Is it worth being sustainable when the nuclear alarm is wailing?

It turns out there are many reasons people avoid making sustainable choices. This week I discovered another one.

We had the nuclear alarm test in Stockholm this week. It happens every few months. That’s just long enough between tests for you to momentarily forget it’s a test. All the alarms go off at the same time. Meaning you get a delayed chorus of droning echoes across the city. We’re quite close to Russia. There are still signs to the St Petersburg ferry on the road near the port.

It can lead to “short-term thinking”. I mean, why bother using sustainable packaging in wine if you’re about to be turned into Frazzles?

This is at the more extreme end of the finding from ad agency Ogilvy that:

“sustainable alternatives are often seen as having trade-offs not worth making”

As we saw last week, a lot of the communication around sustainability puts people off buying sustainable products. And that’s even if they’re open to buying sustainable products. Which we also saw is not a given.

The conclusion of the report was simple:

People want to be agents of change - but sustainability communications must appeal to their selfish interests.

Turns out we’re not complete bastards

“Selfish interests” might give you the impression that we’re all amoral demons who couldn’t give a stuff about the planet. But we know that’s not true.

About a fifth of people (give or take) are engaged “eco-active” shoppers. Knit-your-own-yoghurt-Viz-Modern-Parents-sandal-wearers. A bit more than a third are worried about the environment, but don’t actually to translate that into doing much about it. While two fifths of us are really not that fussed about the environment at all. In fact they think it’s all a load of nonsense cooked up by Knit-your-own-yoghurt-Viz-Modern-Parents-sandal-wearers.

Meaning near enough 80% of people - for whatever reason - don’t actually shop in an environmentally conscious way. And telling them about your eco/sustainable credentials can actually put them off. This is a problem.

Because you’re committed to be sustainable.

You’re in the wine business. “The canary in the mine of climate change.” You know it matters.

How can you get them to change their behaviour?

It turns out there’s a way. And there’s a great example of someone who’s doing all the right things in the world of canned wine.