Shalom Alugwe, Warwick Business School Alumna and MBA candidate at Emory University – Goizueta Business School, explores sustainability from a different lens – that of our everyday behaviour and ecogestures that make an impact and which people find purpose in.

Sustainability without the Jargon: What Gen Z Is Teaching Us by Shalom Alugwe. With kind thanks to Prof. Frederick Dahlmann at WBS.

Sustainability Messaging is Stuck on the Big Stage

No one wants to hear another dramatic update about endangered coral or the migration patterns of birds they will never see. The problem is not that these issues are unimportant – it is that the language and framing are abstract, distant, and emotionally saturated.

Terms like ESG, Net Zero, Scope 3, and Carbon Offsets sit comfortably in reports and policy documents, but they mean almost nothing at the behavioural level. For years, we have kept inventing new labels for the same concept: greenwashing, greenhushing, greenshifting, greenwishing, green‑everything.

While these are useful terms for academics and auditors, for most people, this language game barely finds translation in everyday life. Indeed, the average person does not feel the difference between greenwashing and greenhushing at the kitchen sink – they only feel that yet another promise has been made somewhere, while their own routines stay the same.

Moreover, people do not act on acronyms; they act on habits, routines, costs, convenience, and cultural norms. When sustainability is framed only as a policy negotiated at global plenary sessions and United Nations conferences, it becomes something done “out there” by “them,” not something lived “right here” by “us.”

Behind the Scenes: Daily sustainability touchpoints

By 9 a.m., most adults have already made more sustainability-relevant choices than any climate conference will cover. Across a single day, there are hundreds of micro‑tasks of sustainability playing out. From switching lights and devices off (or not), sorting waste, choosing how to commute, refilling a bottle instead of buying another plastic drink, adjusting blinds instead of cranking the AC, and reusing a tote instead of accepting yet another branded bag at checkout.

Each micro-action is trivial on its own, yet massive in aggregate. These decisions are mostly invisible and uncounted, but they form the true operating system of sustainability, long before ESG reports or net‑zero roadmaps ever appear. Sustainability is not a single heroic act. It is a dense field of small, repeatable choices that need to be made easily, shared, and supported.

Every established system, from finance to sustainability, ultimately runs on human behaviour, not code. What determines outcomes is not only what policies say, but how humans interact with machines, institutions, and one another in real time. Most people do not wake up thinking about climate targets; they wake up thinking about time, money, comfort, beauty, and social belonging. They respond to whether the bus feels safe, whether the refill station is closer than the fridge, whether the reusable packaging is attractive, and whether saying “no bag, thanks” feels socially awkward.

That is why sustainability often stalls. It has been moralized and mechanicalized at the top, but rarely translated into the behavioral currencies people trade in.

Lessons from Gen Z’s Veganism Wave

According to the World Economic Forum, Generation Z (Gen Z) shows the most concern for the planet’s well-being and influences others to make sustainability-first decisions. With an estimated $33 trillion in wealth transfer by 2030, Gen Z represents the largest behavioural engine in history. A generation that consumes, works, invests, and influences values in ways that are visible across fashion, food, beauty, travel, and work expectations.

They are not primarily trying to “save the world” in the old, heroic sense. They are trying to redesign it so that the world they inhabit feels more just and livable. They boycott brands, boost campaigns, ask employers hard questions, and remix norms on social platforms. But even this engine hits limits when the systems around them are designed for waste and inertia.

When sustainable products cost more, when public transport is unsafe, when reusable water bottles cost more than a plastic bottle, values are forced to contend daily with context. The question is no longer whether Gen Z will lead some part of the transition, but how quickly institutions will integrate them into the design of systems they are already hacking from below.

This is where my Gen Z friends have already run a live experiment. Veganism was once a niche ethical stance. Now, in many circles, it functions as an aesthetic and lifestyle category. What made that shift possible was not just moral argument but design.

 First, vegan choices became visible and social. TikTok recipes, Instagram plates, and YouTube “What I eat in a day” vlogs turned plant-based eating into content, not a private sacrifice. Second, they became aspirational and aligned with wellness, fitness, animal ethics, and clean aesthetics. Vegan lifestyles looked like something you might want to join, not just endure. Third, infrastructure followed as supermarkets, cafés, and food‑delivery apps expanded plant-based options, and price gaps narrowed in key categories. Finally, flexibility encouraged people to be “plant‑forward” or flexitarian rather than perfectly pure, expanding the circle of participation. This shows that when values, culture, and infrastructure align, a conceptual stance can become a lifestyle.

Building better Bridges from Policy to Lifestyle

Our world as of today is heavily saturated with climate laws, net-zero commitments, and technical frameworks. This is why enacting “more policies” is not the primary missing ingredient. What we lack are robust bridges between these abstractions and daily action. A carbon‑pricing mechanism means little if the average household cannot see, feel, or afford the better choice it is supposed to unlock. By contrast, when a city invests in safe bike lanes, reliable buses, and compact, walkable neighbourhoods, the sustainable choice becomes the default commute, not an extreme sport.

It is time to retire the tale of incentives and invest in infrastructure. Sustainability efforts have leaned heavily on incentives. For years, the Back‑to‑MAC sustainability campaign turned empty lipstick cases into free products: bring six empties, get a lipstick, feel good about recycling. Then the brand quietly discontinued the free‑product incentive while rehashing their ‘commitment’ to sustainability. Another example is Boots, which now offers Advantage Card points if a customer brings back hard-to-recycle packaging, effectively paying £1–£5 in credit towards their next purchase.

These discounts and reward schemes are better than nothing, but they reveal a deeper problem. If people must be constantly cajoled with a £5 voucher to recycle packaging, how sustainable is that model in the long run? Gen Zs intuitively gravitate toward platforms, products, and environments where sustainability is embedded rather than asking for rewards for sustainable behaviour. This signals that sustainability has shifted from individual virtue to systems design. And in these cases, behaviour changes not because people are rewarded but because the system makes the sustainable choice the easiest one.

The Gap between Awareness and Sustainable Action

There is a behavioural gap between what people say they value and what they do, and both Gen Z and the vegan wave make that gap impossible to ignore. In the United States, around 75% of Gen Zs consistently report strong concern for climate and a preference for sustainable products. Yet at the same time, the U.S. is Shein’s largest consumer market, with #SheinTok generating billions of views on TikTok. This paradox reveals how quickly values buckle when affordability and convenience pull the other way.

The veganism wave shows that when plant-based options became highly visible, socially rewarded, and widely available at comparable prices, many young consumers did not just believe in ethical eating – they quietly changed their plates and routines. And so, when a beauty brand redesigns its lipstick case to be refillable and desirable, suddenly the conversations on plastic waste are no longer about distant oceans, it is sitting in someone’s handbag. 

The lesson is that awareness on its own does very little. The gap closes only when systems line up values, culture, and infrastructure so that the sustainable choice is not the heroic option but the most normal thing to do.

Not New Habits, New Framing

Perhaps the most hopeful insight from watching Gen Z is that sustainability is not something people need to start doing from scratch. It is already in practice, often without permission, recognition, or language. The parent who line-dries clothes in a small apartment to save electricity, the commuter who shares a ride because fuel is expensive, the student who keeps reusing a notebook until every page is filled, these are not wishful metaphors. They are real behaviours with material impact.

What is missing is not virtue but framing and support. When institutions treat these everyday practices as invisible or incidental, they miss the chance to connect them to wider goals. When they recognize, reward, and design around them, they unlock a powerful sense of agency. And more people will understand that what they do before the workday even begins is already part of the climate story.

Sustainability will not be delivered solely by the signing of another multilateral pact. With the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) fast approaching, the path to progress runs through showers, kitchens, commutes, and checkout. If the next phase of climate action is to succeed, it will not be because we discovered a new acronym. It will be because we treated everyday life as the real stage of sustainability.

We have spent years trying to save the planet through targets and pledges. Gen Z is less interested in rescue narratives and more focused on redesigning systems, so sustainability becomes inevitable. That reframing may be the most important lesson of all.

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• Read a related article: The Hidden Complexity of Sustainability Labels: Are Investors Getting Mixed Signals
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