An irony of mainstream corporate sustainability efforts is that they focus significantly on the power of consumption. H&M promotes its “Conscious Collection” that uses organic cotton or recycled polyester. Samsung’s “Galaxy for the Planet” showcases its use of recycled plastics in its devices and sustainable packaging.
When companies advertise their products as sustainable, consumers frequently assume they can buy new items more frequently, making such moves paradoxically self-defeating. But these marketing ploys typically only focus on a selective element of a product’s impact.
The problem is that while each individual product may have less of an impact than what came before it, the increase in overall consumption mitigates any environmental savings, and so inherently perpetuates the cycle of consumption that’s a root cause of today’s environmental problems.
Over the last half century and more, the environmental movement has gradually morphed into a consumer movement, with corporate messaging expertly shifting responsibility from systemic change to individual purchasing decisions.
We’ve been led to believe that the solution to environmental catastrophe lies in meticulously examining product labels for terms like organic, sustainably produced, green, and other buzzwords often coined by corporations themselves. Millennials and Gen Z are portrayed as eco-conscious generations that will correct the poor environmental decisions of their parents.
But while many initiatives today tick corporate sustainability boxes and make individuals feel like their purchases are righteous, they fail to address the deeper systemic challenge: as long as companies prioritize endless growth, they will continue to push more consumption—and no amount of “green” products can offset that.
We need to come to grips with the fact that consumption is—and will always be—exceedingly hard to constrain, especially when companies are spending over $1 trillion a year to convince us to buy more. Any sustainability effort that relies solely on the purchase of more responsible goods will fail.
This challenge has only intensified in the current political landscape. Since returning to office, President Trump and his administration have relaxed standards for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles, and claimed that “more drilling would bring down energy bills.” Furthermore, the Department of Energy announced plans to pause efficiency standards for seven categories of appliances, while the Environmental Protection Agency began overhauling the WaterSense label program to prioritize “effectiveness and consumer experience” over efficiency.
These policy shifts effectively prioritize short-term economic growth and resource extraction over environmental stewardship, and they create a regulatory landscape that rewards consumption rather than conservation and regeneration. Given this, what can companies do to address the fundamental paradox of sustainable consumption?
Creating sustainable consumption opportunities starts before the purchase
A first step for companies interested in consumption being sustainable is to ensure that their entire supply chains are built on sustainable and equitable principles. Reducing the footprint and environmental impact of products in this way is a much more robust path to sustainable consumption than today’s focus on telling consumers to buy products with green attributes.
For instance, beverage maker Guayakí Yerba Mate has developed a regenerative model that connects the dots between consumers purchasing its products and positive societal and environmental effects in its supply chains.
Ben Mand, CEO of Guayakí, told me that his company works in the Atlantic Forest communities in South America where yerba mate leaves from a tree in the holly family are grown. They work with smallholder producers to implement high environmental and social standards, and then ensure that the economic benefits of their work flow directly into the communities rather than being captured by intermediaries.
In other words, if companies can ensure their production and distribution create an overall positive benefit, the environmental problems that stem from the eventual consumption of their products are significantly reduced.
It may seem easy to dismiss strategies like these because they’re done by a company in a niche category. But I’ve observed similar practices being scaled in many other prominent multinational firms across industries around the globe.
For instance, leading global coffee maker Illycaffè created a regenerative coffee production system, focused on enhancing biodiversity, improving soil health, and fostering resilient farming communities. Illycaffè collaborates directly with coffee farmers in South America and Africa to support agro-ecological practices that not only boost crop yields but also protect ecosystems. This approach ensures the long-term viability of coffee cultivation—a crop under significant environmental threat—while promoting fair trade and social equity.
Thus, one way to mitigate the paradox of consumption is by starting with materials and supply chains and fostering a model where each purchase directly delivers social and environmental benefits to the communities producing the raw materials.
The difference between H&M and Samsung versus Guayakí and Illycaffè is subtle but important. H&M and Samsung spotlight isolated “green” features—like recycled materials—to market select products. Guayakí and Illycaffè, by contrast, embed sustainability throughout their supply chains, prioritizing the overall impact of their businesses rather than promoting individual eco-friendly attributes.
Helping consumers understand the extended life cycles of products
Moving up the value chain also highlights the importance of the design of production systems. Ikea, the world’s largest furniture retailer with more than 480 stores across 63 markets, offers another example of how a global corporation can fundamentally reimagine its relationship with consumption. In an industry where Americans discard more than 12 million tons of furniture annually, Ikea is working to break the “take-make-dispose” cycle that has defined furniture retail.
As Mardi Ditze, country sustainability manager for Ikea U.S., explained to me, a key initiative is the Buy Back & Resell program, launched in 2022, which allows customers to return an Ikea product they no longer want and then receive credits worth between 30% and 50% of the original price. Depending on the condition, items are either resold, refurbished, or recycled. This program is now operational in most U.S. stores and accepts nearly 3,000 products for resale. Each returned item undergoes a detailed evaluation process, prioritizing resale through their “As-is” section, with recycling as a last resort. Hege Sæbjørnsen, Ikea’s sustainability manager for the U.K. and Ireland, said the plan would help to promote Ikea’s progress toward achieving its “fully circular” and “climate positive” goals by 2030.
In addition, Ikea has introduced the Ikea Preowned platform, which facilitates peer-to-peer sales of secondhand furniture. The program is currently being tested in Madrid and Oslo, with potential global expansion. The Swedish retailer already resells some 47 million products worldwide.
Companies like Patagonia and Eileen Fisher are also challenging throwaway culture by designing programs that extend product life cycles and reduce waste. Patagonia’s Worn Wear initiative repairs and resells used gear—more than 130,000 items in 2024 alone—thereby encouraging shared responsibility between brand and customer. Eileen Fisher’s take-back program has reclaimed more than two million garments, transforming them into resale items, new clothing, or other goods, and built dedicated facilities to support this near-zero-waste model. Both companies demonstrate how brands can work to reshape purchasing habits and production systems to prioritize sustainability.
Conclusion
There’s no denying that people will want to keep buying new products. We must therefore move beyond current paradigms that place the onus on consumers to drive sustainability.
If we are to achieve legitimate sustainable consumption, businesses must redesign their value chains from the ground up and embed environmental and social responsibility into every decision from design, sourcing, and production to also how they communicate with consumers.
Since returning to office, the Trump administration has systematically dismantled environmental protections that could have incentivized more sustainable business practices. But the examples of Guayakí, Illy, Ikea, Patagonia, and Eileen Fisher point toward an alternative paradigm—one where consumption isn’t positioned as the solution to our environmental crisis, but rather as one element in a broader economic system designed primarily to serve people and planet.