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Unilever's Five Levers for Change
BEHAVIOUR CHANGE AND
SUSTAINABILITY
Creating a sustainable future will require
fundamental changes in attitude and
behaviour across society. Governments
and industry will have to change but so
too will individual citizens.
We all know from personal experience
of losing weight or getting fit just how
difficult change is.
Successful change comes from a real
understanding of people, their habits
and their motivations. As one of the
world’s leading consumer goods
companies, whose products are used by
two billion people every day, Unilever is
constantly researching the attitudes and
needs of people all around the world.
We have a long history of both
sustainability and the use of marketing
and market research to promote
behaviour change. And for the first time
we are publishing our own model for
effective behaviour change. We call this
approach the Five Levers for Change.
It offers a practical tool, based on
what we have learnt over decades of
research and observation. We hope
others will also use it in tackling the big
sustainability challenges we all face.
At Unilever, we’ve learnt how to
encourage people to wash their hands
with soap at the right times of the day,
to do their laundry at low temperatures
and to brush their teeth twice a day. In
doing so, we have made measurable
improvements to the health, hygiene
and quality of life of millions of people.
The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan
commits us to ambitious targets over
the next decade. We intend to help
more than a billion people take action
to improve their health; to halve the
environmental footprint of our products;
and to source 100% of our agricultural
raw materials sustainably.
“SUCCESSfUL CHANGE
COmES fROm A REAL
UNDERSTANDING Of
pEOpLE, THEIR HABITS
AND THEIR
mOTIVATIONS.”
Behaviour Change and Sustainability
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
The issues are evolving rapidly. We
certainly don’t have all the answers.
The challenge of sustainable living
requires us all to work together and be
bold and ambitious in our hopes for
the future. That’s why we have invited
leading experts from around the world
to contribute their thoughts on the
subject. They provide some fascinating
perspectives and pose real challenges.
We believe that business and brands
have a powerful role to play in creating
sustainable living. Brands are more
than simply products; they embody
values and aspirations. They can inspire
and enable change. Look at what the
WWF’s Panda has done to promote
our understanding of the importance
of nature, or what Dove has done to
challenge misguided stereotypes
of beauty.
It won’t be easy to make sustainable
living an everyday reality rather than a
pipedream. We hope that our practical
approach, the Five Levers for Change,
and the contributions in this publication,
will inspire others to take action.
pAUL pOLmAN,
CHIEf EXECUTIVE OffICER,
UNILEVER
“THE CHALLENGE
Of SUSTAINABLE LIVING
REqUIRES US ALL
TO wORk TOGETHER
AND BE BOLD AND
AmBITIOUS IN OUR
HOpES fOR THE
fUTURE.”
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING:
UNILEVER’S fIVE LEVERS fOR CHANGE
CONSUmING pASSIONS:
wHY DO wE CONSUmE?
THE TRANSfORmATIVE pOwER
Of INDIVIDUALS
VISIONS AND ACTIONS fOR
SUSTAINABLE LIfESTYLES
B V pRADEEp, VICE pRESIDENT,
CONSUmER & mARkET INSIGHT, UNILEVER
VAL CURTIS, LONDON SCHOOL Of
HYGIENE AND TROpICAL mEDICINE
HELIO mATTAR, pRESIDENT, AkATU INSTITUTE
fOR CONSCIOUS CONSUmpTION, BRAzIL
CHERYL HICkS AND mICHAEL kUHNDT,
UNEp/wUppERTAL INSTITUTE, CSCp, GERmANY
8
16
20
24
CONTENTS
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
TECHNOLOGY HOLDS THE kEY
TO THE fUTURE
DYSfUNCTIONAL pOLITICIANS
AND THE pOwER Of BRANDS
GOVERNmENTS, NUDGING
AND EffECTIVE SCIENCE
EXITING THE VALLEY
Of DEATH
DR RICHARD L wRIGHT, BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
DIRECTOR, UNILEVER
JONATHON pORRITT, fOUNDER DIRECTOR,
fORUm fOR THE fUTURE
CHARLES ABRAHAm, pENINSULA COLLEGE Of
mEDICINE & DENTISTRY, UNIVERSITY Of EXETER
SImON zADEk, INDEpENDENT ADVISOR; SENIOR
VISITING fELLOw, GLOBAL GREEN GROwTH INSTITUTE
30
34
38
42
6
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING:
UNILEVER’S fIVE LEVERS fOR CHANGE
B V pRADEEp, VICE pRESIDENT, CONSUmER & mARkET INSIGHT, UNILEVER
Over a hundred years ago, Unilever’s
founders saw business opportunities
in serving unmet social needs. William
Lever launched Lifebuoy, the world’s first
health soap, which played an important
role in preventing disease and promoting
hygiene in Victorian Britain.
Ever since, innovative marketing has
been central to promoting the benefits
of Unilever’s brands in
meeting everyday needs
such as washing, eating
and cleaning.
We’ve learnt that marketing can be a
powerful force for behaviour change.
For example, most people have soap at
home, but unless they use it properly
(i.e. washing hands before meals,
not just after), the health benefits of
reducing disease will not be realised.
Likewise, for many years we have been
trying to encourage people to eat
margarine instead of butter for heart
health and to brush their teeth twice
a day for the most effective protection
against tooth decay.
Along the way we’ve learnt a great deal
about people, what motivates them, and
how to inform and engage them.
Developing the Five Levers
for Change
Several years ago, I was part of a team
that had a clear mission: to develop
a best practice toolkit for behaviour
change. We drew on skills from inside
and outside Unilever – psychologists
and academics from leading universities;
Inspiring Sustainable Living: Unilever’s Five Levers For Change | 7
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
hygiene experts; and colleagues from
our research laboratories, marketing
departments and those out meeting
with people who cook, clean and wash
with our products across the world.
We developed the Five Levers for
Change – a set of principles brought
together in a new approach, which,
if applied to behaviour change
interventions, will increase the likelihood
of having a lasting impact.
We soon realised that this approach
could be essential in helping to meet the
goals of the newly launched Unilever
Sustainable Living Plan.
Unilever Sustainable Living Plan
Unilever has an ambitious plan to grow
our business in a way that helps improve
people’s health and well-being, reduces
environmental impact and enhances
livelihoods. Inspiring consumers to
adopt new sustainable products and
behaviours is central to this. After
all, two thirds of the greenhouse gas
impacts of our products across the
lifecycle and about half of our water
footprint is associated with consumer
use, as distinct from manufacturing or
sourcing ingredients.
Our Five Levers for Change helps provide
the insights needed, whether it is
encouraging consumers to use less hot
water when showering or washing their
hands before meals and after going to
the toilet.
Five Levers for Change
How does it work? The first step is
to revisit what we know about our
consumers. We systematically identify:
BARRIERS – what are the things
that stop people from adopting a
new behaviour?
TRIGGERS – how could we get people
to start a new behaviour?
mOTIVATORS – what are the
ways to help them stick with the
new behaviour?
Next, we take all those insights and
consider how to inspire the change
that’s needed using each of
Unilever’s Five Levers for Change.
“fOR mANY YEARS wE
HAVE BEEN TRYING TO
ENCOURAGE pEOpLE TO
EAT mARGARINE INSTEAD
Of BUTTER... AND TO
BRUSH THEIR TEETH
TwICE A DAY.”
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING:
UNILEVER’S fIVE LEVERS fOR CHANGE
8
make it
UNDERSTOOD
Do people know about the behaviour?
Do they believe it’s relevant to them?
This Lever raises awareness and
encourages acceptance.
Many people believe that if their hands
look clean, then they are clean. Lifebuoy
soap’s ‘glo-germ’ demonstration helps
children in India, Indonesia, Pakistan and
Bangladesh understand that washing
hands with water alone isn’t good
enough to get rid of germs. Ultra-violet
light shows the germs left behind on
their hands when they wash with water
alone. Hands are washed again with
soap and shown as germ-free under the
same ultra-violet light.
make it
EASY
Do people know what to do and
feel confident doing it? Can they
see it fitting into their lives? This
Lever establishes convenience
and confidence.
In many parts of the world, laundry is
washed by hand. It is typically in these
countries that water is scarce. With
Comfort One Rinse fabric conditioner
you only need one bucket for rinsing
rather than three. When we launched
in Vietnam, people needed to see with
their own eyes the convenience of
washing out detergent residues after
just one rinse. TV commercials created
high awareness but proved not to be
UNILEVER’S fIVE LEVERS fOR CHANGE
Inspiring Sustainable Living: Unilever’s Five Levers For Change | 9
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
enough to establish confidence. Live
demonstration events and product
samples helped to build confidence that
the new way of rinsing was enough
to remove all residues and showed the
convenience in terms of saving time
and water.
make it
DESIRABLE
Will doing this new behaviour fit with
their actual or aspirational self-image?
Does it fit with how they relate to
others or want to? This Lever is about
‘self and society’ because humans
are social animals. We tend to emulate
the lifestyles and habits of people we
respect – like our parents or sometimes a
celebrity – and follow norms in society.
Infant mortality is a big issue in some
countries, and many lives could be
saved through the simple practice of
handwashing at key moments when
looking after the newborn baby. Lifebuoy
communicates to new mothers, tapping
into the insight that mums like to feel
they are a good mum, and be seen in
this way by others.
So in its communication, the brand
has linked washing hands with soap
with being a good mother, which is a
powerful motivator.
make it
REwARDING
Do people know when they’re doing
the behaviour ‘right’? Do they get some
sort of reward for doing it? This Lever
demonstrates the proof and payoff.
The US’s number-one haircare brand,
Suave, encourages women to turn
off the shower while they lather their
hair by answering that all-important
question: ‘what’s in it for me?’ The brand
campaign showed how families could
save up to $150 a year on utility bills by
cutting hot water use, as well as having
a positive impact on the environment.
make it a
HABIT
Once people have made a change,
what can we do to help them keep
doing it? This Lever is about reinforcing
and reminding.
Lifebuoy soap’s handwashing campaigns
run over a minimum of 21 days to
encourage repetition of behaviour in
relevant settings every day. During
each day of the programme, children
participate in activities designed to
deliver the handwashing message in an
engaging and memorable way. Comic
books, posters, quizzes and songs all
work to remind them about the message
of handwashing at key occasions.
Compliance is also tallied on a daily
sticker chart with the help of mum and
teachers, to reinforce the behaviour.
10
The Five Levers for Change offers a
coherent approach to thinking about
behaviour change and putting it into
practice. It is not intended as a step-by-
step process; the Levers don’t have to
follow one after the other. But what
we’ve learnt is that the most effective
programmes apply all the Levers in
some way.
Changing oral hygiene habits –
an example in practice
More than half the world’s population
only brush their teeth once a
day, rather than twice as dentists
recommend. Clinical studies show
that brushing twice a day with
a fluoride toothpaste
can reduce tooth
decay by up to
50% among
children
compared
to brushing once. And yet tooth decay
remains one of the most common
chronic childhood diseases – the World
Health Organisation estimates that 60-
90% of school children worldwide have
dental cavities.
So we have set a goal in the Unilever
Sustainable Living Plan to help 50
million people change their tooth
brushing behaviour. We used the Five
Levers for Change model to develop our
behaviour change campaign.
First, we selected our target audience
– focusing on children aged 4-8, the
age at which children learn to brush
by themselves and establish their oral
care habits for a lifetime. Our secondary
target audience is parents and
teachers who play an important role
in modelling and reinforcing good
brushing behaviour. We found that
children’s current habit is predominantly
to brush their teeth just once a day –
in the morning after breakfast.
“THE mOST
EffECTIVE
pROGRAmmES AppLY
ALL THE LEVERS
IN SOmE wAY.”
Inspiring Sustainable Living: Unilever’s Five Levers For Change | 11
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Having identified our target and
understood their current behaviour,
we then conducted in-depth research
across a range of markets to find out
more about what children and their
parents think, do and feel when it
comes to oral health. We mined existing
information for insights and immersed
ourselves in the world of children and
their parents: watching children’s TV
programmes, playing their games,
reading magazines and parent blogs
and speaking to young children and
parents we knew.
Then we undertook some exploratory
research to plug gaps in our knowledge.
This helped us to identify some
key insights:
• ‘Barrier’ insights which revealed
that the lack of understanding about
the importance of night brushing is
an important block to brushing
twice a day
• ‘Trigger’ insights which highlight how
to motivate children and their parents
to adopt the habit
• ‘Motivator’ insights which
suggest ways to ensure that the
new habit of brushing twice a day
is sustained over time and becomes
an established part of the
bedtime routine.
“THE fIVE LEVERS
fOR CHANGE OffERS A
COHERENT AppROACH
TO THINkING ABOUT
BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
AND pUTTING IT INTO
pRACTICE.”
12
These new insights were brought to life
in the ‘Pablo and Oliver’ programme for
our Signal and Pepsodent toothpaste
brands, which shows the fun times
that a father and son can share when
brushing their teeth together at night.
We used all Five Levers for Change
in the programme. To ‘make it
understood’ we used powerful
messages such as “brushing day and
night with a fluoride toothpaste can cut
tooth decay up to 50% among children
compared to brushing once”. To ‘make
it easy’, we offered downloadable
games to make brushing teeth at night
an easy habit for the family to share. To
‘make it rewarding’, we offered prizes
for continuing with the habit.
However, the real breakthrough came
from our efforts to ‘make it desirable’.
This inspired us to create a strong role
for dad in the campaign. We recognised
the role fathers can play in passing on
good habits to children and how
this appeals to a father’s desire of
seeing himself as a good, involved
and fun parent.
Finally, to help ‘make it a habit’ we
explored new ways of creating sustained
behaviour change. Along with sticker
diaries to encourage children to practise
the new habit over several weeks,
we reminded parents by sending them
mobile alerts to coincide with
children’s bedtime.
Results are very encouraging with
increased brushing frequency in the
countries running the programme. This
is a great win-win outcome: improving
children’s oral health and helping us
grow our business.
The future
The Five Levers for Change is a simple
process that has resulted in some
success. But there is no silver bullet for
behaviour change.
Our methodology increases the
likelihood of developing a successful
behaviour change programme, but
developing the programme is only
half the story. The critical second half
involves staying power.
“OUR mETHODOLOGY
INCREASES THE
LIkELIHOOD
Of DEVELOpING A
SUCCESSfUL
BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
pROGRAmmE.”
Inspiring Sustainable Living: Unilever’s Five Levers For Change | 13
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
A behavioural change programme
requires sustained and consistent
investment. Too often, campaigns
announce the need for the new
behaviour and stop there. In order
to work, change needs to start with
awareness but then build upon this to
establish and reinforce the behaviour.
It lasts beyond a campaign, indeed
beyond the time-span of the average
marketer’s job.
And, most importantly, we are
aware that just as people are
complex, so too is behaviour change.
Our understanding is continually
evolving. We are continuing to
work with authorities in the field to
ensure we’re exposed to the latest
behavioural change thinking
and practice.
We are publishing our approach
because we think that there are
wider benefits from sharing our work
with others. We’ve learnt a great
deal through our health and hygiene
campaigns and we know that there
is potential for this approach to be
applied to the environmental field –
helping consumers use less water,
emit less greenhouse gases and
produce less waste.
The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan
sets out our own commitments as a
company over the next decade, and
we hope others will join in to create
widespread and lasting change.
The future rests on companies
producing goods and services
that society wants, in ways that
enhance health and well-being
and don’t damage the planet for
future generations.
“wE HOpE OTHERS
wILL JOIN IN TO
CREATE wIDESpREAD
AND LASTING
CHANGE.”
14
CONSUmING pASSIONS:
wHY DO wE CONSUmE?
VAL CURTIS, LONDON SCHOOL Of HYGIENE AND TROpICAL mEDICINE
Why are we humans such a greedy
lot? There are four reasons why we
like to consume. First, we seek to
meet basic needs: for calories, micro-
nutrients, water, shelter and transport,
for example. Second, we consume to
stimulate ourselves, to give ourselves
pleasure: cheesecake, music, flowers
and recreational drugs all fall into this
category. We also consume to hoard:
owning and collecting things is an
ancient instinctual buffer against the
shortages our ancestors suffered in
the Pleistocene savannah. This instinct
to hoard is more often nowadays
expressed in shoe, ornament and, in
my case, hotel soap collecting. But
the fourth, and most economically
important, type of consumption serves
a signalling function – consumption as
display. As Geoffrey Miller eloquently
argues in his book Spent, we consume
to show off. We throw away the old
and buy the latest phone because
otherwise we’d be seen as old
fashioned; we wear what’s cool in our
social group; we buy beauty products
to advertise our fitness and thus attract
potential mates (even if we are not
actually in need of one).
Two types of consumption
Consumption of goods is on the rise
globally, and most of this rise can be
put down to two of the four forces.
One part of the world still has to meet
its basic needs: for food, for washing
machines and for toilets. At the same
time people in the rich world are
spending wildly in an arms race of
display consumption: the high-tech
kitchen, the four-wheel drive, the
airplane trip to the mini-break, the new
mobile phone every 18 months, all of
which aim to out-do, not just the local
Joneses, but the global mega-rich, as
seen on TV. It is important to separate
these two categories of consumption.
Spending on basic needs will grow
inexorably in the emerging markets
of the world and it is untenable to
suggest that such growth should be
stifled or somehow prevented. To take
one example; without access to the
washing machine, two-thirds of the
world’s women still laboriously scrub
clothes clean by hand in bowls, basins
and rivers. As Hans Rosling points
out in his classic ‘the Magic Washing
Consuming Passions: Why Do We Consume? | 15
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Machine’ talk at TED, the non-profit
conference organisation, not even the
most hardened environmentalist is
prepared to wash his jeans by hand. Yet
these same environmentalists presume
to propose that poor women forgo the
liberation from drudgery of the energy-
consuming machine. Rosling argues that
we should rather direct our concerns
at the consumption patterns of the
rich world, who use the lion’s share of
resources – mostly for the purpose of
conspicuous display consumption.
If consumerism really is a problem for
the future of the planet (and not all
would agree, for a contrarian view see
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley),
then the question of how to stem
this rampant, wasteful, signalling via
products is a pressing one.
First we need to
see the problem
for what it is. The
sociologist and
economist Thorstein
Veblen provided an early explanation in
his 1899 critique of consumerism. He
argued that conspicuous consumption,
via conspicuous waste, is used as a way
to signal status. Evolutionary psychology
tells us why. The brain of Homo sapiens
evolved in a world of scarcity, and as
a result we are tuned to always want
‘more’. Because this was adaptive, it
kept us striving to get the stuff that
helped us to get more offspring, in
our dim and distant past. But it was
also adaptive to admire, to emulate,
to cleave to and to want to mate with
those who had ‘more’. Displaying your
success through having so much surplus
that it could even be wasted led others
to want to ally with you and to accord
you social status, and hence higher
fitness and more gene copies in the
next generation. The desire to signal
success and to copy the successful are
thus inescapable facts of the human
“wE CONSUmE TO
SHOw Off.
wE THROw AwAY
THE OLD AND BUY THE
LATEST pHONE BECAUSE
OTHERwISE wE’D BE
SEEN AS OLD
fASHIONED.”
16
nature that we have inherited: they
are ancient motives, the voices of our
ancestors, and we cannot simply reason
them away.
Marketing and a spiral of
self-destruction
Marketers have, of course, long
understood the power of these
voices. They know that they can sell
shampoo and cars on sex appeal and
mobile phones as status props. Adding
signalling value to brands works, it shifts
more products, however irrational this
display behaviour may be in our
modern world.
And, of course, the wider the gap
between those who have stuff and
those who have not, the greater the
motivation for those with less to try
to catch up. As rich countries get
richer, as the rich in emerging markets
pull away from their poor, and as the
mega-rich get to display their toys via
global media, so the innate need to
signal that one is not ‘a failure’
grows. As a result, more and more
consumers around the world
spend frantically in an effort to
signal that they are also worthy
of attention, status and mating
opportunity. Is this an inevitable
and gathering process,
doomed to spiral us into
self-destruction?
Imprecations to give up our
goodies are certainly not going
to halt the process. In Christopher
Marlowe’s play Dr Faustus, Mephisto
argues to Faust that for the good of his
own soul he should:
“Pack up your things and get
back to the land
And there begin to
dig and ditch;
Keep to the marrow round,
confine your mind,
And live on fodder of the simplest kind,
A beast among the bees;
and don’t forget
To use your own dung on
the crops you set!”
-Marlowe,1604
No amount of romantic environmental
rhetoric will induce us, as a species,
to forgo the vast improvements in
the conditions of life brought about
by industrialisation. And there is no
question that our current global market
system will allow these benefits to
continue to spread. This inevitably
means more consumption. So how
can we meet the challenge
of reining in wasteful,
signalling consumption?
Motivations, payoffs and
the future
One way to engineer human
behaviour is to change what’s
called the motivational payoff
structure. Tax systems could be
re-engineered to social ends,
one of which could be to switch
Consuming Passions: Why Do We Consume? | 17
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
to purchase taxes that make a distinction
between basic needs and wasteful
consumption. This would be deeply
controversial; careful research and much
citizen debate would be needed to
figure out how to draw the line between
what was and what was not wasteful.
Another way to change the motivational
payoff structure is to imbue the target
behaviour with a new motive: can
wasteful consumption behaviour
be seen as parasitic on society and
therefore disgusting? Can it be made
ridiculous, embarrassing and shameful?
Some moves have been made in this
direction by the environmental lobby,
suggesting that this may be possible.
Research could be conducted to
highlight the craziness of our consuming
behaviour, the lack of logic in our frantic
signalling – signals that few even notice
anyway – and the insanity of signalling
sexual attractiveness when happily
married or post-reproductive. We can
expose our mismatched cave-man
motives as ridiculous, damaging and
disgusting in the context of the
modern world.
However, it’s not clear how research or
campaigns to change public attitudes
would be funded. Most resources
deployed in influencing human
consumption behaviour today work in
the opposite direction: global marketing
budgets motivate us to spend in an
environmentally unsound fashion.
Some large companies, of course, have
a vested interest in continuing to shift
as much product as possible; it is not in
their short-term interests to attempt to
curb wasteful consumption.
Yet the most enlightened companies,
those that are ahead of, or even leaders
of, social change, may find that they
get a first-mover advantage, a chance
to claim the moral high ground, a
chance for their brands to become more
trusted by consumers because they are
associated with improving our planet.
They can innovate to produce products
that are slim, light, long lasting, use
efficient production and packaging,
and are easy on the environment: and
they can market these as signals of
taste and status. They can fund research
into wasteful consumption and even
campaign against it. Those companies
who first claim the moral high ground
earn the right to shoot at others below,
and can join a growing trend that
stigmatises, rather than admires
and lauds, wasteful consumption.
“CONSUmERS AROUND
THE wORLD SpEND
fRANTICALLY IN AN
EffORT TO SIGNAL THAT
THEY ARE ALSO wORTHY Of
ATTENTION, STATUS AND
mATING OppORTUNITY.”
18
THE TRANSfORmATIVE
pOwER Of INDIVIDUALS
HELIO mATTAR, pRESIDENT, AkATU INSTITUTE fOR CONSCIOUS CONSUmpTION, BRAzIL
Around 16% of humankind is
responsible for 78% of all consumption.
At the same time, present levels of
consumption demand 50% more
renewable natural resources than the
Earth is able to supply. This means
that the proportion of humanity that
at present defines the mainstream
pattern of consumption – although
that proportion is quite small – is
already leading to a situation where
Earth cannot continue to provide
clean air, potable water, healthy arable
land and a complete absorption of
residues generated by production
and consumption. The environmental
services demanded from the planet are
simply not there to be supplied.
If the whole of humanity were to
consume resources at the same rate
as the 16% richest inhabitants of
the planet, five Earths would not
be sufficient to supply all resources
needed. So, clearly, a new pattern of
consumption is needed, one that would
allow the well-being of the whole of
humankind and, at the same time,
respect the inherent limits of the natural
resources of the planet on which
we all live.
In general, the tendency is to think
that, for that to happen, it would be
necessary to reduce the well-being
provided by the present model of
consumption. That is not true. A simple
example may help explain why: if only
one individual cleans their teeth three
times a day using one cup of water
instead of leaving the water running
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
The Transformative Power of Individuals | 19
from the tap for the two minutes
that brushing takes, the amount of
water saved during the 70 years of
their life would be equivalent to
three-quarters of the water in an
Olympic swimming pool.
The power of acting together
This example considers only one small
gesture, that of turning off the tap
while cleaning your teeth, and for just
one individual. Can you imagine the
savings when a family, a community,
a nation adopts the same behaviour?
Or when one considers other activities
where water is consumed, such as
taking a shower; washing dishes,
the floor, your clothes, the car; when
cooking. That clearly shows where
Unilever’s approach, ‘small actions,
big difference’ comes from. In Brazil,
the same slogan was translated into
Portuguese as ‘each gesture counts’,
which expresses the same concept.
For that reason, consumption can be
used as a powerful means to positively
transform the world. For that to be
realised, the individual would have to
be aware of the impact of every act of
“CONSUmpTION CAN BE
USED AS A pOwERfUL
mEANS TO pOSITIVELY
TRANSfORm
THE wORLD.”
20
consumption on the environment and
society and try to reduce the negative
impacts and increase the positive ones.
That can be done through a change
in the behaviour of the consumer or
through a change in the products
offered by companies to consumers, so
as to have a smaller negative impact on
the environment. A good example
are the products designed to use less
energy, such as Unilever’s laundry
products.
It is important to remember that
no product can be manufactured
or used without the extraction of
natural resources from the crust of
the Earth and the use of water and
energy. These items are present in the
production or use of products, even
when the consumer does not notice
them explicitly. As a consequence,
consumers can make an enormous
everyday contribution to the present
and future sustainability
of life on our planet
by choosing which
companies to buy from
and giving preference to
those that have adopted a more friendly
stance towards the environment and
society. They can choose products that
were produced, and can be used and
disposed of, with the best possible
standards from an environmental and
social point of view.
The opportunity ahead
It is important to emphasise that we
are not referring to future risks but
to the opportunities for each and
every consumer to contribute today to
reduce the present and future risks of
unsustainability. However, the problem
is of such magnitude that it would be
too optimistic to expect a solution to
come from any single social agent, be it
government, multilateral organisations,
corporations or civil society. We need
a process that engages the whole of
humanity, starting with the actions of
each individual. This should be reflected
in the enabling conditions provided by
national governments, corporations
and multilateral organisations so that
change is implemented on a scale and
at a speed that can contribute, in time,
to reversing the present pattern of
unsustainability of life on Earth.
But let me repeat: the process starts
at the level of the individual, with the
understanding that small actions will
lead to big changes. In order to show
that individuals do have an enormous
opportunity to contribute, let me give
you two additional examples.
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
The Transformative Power of Individuals | 21
A single British or American citizen
throws away, every day, 1.3kg of waste.
Over 75 years – the approximate life
expectancy of each of those citizens –
the total amount disposed of as waste
by one individual is 36 tons. If one takes
six families with two children each,
the amount of waste they throw away
during their lives (assuming a life span
of 75 years), would require 271,000
towers the size of Big Ben in London to
hold it all.
Of course, the more individuals reduce
the amount of waste produced, the
lower the cost of collecting it, allowing
governments to invest in other,
more important issues than garbage
collection.
And a final example: one American
individual consumes, on average, 350g
of cattle meat every day. To produce
these quantities of meat, 5,300 litres of
water are needed.
As a consequence, over 75 years –
the lifetime of an average American
– an amount equivalent to almost 60
Olympic swimming pools is necessary
for the production of meat that an
individual will eat. That is a lot of water
to feed just one individual.
Of course, the more individuals
reduce the amount of beef they eat,
or substitute with chicken, the less
water will be consumed and more will
be available for other uses. Water is a
precious resource that large groups of
people and regions on the planet lack.
By telling one’s family and friends about
these examples, and by mobilising them
to choose better products and to use
them in a better way, each individual
can multiply the positive impact of his
or her actions by the number of people
they mobilise to do the same. We must
start today.
“EACH INDIVIDUAL
CAN mULTIpLY THE
pOSITIVE ImpACT
Of HIS OR HER ACTIONS
BY THE NUmBER Of
pEOpLE THEY mOBILISE
TO DO THE SAmE.”
22
VISIONS AND ACTIONS fOR
SUSTAINABLE LIfESTYLES
CHERYL HICkS AND mICHAEL kUHNDT, UNEp/wUppERTAL INSTITUTE, CSCp, GERmANY
If you had to live your life more
sustainably this weekend, what would
you do? Answering this question
implies that you have a good idea of
what sustainability means, that you
know what is unsustainable about the
way you currently spend your weekend
and that you are already interested in
seeking options for what you might
do differently to achieve sustainability.
‘Having it all’, that is meeting all of
our needs and desires with minimal
environmental and social impact, will
require a deeper understanding of what
those needs and desires are, and what
is holding us back.
These questions are at the centre of
a current research effort, SPREAD
Sustainable Lifestyles 2050, which is
exploring what it means to live our lives
more sustainably, what changes will be
required and for whom, what options
can be enabled to help us to meet
differing individual needs and desires,
and what promising sustainable living
practices are already starting to
be revealed.
What is unsustainable about the
way we live?
In the last century, a modern economy
has delivered remarkable affluence and
increased quality of living standards
for hundreds of millions of people
worldwide. But the economic growth
behind this wealth generation has
inflicted dangerous costs on the
environment, while billions more aspire
to the same high standards of living.
According to the Global Footprint
Network, humanity today is simply
demanding more resources than the
Earth can provide – five planets if you
live in the US – and of course, we
only have one. This century has begun
with a ‘great convergence’ in living
standards as poorer countries speedily
adopt the technology, know-how and
policies that made the West rich. China
and India are the biggest and fastest
growing of the catch-up countries, but
the emerging-market boom has spread
to embrace Latin America and
Africa too.
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Visions and Actions For Sustainable Lifestyles | 23
The way we eat and live in our homes,
what we buy, consume and waste,
and how we move around account for
significant impacts. According to the
European Environment Agency, our
food is among the highest (20–30% of
our household consumption impacts).
Meat and dairy account for 24% of
all of food consumption impacts in
Europe. Over-consumption of fish
is leading to the depletion of some
fish stocks and collapsing fisheries.
Increased imports of non-seasonal
and exotic food are associated with
high levels of food processing and
high energy use both for production
and use. The energy used to heat our
homes (67% of household energy
consumption in the EU) and the water
we use, together with our appliances
and electronic goods, account for
approximately 40% of total energy
consumption. Increasing extraction of
natural resources and raw materials
(such as wood products, metals and
diamonds) used to manufacture
growing volumes of household
products and consumer goods,
together with rising levels of household
waste, and the impact of the transport
of these goods around the globe,
can cause consumer goods alone to
account for 14% of an average citizen’s
footprint in the UK. Current lifestyle
patterns are also leading to significant
health impacts, such as obesity, heart
disease and cancer.
Visions of sustainable living from
around the world
Universally, people want to improve
their lives. But what is right for
everyone, everywhere? Recent studies
show that our visions of sustainability,
our ideas about sustainable living, and
the futures we aspire to show nuances
of interpretation around the world.
Globally, sustainability is still
predominantly seen as a good that
involves some sort of trade-off. This
entails a risk that people might feel
alienated from it, with no real sense of
agency – or empowerment – to make
change happen.
“GLOBALLY,
SUSTAINABILITY IS
STILL pREDOmINANTLY SEEN
AS A GOOD THAT INVOLVES
SOmE SORT Of
TRADE-Off.”
24
For Western households, sustainability
tends to mean some variation of ‘living
with minimal impact on the Earth’.
This may include things like minimising
the use of non-renewable resources,
thinking about purchases in terms
of whether they were really needed,
how they would be disposed of and
recycled. The Latin American view tends
to put more importance on aspects of
community and social development.
The Asian view tends to include
nuances of economic sustainability
first along with the viability of national
economic development. For example,
the Switch Asia Network Facility, which
promotes sustainable production and
consumption in Asia, finds that lifestyles
in Asia are increasingly influenced by
the escalating consumption patterns
of its growing middle class. Asia is
expected to be at the forefront of
worldwide consumption by 2030, with
consumer spending projected to reach
$32 trillion and constitute about 42%
of worldwide consumption.
A global survey of young adults on
their visions for sustainable lifestyles
was published by the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) in
2011. According to this survey, very few
young people around the world cited
dreams of luxury and unlimited material
comfort. These young adults portrayed
optimistic visions for their lives in the
future which included: the capacity to
meet one’s needs and reach a middle-
class standard of living, a fulfilling job
providing a sense of self-achievement,
a successful family and social life, and a
clean environment. Importantly, young
adults seek security: financial, social,
environmental and personal.
What will it take to have
the lifestyles we want, more
sustainably?
The global population will not change
behaviour or lifestyles homogeneously.
Each of us has different needs, desires,
cultural legacies and habits that we
seek to fulfil on a daily basis. Human
behaviour and consumer segmentation
specialists group people by similarities
in terms of motivators, influencers
and triggers to behave or act. When
it comes to sustainability, studies have
found that our sense of empowerment
to make change and our ability to
delay personal gratification drive many
behaviours and daily decisions. For
example, consumer segmentation
studies show that about 1–2% of
us will be leaders in society, feel
empowered to make change and
advocate what we believe in while
“wE NEED TO mAkE
SUSTAINABLE
LIVING OpTIONS EASY.”
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Visions and Actions For Sustainable Lifestyles | 25
delaying personal gain or gratification
for the greater good; about 7–8% of
us will do this only if it benefits our
families or community and makes a
difference in their lives; about 10% of
us feel completely outside mainstream
society and that our actions make no
difference in society; and most of us,
70–80% of people in most societies,
are driven by a constant need for
instant personal gratification, feeling
empowered to make change for
ourselves without compromise.
What does this mean for sustainable
lifestyles and how can we use this
information to enable more sustainable
living? These studies suggest that
only a small number of us will alter
our behaviour or lifestyles to protect
the environment alone. Even where
well-being and agency are seen
as cornerstones of an ideal future,
sustainability is not spontaneously
considered as a factor of progress –
the benefits are not clear.
What this tells us is that information
is not enough; we need to make
sustainable living options easy. Richard
Thaler and Cass Sunstein describe in
their recent book, Nudge (2008), that
every day we make decisions about
the way we live, but unfortunately,
we often choose poorly. Our mistakes
make us poorer and less healthy, and
have a negative impact on the planet.
By knowing how people think, we can
design choice environments that make
it easier for people to choose what is
best for themselves their families and
their society.
For example, immediate information
about what people are buying is
important but does not tell us enough
about why people buy and what
would help them to change impactful
consumption or lifestyle habits.
Therefore, we need to understand
what current behaviours (and lifestyle
choices) mean to people and what
needs they fulfil. This information
can then help us to develop different
options and more sustainable ways to
fulfil those needs.
26
We have learned several key things
about motivating behaviour change.
Here is a sample from our recent
work with the social innovation firm,
Collective Invention:
Changes proposed have to fill the
individual’s needs. If the way we live
is focused on pleasure and feelings
of success, new products and services
will only be adopted if they at least
maintain and ideally enhance pleasure.
A drop in performance or perceived
status will not be accepted.
Old behaviours need to be
unlearned. Phasing in the change with
a new product or service that fulfils the
same need helps new behaviours to be
learned in a non-critical way and old
behaviours gradually reduced. This is
why driving a hybrid will be easier for
most consumers than cycling or taking
public transport.
Instant feedback and positive
reinforcement are critical.
This allows people to keep
connecting change to things that are
important to them. Smart meters that
show the energy consumption of your
house on a daily basis are an example
where you can see your reductions
in energy use in real time. Seeing the
energy consumption of your house
benchmarked against your neighbours,
where your consumption is higher, will
also tend to be very motivating for
behaviour change.
Understanding how people think and
what motivates them to act may help
policy-makers, community leaders and
designers to develop many solution
options that better address people’s
needs, desires and growing concerns.
Adding knowledge of sustainability in
this process creates new opportunities
to drive product, policy and process
innovation that will advance broader
societal innovation and deliver the
future lifestyles we want. We can
have it all.
Future Actions – Translating
sustainability into meaning for our
everyday lives
1. Visualising and demonstrating
We need more examples and
demonstrations of what more
sustainable living actually looks like.
The Collaborating Centre for
Sustainable Consumption & Production
(CSCP) and Collective Invention have
produced a prototype of what more
sustainable living could look like in
2050 in the form of a demonstration
example of a family living in Europe in
the year 2050: The Family YOU. This
family is a set of constructed personas
that allow us to jump into the shoes
of people living in the future and
share their lifestyles, and to explore
the ways in which possible futures will
intersect with the needs, desires and
actions of individuals. What policies,
infrastructure, services and societal
innovations might have enabled these
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Visions and Actions For Sustainable Lifestyles | 27
living conditions? What behaviour
changes are needed to deliver this
vision of a more sustainable future?
2. Options, access and availability
We need more options for sustainable
living that meet diverse needs and
desires. These options need to be
readily available and easy to access.
The CSCP has developed for the REWE
Group, one of the leading trading
and travel and tourism companies
in Europe, the PRO PLANET product
label system. The aim is to support
sustainable consumption in the mass
market and to offer products with
sustainable added value at a good
price. The methodology identifies
the most adverse environmental and
social impacts of the product during its
lifecycle, including consumption (‘Hot
Spot Analysis’) and generates strategies
to minimise the negative impacts.
At least 80 products across Germany
now have a PRO PLANET label,
including foods (strawberries, tomatoes,
peppers), paper products (toilet
paper), textiles (t-shirts) and home
improvement products (paint, wooden
flooring). Further analysis and roll-out
of other product groups is planned.
3. Innovation at all levels
Achieving sustainable lifestyles will
require a radical rethinking of the
systems that are currently driving
unsustainable trends – innovation
is required at all levels of business
(business model, product and service
innovation), policy (legislation and
decision-making innovation) and society
(social and societal innovation) – and
in partnership or collaboration with
each other. Sustainability entrepreneurs
are critical actors for enabling a more
sustainable future by focusing on the
technological, social and infrastructure
innovations that will deliver more
sustainable lifestyle models.
The CSCP is providing training
programmes and tools for the academic
community in emerging markets with
the aim of encouraging and developing
more sustainability entrepreneurs.
The SMART Start-Up initiative began
with a programme introducing
sustainable lifestyles and sustainable
entrepreneurship into African
universities and colleges from 2007 to
2010. Currently it is applied throughout
Europe, in China and in Brazil.
“wE NEED mORE EXAmpLES
AND DEmONSTRATIONS
Of wHAT mORE
SUSTAINABLE LIVING
ACTUALLY LOOkS LIkE.”
28
TECHNOLOGY HOLDS THE kEY
TO THE fUTURE
DR RICHARD L wRIGHT,
BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE DIRECTOR, UNILEVER
As a behavioural scientist in Unilever’s
Research & Development (R&D) team,
the question I ask myself is: how can
our science and technology expertise
help people to wash their hands before
meals, clean their teeth at night and use
products more sustainably?
One way science helps is by ensuring
that the understanding and theories
developed in behavioural science over
many years drive Unilever’s behaviour
change interventions. We turned theory
into practice by developing accessible
principles that are now used by our
brand marketing teams.
However, probably the most powerful
means that Unilever’s R&D team has to
change people’s behaviour lies in the
large number of consumers we reach:
we design products that are used 2
billion times a day. We help shape what
and how people eat, how they wash
their clothes and clean their teeth. This
means that we play a critical role in the
behaviour which affects their health
and well-being, and the extent to which
they impact our planet when carrying
out everyday actions.
If we can help all our consumers to
make small changes in behaviour then,
multiplied by billions of uses, this can
make a huge difference to our world.
Subtle changes in product design can
enable these changes.
However, this isn’t about manipulation.
It is about making the right choice the
easy and desirable choice. It is similar to
Thaler and Sunstein’s idea of ‘nudging’.
For instance, shoppers could be ‘nudged’
to buy more healthy foods if they were
presented at eye level in stores.
Some simple ‘nudges’ in practice
In a similar vein we have ‘nudged’
our consumers into buying more
Technology Holds the Key to the Future | 29
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
sustainable, concentrated Omo and
Persil laundry liquids because they are
lighter and more convenient. If dosed
correctly, concentrates provide the same
number of washes as ‘dilute liquids’,
while reducing water and waste per
bottle, and halving the number of
trucks required to transport them. This
reduces greenhouse gas emissions per
wash. And, because dosing smaller
amounts is critical for concentrates, we
also ‘nudged’ them into using the right
amount by providing the correct size
dosing cap.
A second, more recent, example is
Comfort One Rinse. We noticed that
consumers in some Asian countries such
as Vietnam and India, who handwash
their clothes, used three buckets of
water at the rinse stage. For these
consumers, clothes were not completely
rinsed until all the soap foam had
disappeared. Comfort One Rinse uses
foam-dispersing technology to reduce
the amount of foam and thereby the
requirement for rinsing decreases to
just one bucket. This has made the task
of washing clothes by hand easier and
quicker for consumers and delivered an
environmental benefit at the same time.
You may wonder why we need to be
subtle in our approach to environmental
behaviour change. Why can’t we just
create and market environmentally
friendly products under a ‘green’
proposition? The truth is that most
people are not ready to trade off product
effectiveness or convenience for the
benefit of the environment. In the West,
many people drive their car to the local
shops because of the convenience.
The key to reducing our environmental
footprint is, in part, about using
sustainable ingredients or more efficient
technology but also about creating
products that shape people’s behaviour
while at the same time improving their
product experience, not making it worse.
Another area in which technology can
make a big impact in behaviour change
is in providing the means for accurate
behaviour measurement. The availability
of small, low-cost electronic sensors has
dramatically changed the way we study
behaviour in Unilever.
Back to the bathroom – How do we
measure accurately?
I have spent a large part of my career
wondering what people do in the
bathroom when they clean their teeth,
go to the toilet or shower. Despite my
interest, people’s enthusiasm for being
watched in the bathroom is limited!
“wE DESIGN
pRODUCTS
THAT ARE USED
2 BILLION
TImES A DAY.”
30
There are critical gaps in understanding
what people actually do rather than
what they say they do. However, asking
them is not a good alternative to
watching them; many everyday activities
that lead to health or environmental
outcomes are habitual and done
unconsciously. These are repeated
actions that we do without thinking –
it comes as no surprise, therefore, that
people have a poor ability to tell you
what they do.
A second problem with asking people is
that they like to present themselves in a
positive light. When asked by a doctor,
we tend to underestimate our alcohol
consumption. This is not because
we mistrust the doctor’s motives but
because an underestimate presents us
in a better light. We have found strong
‘self-presentation’ effects repeatedly in
our research; people exaggerate ‘good’
behaviours such as cleaning their teeth
and washing their hands, while they
underestimate ‘bad’ unhealthy or anti-
social behaviours.
Our solution to the problem of
understanding behaviour has been a
technological one. Over the past eight
years, I have worked with technologists,
inside and outside Unilever, to develop
small electronic devices which monitor
movement. We embed these into
products like soap and toothbrushes
and use them in our consumer trials.
When our volunteers use the sensor
products, the devices record signals
which can be downloaded and
interpreted back at the laboratory. So
we know when and how our products
are being used 24 hours a day, 7 days
a week. This means we know when
farmers in rural India wash their hands
and bodies with soap and how many
times a week urban Chinese consumers
brush their teeth.
We have also used these electronic
sensors to test the effectiveness of
behaviour change campaigns. Unilever’s
behaviour change approach (described
in the article by B V Pradeep) was
used to develop a TV advertisement to
encourage children to brush at night.
It used the father as a role model,
suggesting that children adopt the
father’s good and bad habits – so teach
them a good one such as cleaning your
teeth at night. In our study, half the
families were shown this advert and
the others a TV advert for the same
brand but that did not talk about night
brushing. All members of these families
received sensored brushes and their
behaviour was tracked before and after
exposure to the adverts.
“THERE ARE CRITICAL
GApS IN UNDERSTANDING
wHAT pEOpLE
ACTUALLY DO.”
Technology Holds the Key to the Future | 31
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
When asked, both groups claimed to
have increased their brushing following
the adverts. However, our monitors
showed that neither group changed
their morning time brushing, while
only the group watching the role-
model advert increased their evening
brushing. Although the exposure to
the advert was limited, and the effects
small, this real behavioural effect gave
us confidence to move ahead with the
‘Pablo and Oliver’ TV campaign. Had
we relied on people’s reports we would
have seen no difference between the
two adverts. Had we wanted to see a
clinical outcome, such as reduction in
cavities, it would have taken years and
cost millions.
We have also developed monitors for
soap, bottles and washing machines
and now we are even using them to
track showering. As well as enabling
evaluation, they play a critical role in
generating insights which then drive our
innovation ideas.
Recently, we conducted what we believe
to be the UK’s largest showering study.
We monitored the showers of 100
families. Using electronic monitors we
were able to get over 1,000 days’ worth
of data, a total of over 2,600 showers.
Our monitors recorded when showers
were taken and how long they lasted;
we also recorded the water flow and
temperature of the showers. Some
interesting things we found were that
the average shower time was around
eight minutes – three minutes longer
than the popularly conceived ‘five-
minute shower’ and that nearly a quarter
of showers used more than the 80 litres
of water considered typical for bathing.
These and other insights from our
showering study will drive our efforts
into ‘nudging’ people into taking
more sustainable showers. We don’t
yet have all the answers and we are
still learning as we trial and develop
different programmes. It’s an exciting
time to be developing behaviour change
interventions, and there are many new
innovations ahead. I am convinced
that in order to change behaviours,
technology can and must be key.
32
DYSfUNCTIONAL pOLITICIANS
AND THE pOwER Of BRANDS
JONATHON pORRITT, fOUNDER DIRECTOR, fORUm fOR THE fUTURE
A bit of me still recoils in a mixture of
repugnance and disbelief at the idea
that it’s going to be the world’s leading
brands that will rescue us from today’s
slow but inexorable slide into ecological
disaster. After all, many of those brands
have been in the vanguard of today’s
planet-trashing hyper-consumption,
contributing not just to today’s long
list of environmental problems but also
to a world ever more viciously divided
between the haves and have-nots.
The rich world’s elites were only too
happy earlier in 2011 to see protestors
out on the streets of Tunis, Cairo,
Sana’a and Benghazi. The disaffection
that gave birth to the Arab Spring
was demonstrably ‘a good thing’,
promising the downfall of dictators and
the prospect of Western-style, market-
based democracies. But they’re now
more than a little non-plussed at the
sight of protestors on the streets of
Madrid, Lisbon, London, New York and
other US cities – expressing their own
bitter disaffection with the failures of
that very same brand of market-based
democracy. When confronting the gold-
plated, ludicrously over-privileged lives
of the richest 1% in the world today,
‘we are the 99’ may just turn out to be
as powerful a rallying cry in the West as
in the Middle East.
As those divides deepen, and the
planet’s life-support systems get just
a little more stressed out every year, it
seems sort of preposterous to conjure
up the power of leading brands to turn
things around. As Professor Tim Jackson
has pointed out so tellingly in his 2009
book, Prosperity without Growth, many
brands are very far from being a “force
for good” in today’s world: “People are
being persuaded to spend money we
don’t have on things we don’t need to
create impressions that won’t last on
people we don’t care about.”
But then just look around you at the
broader sustainability scene. The vast
majority of consumers today are still
either confused/disempowered, or
indifferent/ignorant – I know it’s not
politically correct to say that, but it’s
true. Worse yet, the vast majority of
investors are still intent on maximising
short-term returns rather than building
over the long-term – even when it’s
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Dysfunctional Politicians and the Power of Brands | 33
their own pension funds that they’re
investing in.
And worst of all, governments the
world over would appear to be clueless
about transitioning their economies
from yesterday’s patently unsustainable
‘smash and grab, slash and burn’ to
the kind of sustainable capitalism that
offers the prospect of better lives for the
99% while staying within recognised
environmental limits – without too
traumatic a decline in the living
standards of the 1%.
The potential power of brands
So let’s not look these branded gift-
horses in the mouth. When I compare
our politicians’ sorry performance
on environmental issues with the
performance of some of Forum for the
Future’s leading corporate partners,
there’s no question who is making the
bigger difference. Not just in terms of
reducing their own direct footprint,
but in helping their customers improve
their own lives in increasingly more
sustainable and responsible ways.
Brands are so much better placed to
narrow that frightening ’values–action
gap’ that politicians have to confront
(where the voters say one thing and
promptly do another), and are somehow
more trustworthy precisely because they
are so clearly in the business of making
money out of doing the right thing.
As Dorothy Mackenzie of the brand
consulting business, Dragon Rouge puts
it: “People resist moralising statements.
But everyone knows a brand is out to
make money and that clarity of intent
wins trust.”
And that trust creates the space to
innovate. While politicians sit around
waiting for people to show them
where they want to go, companies can
use the power of their brands to help
‘normalise’ our behaviour – ‘wash at
30°’, ‘less is more’ (with concentrated
detergents or energy-efficient light
bulbs), ‘healthy choices, better lives’,
and so on.
Designing in sustainability and
dithering politicians
Sometimes it’s not even necessary to
ask or even inform consumers; build it
in – ‘sustainability inside’, as it were,
and don’t get too het up if people don’t
know exactly what those benefits are all
about. How many ordinary citizens have
the first clue what ‘Intel Inside’ means,
even as they feel vaguely good that the
latest gizmo that they’re splashing out
on offers them that reassurance.
“COmpANIES CAN USE
THE pOwER Of THEIR
BRANDS TO HELp
‘NORmALISE’
OUR BEHAVIOUR.”
34
And that’s about as good as it gets at
the moment – as politicians dither and
short-termism rules supreme in our
capital markets. What we need to do is
to build aspirational armies of citizen-
consumers who no longer feel the
need to get cynical at the idea of ‘small
actions, big difference’. It’s all about
scale, as explained by John Thøgersen,
Professor of Economic Psychology at the
Aarhus School of Business and Social
Science in Denmark:
“One of the reasons why people are
passive is that they feel no one else
is doing anything. When it comes to
climate change, your contribution is
so small it doesn’t really matter. What
matters is what other people do. If
you don’t perceive that many people
are also saving energy, then you
feel a bit of a sucker because you’re
losing something without helping the
problem.”
In that regard, things have moved on
a long way from the ‘I Will If You Will’
message that the UK’s Roundtable on
Sustainable Consumption first came
up with nearly six years ago. Today’s
leading brands have a much more
dynamic story to tell: ‘We Have,
So You Can’.
And we certainly need to see today’s
still-fashionable cynicism put aside.
Short of the whole global economy
imploding in front of our eyes (which I
can assure you would do very little to
enhance the prospect of a genuinely
sustainable world), we have to take
people with us, step by step, not beat
them into submission.
Solitaire Townsend, one of the
co-founders of communications
consultancy Futerra, has been
particularly trenchant in her critique
of conventional environmental
campaigning (“Environmentalists are
very good at identifying what people
should desire – not what they actually
do desire”), exhorting politicians and
businesses alike to put “the sizzle” into
sustainability, using humour, creativity,
“TODAY’S LEADING BRANDS
HAVE A mUCH mORE DYNAmIC
STORY TO TELL:
‘wE HAVE, SO YOU CAN’.”
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Dysfunctional Politicians and the Power of Brands | 35
peer-to-peer messaging and real people
making a real difference in compelling,
sassy ways: “a live, warm-blooded
human being is top trumps when it
comes to changing behaviour”.
I go with all that – as do all of our
corporate partners and their brands.
But not at the expense of some deeper
probing about the scale of the change
required. As yet, even at its best, we’re
nowhere near the zone of genuinely
sustainable consumption – “less
unsustainable consumption is still the
name of the game”.
But I really don’t blame companies
for that. It’s governments that set the
rules within which companies operate
– in terms of regulation, taxation,
incentives, public procurement and so
on. Unfortunately, governments are so
in hock to today’s incumbent corporate
power-brokers and so timid in the face
of the utterly predictable whingeing
from trade associations and all those
vested interests who stand to lose
most as we innovate our way through
to a dynamic low-carbon, equitable
economy. The most we can expect of
such dysfunctional politicians, whatever
their party loyalty, is for them not to get
in the way of those who’ve seen what
a better future really looks like. And are
seriously intent on making it happen.
Scenarios for 2020
None of this makes it any easier for
leading companies today. I became
even more aware of this when we
launched our Consumer Futures 2020
project together with Unilever and
Sainsbury’s in October 2011, using four
very different scenarios looking forward
to different models of sustainable
consumption in 2020.
Financial circumstances are so tough
today that worrying about 2020 could
so easily look and feel self-indulgent:
the current mandate for both Unilever
and Sainsbury’s, shaped as it is by the
overbearing immediacy of now, could so
easily crowd out their future mandates.
But they know it absolutely mustn’t,
and both Amanda Sourry (Chairman of
Unilever UK & Ireland) and Justin King
(Chief Executive of Sainsbury’s) couldn’t
have been clearer in asserting that for
their companies there need be no clash
between growth and sustainability. Both
the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan and
Sainsbury’s new sustainability plan
(“20 by 2020”) are based on doubling
the size of their businesses while getting
better and better at managing social,
environmental and wider economic
challenges. Indeed, both argued
strongly that there is no clash, but
that they’re mutually reinforcing. Not
growth and sustainability, but growth
through sustainability.
Easily said, but one hell of a thing to
deliver. Indeed, sustainable consumption
sounds so reassuring at one level,
but dig down a bit deeper, and it
re-presents itself as one of the most
compelling challenges of our age.
36
GOVERNmENTS, NUDGING
AND EffECTIVE SCIENCE
CHARLES ABRAHAm, pENINSULA COLLEGE Of mEDICINE & DENTISTRY, UNIVERSITY Of EXETER
Humanity faces challenges requiring
changes in our everyday behaviour
patterns at individual and societal levels.
We should be optimistic about change
because we have thrived as a species
largely because of our capacity to adapt
and change our behaviour. Nonetheless,
action is needed now. What part can
governments and scientists play in
this challenge?
Consider two examples. Reductions in
CO2 emissions are critical to limiting
global temperature rises. This requires
a variety of changes in energy usage,
including changes in transportation.
Transport accounts for approximately
23% of current global energy-related
CO2 emissions and nearly three-
quarters of these are generated by
road transport. In the US, car travel
accounts for up to 91% of all vehicle
kilometres travelled, while in the UK,
car travel accounts for up to 78%
of road miles. In the context of less
expensive cars being mass produced, if
we are to protect our habitat we must
either substantially reduce the distances
we drive or we must replace internal
combustion engine cars with vehicles
using green energy.
Obesity is a growing global epidemic.
If the current rising trend remains
unchecked, more than 40% of the
UK population will be obese by 2050,
resulting in a national annual cost
of £49.9 billion. Obesity reduces life
expectancy mainly because of the
increased risk of cardiovascular disease
and diabetes. It is also associated with
an increased likelihood of developing
kidney disease, osteoarthritis, several
cancers, hypertension, dementia,
asthma and depression. While
increasing physical activity can
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Governments, Nudging and Effective Science | 37
contribute much to obesity prevention
and weight control, the real challenge is
to end over-eating.
These two examples highlight the
importance of behaviour change to
policy formulation. Transport policy is
critical to meeting emission reduction
targets, which in turn impact on the
maintenance of our global habitat.
The financial viability of supporting
health services is threatened when they
are increasingly burdened by health
problems resulting from over-eating.
Unsurprisingly, then, governments have
become increasing concerned with
understanding behaviour change.
Political acknowledgement of the
need for behaviour change
Many governments have taken an
interest in the science of behaviour
change. Here we focus on recent UK
developments. In 2007 the government
commissioned the National Institute for
Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to
provide guidance on behaviour change
for the UK National Health Service. A
broad framework was developed which
is soon to be updated and developed.
More recently, the government has
established a Behaviour Insights
team to integrate evidence-based
behaviour change interventions across
government departments. This unit
has been strongly influenced by Thaler
and Sunstein’s book Nudge. NUDGE is
an acronym that refers to a range of
distinct behaviour change techniques.
However, the defining feature of
a nudge is a change to the ‘choice
architecture’ around us that in turn
changes our motivation or decisions.
For example, placing confectionery
near supermarket checkouts is a
‘nudge’. Thaler and Sunstein refer to
anyone with the power to change the
environment that prompts decisions,
from doctors to supermarket managers
to policy-makers as ‘choice architects’.
To help policy-makers employ nudges
and other behaviour change techniques
the UK Institute for Government
has produced a checklist of change
processes organised around the
acronym MINDSPACE (Messenger,
Incentives, Norms, Defaults, Salience,
Priming, Affect, Commitments and
Ego). Each of these processes can
be translated into specific behaviour
change techniques relevant to particular
behaviours and policies.
In 2011, the Committee on Science
and Technology of the House of Lords
“wE HAVE THRIVED
AS A SpECIES LARGELY
BECAUSE Of OUR CApACITY TO
ADApT AND CHANGE
OUR BEHAVIOUR.”
38
undertook an inquiry into behaviour
change which the UK government
responded to. The committee made
a variety of recommendations to
government on how it might: use the
best available evidence on behaviour
change; best communicate with
behaviour scientists; commission large-
scale research into the population-
level effects of behaviour change
interventions; ensure that behaviour
change interventions are properly
evaluated so that lessons can be
learned; work with industry to bring
about behaviour changes; and tackle
issues such as food labelling, marketing
aimed at children and a reduction in
car usage.
Research challenges highlighted by
the House of Lords inquiry
The House of Lords inquiry highlighted
a series of challenges for research
into behaviour change. The inquiry
concluded that nudges may not often
work alone. So the key question is:
which nudges may be effective, when
and for whom? And which other
behaviour change techniques should
nudges be combined with to optimise
their effectiveness?
The inquiry also highlighted the
importance of evaluating behaviour
change interventions. If the science
of behaviour change is to advance,
we need to know what works and
what does not. It is not enough to ask
participants in a behaviour change
study whether they noticed or liked
the intervention. We need to measure
behaviour before and afterwards
among samples who do and do not
receive interventions to assess their
effectiveness. While this seems obvious
to most scientists, unfortunately it is not
the norm in commissioning of behaviour
change interventions. Consequently,
the inquiry noted an unfortunate
dearth of rigorous, long-term
evaluations of interventions designed
to change behaviour using population-
representative samples. Research of
this type is required by policy-makers
if they are to identify interventions
which are ready to be rolled out across
populations. The main implication of
this observation is for the funders of
research. Such trials are very expensive
and require long-term financial support.
Co-operation among funders to identify
potentially effective interventions
worthy of such support and testing
is needed.
“THE kEY
qUESTION IS:
wHICH NUDGES
mAY BE EffECTIVE,
wHEN AND fOR
wHOm?”
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Governments, Nudging and Effective Science | 39
Towards a science of
behaviour change
The content of behaviour change
interventions is crucial to their
effectiveness. So understanding
what content is associated with
effectiveness for which behaviours
is fundamental. Unfortunately, the
absence of standardised definitions of
behaviour change techniques included
in interventions can make it difficult
to specify exactly what was in an
intervention and, therefore, impedes
accurate replication.
Nudge, MINDSPACE and other lists
of approaches to behaviour change
provide useful pointers to the definition
of core behaviour change techniques.
However, further progress will depend
on systematic analyses of what is
included in more or less effective
behaviour change interventions –
and for whom.
Effective behaviour change
interventions are needed to resolve
a variety of global challenges facing
humanity. Politicians are increasingly
aware of the need to use effective
behaviour change interventions to
promote national well-being. This
places a responsibility on behavioural
scientists to develop broad and
inclusive frameworks to understand
change processes and mechanisms
at individual, group, societal and
international levels. Moreover,
we need to match well-specified
behaviour change techniques to these
key mechanisms of change.
“EffECTIVE
BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
INTERVENTIONS
ARE NEEDED TO
RESOLVE A
VARIETY Of GLOBAL
CHALLENGES fACING
HUmANITY.”
40
EXITING THE VALLEY
Of DEATH
SImON zADEk, INDEpENDENT ADVISOR; SENIOR VISITING fELLOw, GLOBAL GREEN GROwTH INSTITUTE
Start-up companies have named the
most dangerous moment in their
development as the ‘Valley of Death’ -
the moment between proof of concept
and the beginning of mass production
and significant sales. It is the place
where most dreams perish in the face of
conservative capital markets that doubt
an entrepreneur’s abilities to beat
the competition.
Sustainability has reached its own valley
of death. After two decades of intense
activities, we have excellent data on
the nature and scale of the problem,
an abundance of cases of successful
experiments, and the growing attention
of political and business leaders. Yet we
cannot leverage our insights, resources
and passion to contain our production
of carbon, manage the scarcity of
water, or dampen the speculative
fluctuations in the price and availability
of basic foodstuffs. De-materialised
products, rentalised markets, renewable
power and sustainability standards are
amongst the social innovations that
have provided inspiration and advances
in offering consumers greener choices.
Yet whilst our call to arms has been for
transformation, we are, in
practice, celebrating incremental
changes in the spirit of increasingly
desperate optimism.
Yet although we bemoan the lack
of much-needed speed-to-scale in
advancing the sustainability agenda,
scale is something we know a lot
about - in selling mobile phones, going
to war, watching the World Cup, or
in catalyzing fundamentalism in its
many forms. Markets, governments,
and communities in action have been
societies’ three historic instruments for
achieving scale. Business, the world’s
most fashionable vehicle of change
over recent decades across richer
Exiting the Valley of Death | 41
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
nations, can in quick time sell billions
of packets of crisps, tens of millions of
cars and millions of handguns. If the
price is right, businesses can innovate,
produce and deliver, and citizens will
turn out en masse and do the right
thing, namely buy. But the logic of
the business community has, to date,
limited its ability to deliver sustainability-
aligned products and services at scale.
Today’s backward-facing markets, in the
main, only reward companies for doing
the right thing on the margin. Despite
exemplary businesses, innovative
products, technological advances and
the fact that most people do care about
other people and the planet, most
profits are still made by selling lots of
stuff that is produced, and then used,
in environmentally unsustainable and
often socially-destructive ways.
Government and the power of
public policy
Government, after religion, is arguably
our most venerable institution for scaled
action for the broader interest - in
principle, at least. Most obviously, it does
much to define what should not be done,
set out through the rule of law. Fiscal
policy also plays a critical role in driving
consumer behaviour, with feed-in tariffs
(or their equivalent) crucial for advancing
renewables, whilst perverse fossil fuel
subsidies encourage unsustainable
lifestyles. Governments have soft as well
as statutory and fiscal instruments. The
decline in smoking throughout wealthier
nations resulted from a combination of
public education and a gradual restriction
in social space for exercising the habit.
Public education, from classrooms to
billboards, has played a major role in
socialising a deeper, inter-generational
appreciation of sustainability, from climate
to waste to health management. And
governments are big spenders, with
contestable public procurement globally
amounting to US$4-5 trillion annually,
and some have indeed moved, albeit
slowly, in greening this voluminous
purchase of goods and services.
Public policy counts in achieving scale,
and so enabling business to do what it
does best in ways that are sustainability
aligned. The nexus between business
and government is critical in shaping
options facing citizens as consumers,
voters, employees and investors. Both
together have the power to make or
prevent change, complementing
“mARkETS, GOVERNmENTS,
AND COmmUNITIES
IN ACTION HAVE
BEEN SOCIETIES’ THREE
HISTORIC INSTRUmENTS
fOR ACHIEVING SCALE.”
42
each others’ strengths and offsetting
each others’ weaknesses. The US’s
environmental shortfalls can be
directly attributed to the power of
businesses that benefit from the status
quo, whatever the cost. Meanwhile,
Denmark’s new government has come
to office with a mandate to double the
country’s carbon emission reduction
targets to 40% by 2020 and to deliver
an energy system powered largely by
wind by the same date, providing a
strong domestic basis for building its
next generation of global exporters.
Similarly, the Korean government
is driving forward with the nation’s
business community, an integrated
green economy with every intention
of taking global markets by storm.
Brazil and China, also, are leading in
shaping domestic policies to incentivise
green business, whilst simultaneously
advancing their immediate
development agendas.
Social norms and collective action
Citizens’ norms of concerns and
behaviour in large part define the
difference between nations like
Denmark and Korea, and those failing
to progress, such as the US. These are
in no small part shaped by governments
alongside business. After all, citizens
did not stand up and demand the
internet, they merely responded to
the increasingly persuasive offer. Yet
this closed loop is not the entire story.
Germany’s decision to green its power
system was built on a deep sensibility
of its citizens towards the environment,
just as others have tapped national
sensibilities, including problematic ones
like nationalism and other aspects of
identity. At a far smaller scale, after all,
support for ‘fair trade’ products from
coffee to cotton was born in Europe’s
churches, community centres and
political movements. Major events can
also be important turning points, such
as Japan’s recent nuclear disaster.
People, that is, citizens acting together,
are our third way of fracturing and
seeking to replace incumbent social
norms and outcomes that are no longer
acceptable. The Arab Spring in Tunisia,
Egypt and elsewhere demonstrate
vividly that people can and do rise
together and say ‘enough’, even to
those with the destructive power and
the willingness to exercise it.
OccupyWallStreet - and its thousand
or so companion protests - show us
that people from every walk of life
will join together, despite their huge
“pEOpLE fROm EVERY
wALk Of LIfE wILL
JOIN TOGETHER,
DESpITE THEIR HUGE
DIffERENCES, TO
CHALLENGE wHAT IS JUST
pLAIN wRONG.”
Exiting the Valley of Death | 43
INSpIRING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
differences, to challenge what is just
plain wrong. But these dramatic cases
also illustrate the potential poverty
of social movements that can declare
‘enough’, but do not identify, cohere
and secure the next steps. Although
these unfolding histories are far from
complete, the concern from Cairo to the
City of London is that these cathartic
societal experiments might fail to deliver
the much-needed new economics.
There is no sign that the Muslim
Brotherhood is concerned with Egypt’s
dirty and weakened economy. Equally,
there is no obvious sign that the US and
UK governments are inclined to respond
to OccupyWallStreet’s call for reform
of the financial sector, the lifeblood
or life-taker of the real economy, with
anything but platitudes or worse.
Exiting sustainability’s valley of death
is not about public policy, business
initiative, or citizen action – it is about
all three and their dynamic alignment
with each other. Citizen actions that
create scaled change will be collective,
not necessarily on the streets, but as
social norms confirmed in bars, taxis,
workplaces and schools, and only
in the end at the point of purchase.
Shaping new social norms that underpin
citizens’ collective action is a task
where businesses and governments
have an important catalyzing role to
play. Government policies are a product
of artful politics, occasionally inspired
by crisis and leadership, shaped by
business interests, and underpinned
by the ultimate need to satisfy the
public in all but the most despotic
cases. And, finally, to achieve scale,
progressive businesses will have to help
to create the political space to shape
the right enabling policies, edging to
one side their resistant competitors,
and mobilising citizens’ support in
encouraging governments to do the
right thing. Only with such alignment
will public policy play a fulsome role,
opening the opportunity for us to exit
sustainability’s valley of death.
Produced with
Unilever PLC
Unilever House
100 Victoria Embankment
London
EC4Y 0DY
United Kingdom
www.unilever.com/sustainability
