Reimagining Sustainable Shopping

by Steve Isley, Co-founder and CEO of CountOn

Everyday consumer choices are responsible for 35% of global CO2 emissions, increasing to 65% if you include larger choices like what kind of car you drive and what kind of home you live in. While harder to quantify, consumer choices likely play an even larger role in other aspects of sustainability, like social responsibility and animal welfare. Further, survey after survey [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, …] report that large majorities of people want sustainable products, are willing to switch brands to get them, and are willing to pay more.

Given this demand and large potential for positive impact, why aren’t there any sustainable shopping tools with mainstream adoption? One possibility is that people are mostly virtue signaling. They say they want sustainable products, but deep down they don’t care that much. While somewhat true, it can’t be the full story. Even cutting survey results in half leaves a huge addressable market. Perhaps there aren’t enough products? But some Google searching for nearly any product will eventually surface more sustainable alternatives (case in point, try Googling “sustainable underwear” - a category for which virtue signaling surely isn’t the explanation).

While demand and supply both contribute to the difficulty of realizing the potential of consumer behavior, an under-appreciated challenge is where the two intersect - the actual shopping experience. For decades, there has been a standard approach that has consistently failed.

The “Standard Approach” to sustainable shopping

Step 1 in the standard approach is to define sustainability. This makes intuitive sense, but is actually a mistake. One of the first things I learned at Amazon was that sustainability is very personal. It means different things to different people.

The best analogy for this is health. Try to define a healthy product. Ask ten people and you’ll get ten answers, but you probably wouldn’t call any of them wrong. This doesn’t mean science isn’t important to the study of sustainability (just like with health), only that it’s insufficient. Attempting to define sustainability creates a “one size fits none” outcome. Further, there will always be a tension between wanting a rigorous standard that avoids even the hint of greenwashing, and wanting a large selection of products to provide a useful shopping experience.

Step 2 in the standard approach is to hire scientists to calculate scores based on your definition of sustainability. However, there is not enough publicly available data to do this and the problem grows exponentially with every dimension of sustainability you add. Carbon is hard enough, now try finding data for social responsibility, animal welfare, toxicology, diversity, and more. The more expansive your definition of sustainability, the harder it becomes to calculate scores.

Step 3 in the standard approach is to get scores in front of shoppers. Setting aside all the usual challenges of getting anything in front of shoppers, sustainability is just one of many things shoppers care about. In fact, it is and should be a secondary concern. Nobody should buy something because it’s sustainable. They should buy something because they have a need and the thing meets that need. After that, it should be sustainable. In the extreme, buying something solely because it’s sustainable is frivolous consumption good only for virtue signaling.

The final step in the standard approach is to realize (too late) that shoppers neither like nor understand numbers, so you color code things. The irony here is that what starts as a quest for a scientifically rigorous definition of sustainability ends up subjective in the end as there’s no objective way to draw the boundaries. More troubling is that now the scoring system unintentionally shames poor people who can’t afford brands like Patagonia because sustainability usually comes with a price premium. So people with budget constraints - meaning most people - are now subjected to a color scheme that shames them, even if they’re making a real sacrifice in their attempt to buy better.

What other approaches are possible?

If the standard approach doesn’t work, what will? Nobody can yet claim to have an answer, but luckily there are many possible avenues to explore. Broadly, a sustainable shopping experience should be three things: personalized, trustworthy, and convenient.

Personalization allows us to cater to each individual’s unique values while also meeting people where they’re at in terms of budgetary constraints. What makes a great sustainable choice for a broke college student is almost certainly not the same as for an overpaid tech employee (both of which I’ve been in my life). The option that’s best for someone passionate about social responsibility is likely not the best for someone trying to live a zero-waste lifestyle.

A sustainable shopping experience also needs to be trustworthy. Sustainability is what’s known as a “credence” attribute. It’s not a “search” attribute like price that you know before you buy. Nor is it an “experience” attribute like quality you learn about after you buy. Sustainability requires trust. Trust can come from the brand itself (think Patagonia), a certification, or even a friend.

Finally, a sustainable shopping experience should be EASY. Ideally, it displays the right information, to the right person, at the right time. It should recommend the option the person would have chosen if they had spent hours pouring over the details themselves. This includes taking into consideration the product attributes aside from sustainability that matter to the individual.

This is a tall order. Luckily, technology - especially advances in AI - are opening up new approaches to help people make more sustainable choices. I hope this article will help people avoid past mistakes while guiding them towards new and better alternatives.

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🍿 The Lean Back

Rollie Williams covers the garbage that is fast fashion on Climate Town.

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🎙️ My Climate Journey Podcast

🌍 Cody covered youth empowerment around climate with Lissie Garvin from 776, and Ayakha Melithafa and Dysmus Kisilu, recipients of the 776 Fellowship. They explore the program's purpose, operations, and its impact. We also hear Ayakha and Dysmus’ stories and the work they're doing to affect change. Listen to the episode here.

👨‍💻 Jason talked to John Tough, Managing Partner at Energize Capital, a leading climate software investor. The discussion covers John’s background and Energize's approach, LP composition, evolution, and the alignment between LPs and the venture and growth vehicles. Tune in to the Capital Series here.

🌤️ Yin sat down with Robert “Bob” Blake, a tribal citizen of the Red Lake Nation and the founder and CEO of Solar Bear, to learn about his work and what shaped his beliefs about the true power of the clean energy transition. We also discuss what it's like for members of tribal communities within the U.S. to navigate two different worlds. Listen to the Skilled Labor Series here.

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👩‍💻 Climate Jobs

For more open positions, check out the #j-climatejobs channel in MCJ Slack as well as our MCJ Job Board.

• Senior Mechanical Engineer - Research at Charm Industrial (San Francisco, CA)

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• Senior R&D Engineer II at Solugen (Houston, TX)

• Marketing Manager at WeaveGrid (Bay Area, CA)

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✨ Community Highlights

Huge thank you to the folks that joined our London September Social with Sustainable Ventures and Cleantech for UK

📣 Bill Weihl, founder and Co-Executive Director of ClimateVoice, has an inspiring message everybody needs to hear after his recent ALS diagnosis. His voice is more powerful than ever. Read it here.

👏 Congrats to Cyrus Wadia, who has been appointed as Activate’s new chief executive officer. With experience in both the public and private sectors, Cyrus will oversee Activate’s expansion and help deliver impact at scale. Learn more here.

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🗓 Climate Events

💸 TODAY! MCJ AMA with Hampus Jakobsson: Hampus is a software engineer, turned founder, turned angel investor, turned VC. He’s also the General Partner and Co-founder at Pale Blue Dot. Post your questions in the #c-mcj-ama channel! Details here. (Sept 20)

🇫🇷 MCJ Paris Climate Tech Meetup: ​Quarterly gathering for founders and investors active in the space. Come join us! (Sept 20)

👩‍💻 Women in Data x Climate Workgroup | Batteries & Physics-Informed Models: This meeting will include a brief Batteries 101 and intro to physics-based ML applications presented by Sofia Taylor. No prior background knowledge in these fields are necessary to attend and get the most out of this meeting! (Sept 20)

🍻 MCJ Minneapolis / St. Paul Climate Meetup: Monthly gathering for the local climate community. (Sept 21)

😎 MCJ LA Climate Tech Meetup: Special thanks to our sponsor JP Morgan who will be helping us provide drinks and small appetizers. (Sept 26)

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