right thing. We know it’s a complex story and that price, accessibility of product and perceived efficacy all affect shoppers’ choices. In general, however, we trust that customers will pick sustainable solutions if they are easy to find and price differences are negligible.

And there is evidence that consumers do prefer to buy sustainable products. NYU Stern’s landmark study found that 50 percent of CPG growth from 2013 to 2018 came from sustainability-marketed products. The study is based on what consumers actually bought — not what they said they would do.

Still, we were curious to explore if there was more to this story. Clearly, some customers reward companies by buying sustainable products, but did that hold true for more specific aspects of sustainability, such as climate change? If two products were equal and were equally priced, would a perception of climate action by the company make the difference?

Read this guest blog on GreenBiz.

By Diane Osgood & Daniel Aronson

As sustainability professionals, we’ve been talking for years about how consumers are increasingly influenced by values and sustainability.  We search the data for proof points that people would prefer to buy from a more sustainable company. Indeed, even when we find the proof points, we also find a large action gap between what people say and what they do.

We think the action gap is about to get smaller, due to a set of trends and the context of the pandemic.

The pandemic has shaken the mental health and emotional well-being of people everywhere. It also has caused many people to consider more carefully what they value most: family; friends; health — and savings, if possible. As a result, consumers are paying increased attention to companies that treated their customers and employees well during the pandemic …

Read my guest blog on GreenBiz.