Consumer interest in sustainability has been growing for years, with preferences shifting toward products and services that align with personal interests and beliefs. And the trend isn’t slowing. By 2021, we expect sustainable-minded consumers in the U.S. to spend $150 billion on sustainable products.
But consumer interest in sustainability isn’t limited to things like food and beverages. Today, consumers think about sustainability across everything from resource management to product packaging, which speaks to the ever-broadening nature of the term “sustainability.” Regardless of how it gets defined, however, sustainability is top of mind for consumers around the globe, as 73% say they would definitely or probably change a behavior to reduce their impact on the planet.
So what do these shifts mean for businesses? While we’ve been monitoring consumer sustainable intentions and spending trends for some time, we wanted to explore the broader impact of this behavior—how they’re shaping the business landscape. Specifically, we wanted to understand how companies are adapting, how that adoption has accelerated in recent years, as well as what happens to their performance when they do adapt—as well as what will happen if they don’t.
This episode explores the business side of sustainability. It includes two segments: the first is a conversation with George Callard, Chief Legal Officer at Nielsen, and Julia Wilson, Vice President, Global Responsibility & Sustainability at Nielsen; and the second is a conversation with Tessie Petion, Head of ESG Research, Americas, HSBC Securities, and Evan Harvey, Global Head of Sustainability, Nasdaq.
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Published May 6, 2019 4pm EDT / 1pm PDT / 9pm BST / 10pm CEST