Jacqueline Kerr
Founder, Leading Real Change
Sustainability strategies have reached a turning point. For years, companies have launched ESG initiatives, published reports, and set science-based targets. But on the ground, the return on investment (ROI) has fallen short.
If it feels like your sustainability strategy has stalled, you’re not alone. Only 16 percent of G2000 companies are on track to achieve net zero by 2050 and 45 percent are still increasing emissions.
Despite our best intentions, sustainability leaders are discovering that real-world barriers are slowing progress and, in some cases, reversing it. Consumers aren’t shifting their behaviors. Suppliers are pushing back. Green claims are triggering fines. Even talking about sustainability has become a political risk in some regions.
So, what now?
The answer isn’t more compliance; It’s smarter implementation.
To unlock sustainability ROI, companies must move beyond reporting and activate the hidden leaders in their value chain, in their communities, and in their customer base to ensure progress on the ground delivers the outcomes we need more urgently than ever.
Why Corporate Sustainability is Stalling
As Robert Burns once wrote in a poem about a mouse’s house being destroyed, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley.” Or, as Mike Tyson put it, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
That’s what the past five years have felt like for many sustainability leaders; one punch after another and plans being derailed as they face implementation challenges.
Examples:
- Education campaigns failing to change consumer behavior
- Supplier relationships strained by compliance demands
- Climate targets missed due to lack of local infrastructure
- Green claims resulting in fines and media backlash
- Reporting requirements eating up sustainability budgets
Now, as we face the reality of the world in 2025, ESG itself has become controversial. In the US, sustainability messaging can now invite political scrutiny and reputational risk. Meanwhile, regulations are evolving unevenly across regions, making compliance even more complex and confusing for stakeholders.
TAKEAWAY: When sustainability requirements are not leading to results, it’s time for a reset. But first, we must understand the realities on the ground where our best intentions are falling short.
The Intention–Action Gap: Why Consumers Aren’t Changing
For years, companies relied on survey data suggesting that consumers wanted more sustainable products—and would even pay more for them. But behavior change never followed.
Why?
1. Intentions ≠ Action
Surveys often reflect what people believe about themselves, not what they’ll do. Behavioral science calls this the intention–action gap. Social desirability bias leads consumers to overstate their willingness to make sustainable choices. This phenomenon has not been encountered before in surveys of less complex purchasing decisions. Consumers also underestimated the challenges of changing their behaviors.
What is easy to agree to on paper is often more difficult in reality; people lose confidence, experience failure and give up."
Jacqueline Kerr
Founder, Leading Real Change
Studies of behavior change show very poor correlations between beliefs, intentions and actual future behavior change. Our current beliefs are related to our current behaviors, but they do not predict a change in behavior in a new direction. This intention-action gap has misled companies and failed to deliver market growth.
TAKEAWAY: Beliefs don’t predict new behaviors. When change is not the easy choice, people give up or are afraid to even start.
2. Economic Pressures Override Values
Inflation, post-COVID financial stress, and economic uncertainty have made cost the top concern. As political uncertainty continues to grow, consumers are making more choices based on price. Studies on messaging the additional costs of sustainability at purchase points have resulted in consumer confusion and reduced sales.
TAKEAWAY: Even motivated consumers are choosing cheaper products over greener ones.
3. Messaging Misses the Moment of Action
Sustainability campaigns often target values, not habits. They fail to influence consumers at the point of use—where real behavior change happens.
Examples:
- A celebrity product endorsement won’t convince someone to compost their leftovers.
- A green label won’t motivate someone to rinse a jar or sort packaging when they’re tired.
- A “cold wash” product claim won’t shift a whole family’s laundry habits.
Corporate sustainability messaging has also taken on a moral tone that does not motivate behavior on the ground because it doesn’t translate clear cost benefits to the consumer in their everyday terms. Companies have also assumed that product labeling would increase trust due to transparency. Consumers, however, have been deceived or confused by product labels in the past (e.g. complex nutrition labeling) resulting in more distrust. Products with less packaging have also suffered from being less visible on the shelf and consumers have struggled to believe that more concentrated products will work as well.
TAKEAWAY: Consumers are hesitant to trust corporate claims that are removed from everyday reality.
So, what works?
Strategy 1: Consumer-Led Change That Makes Sustainability Easy
The good news: sustainable products are getting more affordable, and companies are beginning to learn from real-world use—not just surveys.
Examples:
- Procter & Gamble’s 50L Home initiative uses in-home monitoring to understand water behaviors.
- Electrolux is designing default cold wash settings to make energy-saving choices automatic.
- Staples is testing in-home battery collection boxes and in-store incentives to reduce waste.
But there’s a bigger opportunity: point-of-choice peer support.
Imagine if retailers and brands sponsored trained in-store sustainability assistants—people who guide shoppers toward:
- Smaller-packaged, local, lower-emission options
- Genuine fair-trade and refillable products
- Smarter storage and expiration-dates to reduce food waste
Behavioral science shows that point-of-choice prompts and peer support are key for changing difficult, less habitual behaviors. Grocery and retail outlets and consumer brands could create a coalition and sponsor customer-led programs in stores. Peer assistants are hired and trained to guide customers around stores to point out smaller packaged goods, genuine fair-trade claims, local produce with less emissions, refill options, and expiration dates. This would enhance customer trust in sustainability claims and provide the support consumers need to change their behaviors at the right time and place.
TAKEAWAY: A peer-led approach builds trust and helps consumers act in the moment, where change actually happens.
Strategy 2: Community-Based Investments That Reduce Corporate Risk
Sustainability isn’t just about products, packaging, and processing; it’s about collaboration across the whole value chain.
Companies often face barriers they can’t control alone that impact their emissions targets and their uptake of new innovations (for example, the current lack of EV charging infrastructure or inaccessible recycling streams). These are shared challenges that require community-driven solutions.
Instead of absorbing all the risk, companies can co-sponsor community-led initiatives that create the conditions for change on the ground."
Jacqueline Kerr
Founder, Leading Real Change
Systems-change science shows that pioneers leading communities of practice, demonstrated benefits, and well-timed transitions by decision makers result in new scalable systems.
We’ve tested this model through randomized controlled trials:
- Local leaders were trained to promote sustainable transportation habits.
- They built peer-to-peer networks, engaged policymakers, and aligned with city infrastructure goals.
The result: 450 percent ROI in two years and long-term city investment in the program.
This is what systems change looks like: shared ownership, grassroots action, and infrastructure that benefits everyone—including corporations.
Amazon’s water stewardship follows this formula. They are investing in ‘purple pipes’ through which the recycled water flows. They are listening to experienced community organizations like Water.org and learning about alternative microfinancing models for water projects. Finally, they are sharing solutions with others through their Sustainability Exchange.
While successful, such approaches are sometimes siloed within a corporation but could be applied to other challenges in the value chain:
Programs like this could be applied to:
- Composting and food waste reduction
- Circular economy behaviors e.g. reuse, repair, refurbish, recycle, etc.
- EV infrastructure, community gardens, school solar projects, etc.
- Employee-active transportation programs
TAKEAWAY: It’s not about companies doing everything; It’s about unlocking collective capacity to drive change on the ground.
Strategy 3: Supplier-Led Innovation That’s Already Working
Scope 3 emissions are notoriously difficult to measure—and even harder to reduce.
Companies often focus on top-down mandates and training large suppliers in reporting emissions. But what if the best Scope 3 solutions already exist in the supply chain based on cost efficiencies?
Examples:
- The BBC hosts supplier-solution booths to crowdsource ideas and Dell collects solutions from frontline workers and suppliers through their “Culture of Innovation”.
- Salesforce changed their procurement process, indicating long term commitment and allowing suppliers to plan their own path to emissions reductions.
- PepsiCo learned about e-boiling technology from suppliers, then adopted it internally.
- Wine growers in Tasmania used peer-to-peer data sharing to identify and adopt lower-emission farming practices.
In all these cases, the key success factor is leaders learning from one another. Or, in other words, peer learning (not corporate compliance training).
Peer-leadership and learning is more effective because it:
- Builds buy-in, shared accountability, and long-term commitment
- Surfaces low-cost, high-impact solutions across multiple sectors
- Increases credibility and trust across the value chain
- Motivates change and successful replication in others
- Delivers new innovations and ongoing resilience
TAKEAWAY: Instead of chasing perfect data, companies should focus on amplifying what’s already working.
From Compliance to Collective Action
We can’t abandon ESG reporting entirely, but we do need to reframe it.
Reporting is important—but it should follow action, not replace it. Right now, too many companies are stuck trying to report last year’s emissions while neglecting the urgent work of actually reducing them.
This is creating burnout in sustainability teams, damaging long term relationships, and leaving unmeasured value on the table.
The solution isn’t more top-down mandates. It’s unlocking the hidden leaders in your system, such as:
- Employees who care but remain unpaid champions
- Suppliers with proven innovations who are treated like a number
- Community leaders ready to organize but who lack initial sponsorship
- Consumers eager to change but needing more help than an app
TAKEAWAY: Companies that are activating hidden leaders build capacity for change and create momentum that goes beyond compliance.
A Practical Roadmap for Impact
So where do you start?
1. Map missed opportunities
Where are sustainability efforts already happening but not being acknowledged or scaled?
2. Identify hidden leaders
Who in your value chain, community, or workforce is already leading change but not being recognized or rewarded?
3. Shift from education to enablement
Don’t just inform—make the sustainable choice the easy one through point of choice prompts and peer support.
4. Pilot, then scale
Start small by sponsoring effective community leadership and advocacy programs. From there, connect peer-learning networks across sectors and develop train-the-trainer leadership programs to spread change.
5. Reverse engineer from success
Find sustainability innovations and practices that are working—then figure out which metrics matter most, track and replicate them, and create action on the ground. From there, create step-by-step tool kits and translate improvements into reporting data.
If your sustainability strategy is stuck, it’s not because you lack ambition; it’s because business as usual has been left behind by ever evolving, unexpected challenges on the ground."
Jacqueline Kerr
Founder, Leading Real Change
Final Thought: ROI Starts on the Ground
Some leaders are scrubbing ESG from their corporate communications and going into survival mode. This is a reality in some regions.
But just because corporations can’t always lead out loud doesn’t mean the power of their value chain should be ignored. Unlike governments or NGOs, corporations can connect with change-makers who can deliver commercial insights and advantages. Initial investments by corporations are then built upon by communities, creating long-term support and supply chain resilience.
The next wave of sustainability success will be driven by people on the ground, not federal policies. By action, not just audits.
The organizations that thrive in this era will be the ones that stop trying to control everything—and start supporting collective action where it counts.
This roadmap provides an alternative path for corporations to follow based on behavior and systems change science. Delaying these strategies due to current adverse conditions will not improve outcomes. Rather, implementing these strategies today will both improve the enabling conditions for change on the ground and increase returns.
References
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