Nearly nine in ten consumers are concerned about sustainability — and they are quietly building green habits into their daily lives. That is the headline finding of Bain & Company’s 2026 CEO Sustainability Report, The Visionary CEO’s Guide to Sustainability 2026, which surveyed around 7,500 consumers across the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Brazil and Indonesia.
FAKTA
- Report: Bain & Company’s The Visionary CEO’s Guide to Sustainability 2026, fourth edition
- Survey: Bain Consumer Lab ESG Survey 2026 — around 7,500 consumers in the US, UK, Italy, Brazil and Indonesia
- Concern: 85% of consumers are concerned about environmental sustainability, up from 79% last year — the first increase in three years
- Intensity: 65% say their concern has intensified over the past two years
- Habits: 83% have adopted three or more sustainable lifestyle habits, up from 73% in 2023
- Top driver: extreme weather events worldwide — cited by 53% of respondents in developed markets and 61% in fast-growing markets
- Sources: Bain & Company; ESG Today; VisionMonday
Concern about sustainability rises for the first time in three years
According to Bain, consumer concern about environmental sustainability climbed to 85% in 2026 from 79% in 2025, reversing declines over the previous two years. The increase was consistent across every market surveyed: concern rose to 77% in the US (from 69%), 74% in the UK (from 67%) and 85% in Italy (from 81%), and ran higher still in fast-growing markets — 90% in Brazil and 99% in Indonesia, which Bain notes are more directly affected by extreme weather. By generation, 92% of Gen Z respondents reported being concerned, compared with 77% of Baby Boomers.
Extreme weather worldwide was the most commonly cited reason for concern, followed by “extreme weather in my country”, cited by 32% of respondents in developed markets and 47% in fast-growing markets.
Sorting waste into recycling bins — one of the mainstream sustainable habits that keep growing year over year, according to Bain’s 2026 survey of around 7,500 consumers.
Quietly building sustainable habits into daily life
The survey found that sustainable habits continue to increase year over year across all categories. Eighty-three percent of respondents have adopted three or more sustainable lifestyle habits, up from 73% in 2023.
The mainstream habits
The top habits are practical and mainstream: 59% of people limit home energy use, 56% recycle, and 81% believe their individual actions have a meaningful impact on environmental sustainability.
Even the sceptics are changing
Strikingly, sustainable habits are growing even among consumers who say they do not care about sustainability. In 2023, 35% of these consumers had three or more sustainable lifestyle habits; this year the figure has jumped to nearly 50%.
Health, price and AI shape the green consumer
Health remained the top purchase criterion for most consumers surveyed — above environmental sustainability, price and brand — and consumers increasingly interpret “healthy” through a sustainability lens, focusing on attributes such as “natural”, “clean” and free of additives and pesticides, according to VisionMonday’s account of the report.
Consumers report they are willing to pay about 18% more for a product with sustainability benefits, the report found. AI tools and product information apps are what consumers increasingly turn to when they have questions about what is healthy or sustainable — though Bain says consumers vastly overestimate the energy impact of AI itself, by roughly 30 times, and are already adjusting their behaviour in response.
The report places the consumer findings against a broader picture of record spending with uneven results: private companies and governments invested a record $2.4 trillion in sustainable technologies in 2025 and $17 trillion over the past decade, yet only three of 37 technologies tracked — solar, battery storage and electric vehicles — strongly exceeded deployment forecasts.
More climate stories: Watan News climate coverage. Source: ESG Today — Consumer Concern About Sustainability Increases for First Time in 3 Years: Bain Survey.
