Sustainability is a behavioral challenge

The climate is changing, and the call for action has never been louder. From transitioning to clean energy to building a circular economy, the challenges are vast. Designing innovative climate tech is one part of the equation. The other is ensuring collective action from governments, businesses, and individuals. At its core, it’s about changing behavior.

So how do we make greener choices easier? How do we encourage meaningful shifts toward sustainable behaviors – like reducing consumption and waste, cutting emissions, and conserving resources?

What is holding people back?

Adopting sustainable practices isn’t always straightforward. Sometimes it’s about one-time investments, like installing solar panels. But other times it’s about adopting more continuous pro-environmental habits. Some changes are seemingly small efforts, like separating your waste, while others require bigger commitments, like shifting entire business models toward sustainability.

The key to driving these changes is understanding what motivates people, and what holds them back. Barriers might include convenience, cost, lack of knowledge, misconceptions about what is most impactful, or even a feeling that individual actions are just a drop in the ocean. At the same time, motivations like saving money, improving health, or contributing to a larger purpose can drive change when framed thoughtfully.

Encouraging more pro-environmental behavior

Behavioral Science helps uncover these barriers and motivations, allowing us to design solutions that not only appeal to people’s values but also remove friction from the decision-making process. While changing behavior is challenging, especially at scale, there are proven, evidence-based strategies to make pro-environmental actions more appealing, accessible, and achievable. The key is embedding behaviorally informed approaches into climate tech and other sustainability efforts, ensuring interventions don’t exist in a vacuum but work within the messy realities of people’s day-to-day life. By doing so, Behavioral Science helps create sustainability tools – whether apps, platforms, or policy initiatives – that seamlessly integrate into routines, making greener choices feel natural and effortless.

By applying Behavioral Science to sustainability, we’ve already helped product teams create: 

• Apps that make it easy for people to track and reduce their carbon footprints, empowering them to make sustainable financial choices.

• Digital tools and chatbots to encourage mindful consumption and waste reduction through behavioral nudges and habit formation techniques.

• Effective messaging to reframe pro-environmental behaviors from feeling like sacrifices to opportunities to make a tangible, meaningful impact.

The key is to align solutions with how people naturally behave, making sustainable choices not just easy but second nature.

In many climate initiatives today, behavioral insights are the missing link in driving the large-scale adoption of climate tech and building a more sustainable future. By understanding the psychological and contextual factors that shape behavior, we can design solutions that not only inspire but also create lasting change. 

So, what challenges are you looking to solve? Let’s work together to help more people make pro-environmental behavior second nature. Contact us to explore how you can embed behavioral strategies in your products and services.